Phillipp Seymor Hoffman

[Chris James]

http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=850332

A talented man with what would be described as "dark edges." Dead at forty-six years of age from a drug overdose, what a waste.

So many vibrant talented people have died this way and you have to ask why. Is there some flaw in the ego of such an individual that they feel they are above their human frailty? Heroin kills, he knew that, they all knew that.

There must be some deep seated weakness in those who would otherwise be envied for their talents. Hoffman has portrayed some stunning characters in film, but each of them was quirky, something that must have attracted him. His portrayal of Truman Capote made me a loyal fan of Hoffman's talent.

Now that he has died there will be the usual incriminations about who knew what kind of self-destructive binge he was on and why didn't anyone stop him. We got the same buzz when River Phoenix died. People know when these stars are headed for the gutter. Their lives are managed because they are worth so much money, but managers only posture and kiss ass, they don't save lives.

Perhaps someone out there can tell me why these things happen, why we are forced to watch a brilliant man brought so low even unto death. Hoffman had friends, so did John Belushi and Michael Jackson, but no one seemed to be capable of stopping their rush towards death. It sickens me that people around these drug affected individuals know and do nothing. They are enablers and I see them as less than human beings.

Excuse the rant, it had to be said.

[Cole Parker]

I liked him in State and Main.

I think sometimes very creative, very artistic people don't feel they fit in very well. Perhaps the drugs are to soften the edges of life. It is indeed a tragedy. I too wish someone would intervene.

C

[clay49]

Perhaps someone out there can tell me why these things happen, why we are forced to watch a brilliant man brought so low even unto death. Hoffman had friends, so did John Belushi and Michael Jackson, but no one seemed to be capable of stopping their rush towards death.

If a person is not willing to change, there is nothing anyone can do.

[FreeThinker]

I think there is a part of many of us who feel we aren't worthy of the praise or success we achieve. This is a major element of the story I am writing. Many people who are high achievers, who are extraordinarily creative and talented, feel they aren't enough, they aren't good enough. They aren't getting that approval they need. No matter how good they are, they feel its not enough to overcome the negative messages they received when they were younger and they search for something to add to the success, something to give them that certain, undefinable extra they seek. For some, its sex. For other's, its chemicals. The list of talented, creative people who succumb is endless.... Cory Monteith and Philip Seymour Hoffman are just the latest. River Phoenix and Brad Renfro back to Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison and further back to Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds....

There's a poignant line at the end of The Boys in the Band made more meaningful by the context in which it was uttered. "Why can't we just learn to love ourselves?"

[DesDownunder]

[...]

There's a poignant line at the end of The Boys in the Band made more meaningful by the context in which it was uttered. "Why can't we just learn to love ourselves?"

There is truth in that quote, but personal experience may help throw some light onto the subject, if not on the individuals' plight.

Back in the late 1960s I knew a young man when he was just 15 years old. He was full of life or so it seemed to us all.

He was not yet certain of his sexuality and no one tried to force him into anything...except his father, who being a good Christian minister would come home from helping his congregation and drink himself into oblivion before physically beating his wife and kids. In later years when his kids had grown up he tried to atone for his behaviour by helping them build their homes.

The son in question however, was by the time of his late teens an addict. It would true to say that if it grew out of the ground, he would dry it out and smoke it. Later he became hooked on stronger drugs.

Many of his friends tried to help him and despite that help and his own insight (he wasn't without intelligence) into his addictions, he resisted the chances he was offered to overcome the addiction to being addicted.

I asked him why he did it, and his reply was, "It's the pain of being alive. How do you cope with the agony of being alive?"

I lost contact with him for several years as he formed new and dangerous relationships in the drug world. One day, his brother, now a successful entrepreneur, stopped me in the street and told me that his younger brother had died after a drug caused heart attack at the age of 35.

We can come up with a mountain of psychological reasons as to why people become despondent, addicted and oblivious to where their life choices are taking them. Sometimes they are not choices. Sometimes there are accidents, and sometimes the inevitable is beyond our ability to do anything.

Sometimes we're not able to do anything to help others, to help them yell "Yes to life," instead of becoming a victim of negations that are never really an escape.

That is a pain of life in itself, and one we learn to live with.

[The Pecman]

Really a tragic end to a brilliant career. Phil Hoffman was a one-of-a-kind actor, one of the rare people who could disappear into a role. He could play four or five different people and you'd never be aware it was him until after the movie was over. He became the character.

The three roles that impressed me the most were the shlub in Boogie Nights who tries to proposition well-hung porn star Mark Wahlberg only to get rebuked, and hit himself in the head crying, "stupid! stupid! stupid!" (which my partner and I have laughed about for 15 years); his fantastic role in Almost Famous as cynical, world-weary rock critic Lester Bangs, giving career advice to the teenaged Cameron Crowe, who just got his first big break writing for Rolling Stone; and as the mysterious L. Ron Hubbard-like religious czar who runs a Scientology-like church in The Master. All three totally different characters, totally different stories, and it's like a different guy played each of them.

Just ordered Capote on Netflix and can't wait to see that. The previews are amazing: you believe he was the 1950s/1960s writer.

Terrible waste that he died. I know this is a poor taste joke, but I lamented to a friend today, "why is Hoffman dead while idiots like Shia LaBouf and Justin Bieber are still alive? There are times I wish Shia LaBouf would drive off a cliff, with Bieber sitting in his lap, and maybe with Lindsay Lohan in the back seat." [i know, bad taste, but I cracked up anyway.]