Philip Seymour Hoffman

[Gangster Octopus]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Unlike everyone else?

[Bored Of Education]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Everyone else doesn't get asked their opinion on stuff they don't know about quite so much.

That article is still dreadfully written, by the way, it is just that the content of what he is saying is sound.

[jason voorhees]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

The Matt Taibbi Camden article in Rolling Stone contained one moment that was incredibly harrowing because I've seen it.

Many high school students from the Philadelphia suburbs are ending up on heroin as they make their way to Camden, NJ. I've taken the RiverLine, a lightrail that runs along the Delaware River and ends in the Camden Aquarium.

One kid had black hair and Greek/Roman features. An absolutely gorgeous kid. He had star tattoos all over his face, and as he got closer to Camden, you could see him aching and twisting as he got up and surveyed the streets, looking for his man.

His face was about 2 feet from mine, and I was staring at him to see how long it would be before he noticed I was looking right in his eyes, and in what seemed like an eternity, I just watched him as he looked left and right and down the avenue of the streets surrounding the Walter Reade Transportation Center. Once the train stopped, he popped out of the doors. Never saw me.

At the Walter Reade Transportation Center, you see women taking off their socks and clothes and giving imaginary lapdances, remembering a time when she could get money for such a thing. You got Philadelphia's Kensington Avenue, as close to a real-life Hamsterdam from The Wire.

People have made these comments like "how come no one is angry that he left 3 kids." There was a beautiful man I knew, Brian Welsh. Soccer coach at West Windsor-Plainsboro South for over 2 decades. He had a few kids with the first wife, then had twins with the next. Piece by piece, year by year, it came unravelled. The twins were born at 6 months, and fought for life everyday for a year. His wife couldn't get her job back. He had alimony and older kids in college. He started drinking. The marriage fell apart.

Then he did this.

I never understood how fathers could commit suicide and leave their children behind. Or overdose on heroin and leave their children behind.

Until I was a father who was mostly unemployed for 2 years.

What they don't tell you, and there's no way to know, is that having kids sometimes gives you something to live for. But it also multiplies the feelings of failure exponentially. And once you say, "my kids will be better off without me," you're more than halfway to the sleeping pills or alcohol or needle or crackpipe or roulette table.

The thought of letting your kids down, the thought of seeing life play out for them with a bum father who will drag them down into poverty and drugs and the stripper pole and you are powerless to stop it, is too much. Death is too close, and it's too alluring.

I never really liked Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Didn't really like his face. I hated that pompous Magnolia, and I hated the people that liked that movie. He was also in Patch Adams.

Then I was reminded of all of his other roles. I liked Scotty of Boogie Nights, but that was some actor who looked like PSH. Same for the smarmy slimy guy in Talented Mr. Ripley. And I never figured out how they actually got Truman Capote to act in that Capote film. Oh yeah, he was brilliant.

One reason I love drug stories, The Wire, Luther Mahoney, tales of the Latin Kings and Run CMD, is that drugs go to the very core of being a human. To Be Or Not To Be. What is happiness.

It obviously makes people very, very, very happy. Like a cold hopped-up IPA flushing down my esophagus. Like 14 cold hopped-up IPAs flushing down my esophagus.

[Reed John]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

[Bored Of Education]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

There used to be a saying that you were only two bad decisions away from living on the street. Now it is more than likely that those two bad decisions are likely to be made by someone else who gets away scot-free.

[alyxandr]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

"how come no one is angry that he left 3 kids."

Oh, we're here, no worries. Although i've been reluctant to mention it, after taking a serious smackdown on another forum for mildly suggesting that the massive Princess-Di-style public wailing and rending of garments over here after Heath Ledger's death might have been a little creepy. People do like their celebrities.

Now, i'm as socially libertarian as they come, particularly on ludicrous issues like illegal plants... right up until the moment of spawning, at which point one needs to understand that, for the next two decades or so, it's not about you anymore.

That's an excellent article, and it's certainly swayed me a bit; my one objection would be subtly equating Mr. Hoffman to someone struggling to pay their bills. Though perhaps not a literal 1%-er, Mr. Hoffman was at least a member of the upper middle class so beloved in these pages, and had access to effective treatment and support. And the apparent fact that, as a parent, he did not avail himself of this, strikes me as a profoundly selfish act.

(YMMV)

[jason voorhees]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

I don't know the guy, and obviously this is all conjecture and la di da di, but having kids brings out emotions that (a) don't exist before they are born, (b) you have no idea could exist before they are born, (c) are so powerful and are unlike anything you ever experienced growing up.

Pets don't prepare you, your parents don't prepare you, coaching doesn't prepare you, teaching doesn't prepare you, reading about it doesn't prepare you...whoever you are, whatever you've become, whatever you've learned is rendered null and void.

You can use your experiences to help you, but the emotions are such that it can rip someone to shreds. Money or no money.

You play with your kids, and you neglect your job. Especially one in which you have to spend hours learning and memorizing lines. Your brain learned a pattern that enabled yourself to become successful, and suddenly (granted, his oldest was 11) that pattern changes.

Whenever you concentrate on your job, you neglect your kids. Look at how many professional sports players are amazed that their baby they remembered being born yesterday is 19 years old. Look at Matt McConhaughey and Chris O'Donnell, and how they took years off because being a father is that demanding.

In the end, I know what the guy was feeling. Or I have a glimpse of a slight percentage of what he was feeling. 20 years ago, when I was 20, I laughed at Kurt Cobain when he shot himself and was aghast he could do that with a daughter. Now I know that when that baby was born, the last thing either any of them wanted was to put a gun in their mouth or OD on Heron.

[alyxandr]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

I hear what you're saying, and can empathize. But let's look at a quick distillation of your middle 4 paragraphs:

you... your... you... you... you... you... you... you've... you've...

your... someone

you... [your kids]... you... your... you... your... yourself

you... your... [your kids]... [their baby]...

Again, my point: it's not about you anymore. And for all our eye-rolling annoyance at the title "The Greatest Generation", i think this is something they understood better than we do.

[jason voorhees]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Books upon books to debate that, but I'll be happy to leave it with your point.

Actually, I'll leave it with one more. He may have shot up, because he was thinking of his kids. This was his way of being a better father. Your mind twists and turns into contortions that are unfathomable.

[MsD]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

You're right. Addiction isn't as simple as "oh sod the kids, I want to indulge myself". I've known someone take heroin to ease the terrible pain of being a mother, of loving someone so desperately, and feeling terrified and vulnerable because of that love. If you love your kids, there's the constant fear of something happening to them and heroin can ease that for a while.

[MsD]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

I've no idea if any of that applied to PSH, just saying, people don't take continue to take heroin because they're selfish or indifferent to their children, necessarily.

[WOM]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

My brother in law is an alcoholic. He's 38 (looks 50), lives in a rented basement, is a day labourer and owns a change of clothes and some hand tools. He has no partner, no children and no friends beyond other drinkers. Nothing matters to him more than his next drink.

My father in law is an alcoholic. He's 67 (looks 60), lives in a lovely big house on a lake, had a good career in banking management, and has whatever a man of that 'station' could desire. He has a wife of 47 years, children, grandchildren and an army of friends, most of whom are other heavy drinkers of similar respectability. Little - I can't say 'nothing' - matters to him more than his next drink.

Addiction is an insidious and complicated thing, and we really can't pretend to understand all of its facets.

[WOM]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

I say 'we can't, but obviously there are those who do. But certainly there aren't enough of them to reach each and every addict, even if they could identify them all...or if they'd accept help...

[jason voorhees]

Philip Seymour Hoffman

The good news is we have weeks and months of National Enquirer "The Tragic Last Days" articles to enlighten us.