THOUGHTS ON PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN

The Super Bowl has come and gone. Besides being devoid of football enjoyment, especially so for a guy who's not big into football, the game also had a huge cloud hanging over it even before the slaughter began. Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the 21st century's finest character actors/actor in general overdosed on heroin at the age of 46. Media coverage of Hoffman's death has been intrusive to say the least, and I wanted it to die down a bit so I could get most of the news and think of something fitting to say in response to his death.

In one of his lighter roles as Brandt

It's ironic to say that I'm fortunate that I haven't seen Hoffman's finest work, which, reading from the tribute articles that have come out in droves this past week, include primarily the following five films: Capote, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Almost Famous, Doubt and Boogie Nights. They're at least the constantly reoccurring ones. I'm glad not to have seen them because now I have Hoffman's body of work, a body so consistently thoughtful and expressive you couldn't possibly tell what his next move was. I have been lucky to see his supporting turns in more mainstream work in The Big Lebowski, Catching Fire, Moneyball and my personal favorite of his Mission: Impossible III. He was a superb villain, a real nasty fellow, and the only one really that anyone can seem to recollect in the rather generic villains of that action series.

So as you can see I'm not here to rave of his filmography, or debate what'll happen to Plutarch Heavensbee in Mockingjay Part 2. I'm here to briefly comment on addiction, and how it can even make a cinematic great like Hoffman crumble under its influences. While discussing his death in one of my classes, my peers and I came unto this consensus: if you have the addiction gene in your blood, you are always an addict. An alcoholic sober for three decades is still an alcoholic. It never leaves you. I naively thought that after his brief rehab stint in May that Hoffman could make a 180 and still make movies. Celebrity rehab "stays" are like putting a band-aid on a concussion.

Reports of what I read indicate Hoffman was near-Method in his quest for a performance. The word "truth" is found frequently in these articles; also his incredible ability to add little quirks to his roles: like Brandt's nervous "I wish I could slap you" laughter when the Dude touches Lebowski's awards in TBL. These little touches and notes of an honorable man will be lost to the fact that he died alone in his apartment with a heroin syringe in his arm. . To quote from the movie Parkland that I watched a week ago, "It's such an undignified way to die for such a dignified man."

I don't want to sound like an officer from a D.A.R.E. program, but please let this be a lesson to those struggling with addiction. It does not discrimnate, and will consume any person if they welcome it into their lives. Fortunately for us, we'll hopefully be seeing more of Mr. Hoffman for the next two years in "The Hunger Games," because, I've stated before, actors truly never die. Their work lives on for as long as cinema may last.