Philip Seymour Hoffman
Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of my favorite actors. As Scotty J. in Boogie Nights, Allen in Happiness, Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, and Truman Capote in Capote, Hoffman delivers some of the most honest and unflinchingly human portrayals in contemporary American cinema. Apparently, the NYT agrees with me (or, I agree with them). Their profile of PSH appears in today’s NYT magazine, and it’s clear that the man behind these characters is equally complex:
Caden Cotard [PSH's character in Synedoche] seems to echo many of Hoffman’s own internal debates and anxieties. “I took ‘Synecdoche’ on because I was turning 40, and I had two kids, and I was thinking about this stuff — death and loss — all the time,” Hoffman continued. “The workload was hard, but what made it really difficult was playing a character who is trying to incorporate the inevitable pull of death into his art. Somewhere, Philip Roth writes: ‘Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.’ And Charlie, like Roth, is quite aware of the fact that we’re all going to die.” Hoffman looked around the theater. The stage manager was arranging furniture; the actors were lolling on a sofa; Andrew Upton was chatting with an assistant. “In 80 years,” Hoffman went on, “no one I’m seeing now will be alive. Hopefully, the art will remain.”
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the creative process. There’s something about creativity that requires an intensity of focus – a drive to be sure – inspired by the intense realization that we are mortal and fallible and when we die we leave so little behind. Art, then, is driven by this need to make our lives meaningful and important. But I wonder if this same drive can become overwhelming. If we’re constantly having this metadialogue about the relative permanence of what we’re creating, does this allow us the freedom to make mistakes? To create “bad” art? When I’m having difficulty writing, I think it’s because I’m spending too much time thinking like an editor rather than as a writer. Words don’t hit the page because I’ve already decided they’re not quite right. This means it’s harder for me to enter a flow state and actually get to the business of writing.
(All this musing is no doubt inspired by the fact that I’m supposed to be writing right now and am procrastinating a bit. Oh, the irony!).
One of my new favorite quotes also comes from this article:
“Sometimes when I see a great movie or a great play I think, ‘Being human means you’re really alone…’”