How do you even respond to something like this?
I was prepared to write something of an elegiac introduction, but I came up short. What’s the angle you go for? Compare-and-contrast? Maximillian Schell died this weekend too, but he was 86…does that make his death less tragic? Seemed to take away from the whole point of this article.
There’s the temptation to do a variation on what a lot of rather irritating Facebook posters do, which is to make excuses for why you’re even spending time at all on the death of someone you never met (you’ve seen them: “I don’t usually care about celebrities, but…”—we get it, you’re deep). But Philip Seymour Hoffman was sewn so tightly into the fabric of contemporary film culture, and was nowhere near leaving it, that justification, too, seems superfluous. The first thing I ever saw him in was Scent of a Woman, twenty-two years ago. An iconic film, and the fact that it’s one of the least iconic in his magnificent career is only one of the many things that speaks to this guy’s greatness.
So instead of a eulogy, I figured I’d make a list of my favorite of his performances—and there I certainly don’t come up short. In fact, I had to make a top ten instead of my usual top five, because it’s impossible to encapsulate his best into a simple quintet. (Truth told, it’s impossible to reduce it to a dectet either; I’ve left off gems like his bit part in Lebowski, or his scene-stealer in Charlie Wilson’s War, or his head-to-head with Paul Giamatti in Ides of March, etc etc).
So, my ten favorite Philip Seymour Hoffman performances:
10. 25th Hour (2002)
Hoffman was known for being part of ensemble casts, and yet never had trouble distinguishing himself in a sea of great performances. That’s the case here, when he plays Jacob Olinski, second banana to Edward Norton’s main role. But Hoffman infuses Olinski with what one character calls “upper-class Jewish guilt”, a do-gooder stuck in a night when everything goes to hell, first for his friend, then for himself. His panic-stricken face outside a public bathroom after an incident with a Lolita-style student is worth the price of admission alone.
9. Happiness (1998)
Todd Solondz’s film took average Americans to task for their secret, taboo desires, exposing a zoo of pedophiles, miscreants, and, in the case of Hoffman’s Allen, compulsive makers of dirty prank phone calls. Allen’s a creep, sure, but Hoffman makes him human, which is why, aside from using his own semen to glue pictures to his wall, the most memorable moment in the film comes when he calls dominant Lara Flynn Boyle, who actually engages his perversity, and he gets so embarrassed he has to hang up.
8. Doubt (2008)
It takes a master actor to do what Hoffman does here. The entire plot of Doubt rests upon keeping the audience in the dark. We don’t know whether Father Flynn has done anything, or whether rumors are simply flying around about him because his methods of teaching differ from convention. Hoffman proves himself to be a stellar poker player here; we are, indeed, left with little more than doubt by the end—nothing is certain, thanks mainly to Hoffman’s performance. A flawed movie with the best cast of 2008.
7. Capote (2005)
Hoffman won the Academy Award for his performance as the titular Truman Capote, and no wonder. It’s not just the physical differences he had to overcome (though that’s certainly part of it—Capote was famously tiny and slight, whereas Hoffman was, of course, hulking). It’s his entire being, the skin he steps into to become Capote; it’s how he shows us what mere mimicry Jamie Foxx’s Ray Charles was the year prior. Surely a tough film to watch now, as it takes on an ultra-meta level: Capote became an alcoholic after writing his most famous work—and Hoffman’s addiction reportedly got much worse after inhabiting the man.
6. Magnolia (1999)
Another film carpeted wall-to-wall with great acting, and Hoffman’s stands out precisely because it doesn’t stand out. It’s a showy film, and generous Hoffman allows his fellow actors (in the room with him: Julianne Moore, Tom Cruise, and Jason Robards) to take over. But he also lends an understated, muted quality to Phil Parma, possibly the only sane and pure person left in his dying patient’s life. Without Phil, the other characters couldn’t come together, so watch for the heartbreaking moment when he pleads with Frank TJ Mackey’s phone operator: “This is the scene in the movie where you help me out…”
5. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Sure, Tom Ripley’s the “bad guy” in this story, but god damn if Hoffman doesn’t turn Freddie Miles into the bastardliest bastard you ever wanted not to meet. Everything’s going fine for Tom—he and Dickie Greenleaf are getting along literally swimmingly—until Freddie comes to town. What’s brilliant about the performance is that, actually, Freddie is a good guy; he is, after all, the one person prepared to call Tom Ripley out for being a psychopath and (eventually) a murderer. And yet Hoffman understands the Hitchcockian twists of character enough to encourage us to root for the murderer, and makes Freddie’s “How’s the peeping, Tommy?” sound less like someone exposing a creep than being a creep himself.
4. Boogie Nights (1997)
The first time I actually noticed Hoffman as more than just an oh-isn’t-he-that-guy-from kind of actor. He was as good a comic actor as a dramatic one (check out yet another PTA performance in Punch-Drunk Love for solid evidence of that), and that shows here. Scotty’s initial introduction to Dirk Diggler is so painfully awkward that you’d want to hug him if you also didn’t simultaneously want to keep your distance. His face when he holds a boom mic and watches Diggler have sex for the first time is goddam priceless. And certainly no one should forget his repetition of “I’m a fuckin’ idiot” after a failed attempt at kissing Dirk on New Year’s Eve, a scene that is the absolute definition of Sad.
3. Synecdoche, New York (2008)
One of only three times when the show was Hoffman, and he didn’t have to hang out on the sidelines. Charlie Kaufman’s usual head-trips were elevated to a level of sophistication unseen previously. Kaufman’s first time directing could have been a disaster—the film is not easy to love—but ends up being both intelligent and extremely entertaining with Hoffman’s Caden Cotard anchoring the whole thing. Hoffman’s brilliance here is to play the whole absurd premise straight, deadpanning lines (like the following, which my friends and I have quoted to each other thousands of times since):
Caden: (looking at the morning paper) Harold Pinter died. (evenly, dry) Wait, no, he won the Nobel prize.
2. The Master (2012)
Hoffman was always in rare form when he had to go toe-to-toe with another fine actor, and as Lancaster Dodd (in yet another PTA film), Hoffman gets the chance to do just that. The challenge here was clear: Dodd is an enigma, a man whose entire identity lies in people’s inability to figure him out. Not an easy role to play, but play him Hoffman does, somehow managing to be simultaneously enigmatic and also allowing us t see the hairline cracks in Dodd’s outer shell. He’s lonely, isolated, angry, brilliant. He creates his cult—or is it?—as a defense against the world he resents. Hoffman penetrates an impenetrable character, for the benevolent purpose of letting us see inside him as well.
1. Almost Famous (2000)
Hoffman’s Lester Bangs bookends the entire film, acting as our protagonist’s conscience throughout. He starts by advising William Miller “don’t make friends with the band,” and stops him in the middle of the street to tell him sorry, he doesn’t have time to chat with his many fans (only to be seen two seconds later, still talking to William). Hoffman makes Bangs a force of nature, never allowing the character to tip over into parody by showing the common sense and pure, unadulterated dignity in everything he says. And very few lines have ever made me laugh as hard as the spin he puts on: “I know what happened. The band made you feel cool. And trust me, I met you. You are not cool.”
Be honest and unmerciful, Bangs tells William—are there four better words that better capture Hoffman’s dramatic sensibility throughout his whole career?
About Ted McLoof
Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.