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Very shocking & sad news. PSH definitely brought a lot to any film he was in, even if the role wasn't that large.

Obviously, his work in the films of P.T. Anderson were amazing. However, some of my favorites were:

As the wealthy snob Freddie Miles in The Talented Mr. Ripley. He was the first one to see through Ripley, and the scene when Ripley took him out (to keep from being discovered) was one of the most disturbing sequences in the film....after I saw this I read the novel by Patricia Highsmith & my like of the movie was significantly diminished because of how much they changed the plot/story, but that doesn't alter the fact the PSH was brilliant in this.

As the officious Brandt in The Big Lewboski. Hilarious, even though the character wasn't necessarily trying to be funny - brilliant performance.

However, possibly my all-time favorite PSH role was as the title character in Owning Mahowny - though I know very little about gambling addiction, I'm sure this was a very convincing portrayal...well-done.

Perkins Cobb wrote:

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Maybe Gandolfini, but the added tragedy of addiction has brought out heartfelt responses from recovering addicts has made it all the more personal if that makes any sense..

Not to mention finger-wagging from judgmental douchebags, blaming the dead guy for being selfish and leaving his family behind. Unbelievable.

That's not been my experience, at least with Twitter. I'm sure it's happening, but judgmental douchebags usually don't merit following.

Twitter assholes are far too busy calling for a boycott of Coca-Cola after last night

domino harvey wrote:Twitter assholes are far too busy calling for a boycott of Coca-Cola after last night

What did Coca-Cola do?

A commercial with people of several nationalities singing "America The Beautiful" in their native languages.

Lethal batches of ‘bad heroin’ hit East Coast the same week Philip Seymour Hoffman died

I love how he was able to really take mainstream fare and make it all the more interesting by stealing the show like in Mission Impossible III and Charlie Wilson's War.

RIP

What I find most remarkable about Phillip Seymour Hoffman was that as great as he was there are so many films that you forgot he was in, then remember and say, ''man was he great in that". That might at first glance seem like a knock but I think it's a testament to how great he really was, that unlike other 'greats' he never overwhelmed the screen with his performances. He was always in character, never Phillip Seymour Hoffman great actor.

Perkins Cobb wrote:Who would've thought we'd lose PSH before PBH.

I'm going to kick myself when you tell me but who's PBH?

Baker Hall, co-star of Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and Magnolia

Ah, you mean Bookman from Seinfeld. That guy's had a great career flying under the radar.

You make it sound like he's a 25 year old guy who had one big guest-starring role

Black Hat wrote:Ah, you mean Bookman from Seinfeld. That guy's had a great career flying under the radar.

No, I mean one of the other actors who is closely associated with, if not best known for, his collaborations with Paul Thomas Anderson.

mfunk9786 wrote:You make it sound like he's a 25 year old guy who had one big guest-starring role

In a way, 25 year old bit aside, this is kind of true. His part in Seinfeld was by far his most culturally relevant role. He's an excellent character actor but, love him or hate him, of the relative few who watch Paul Thomas Anderson's films, not many outside of Perkins Cobb are associating Baker-Hall with them.

He's the lead of Hard 8 and has a very, very prominent role in Magnolia. He's also the lead in Secret Honor. It's weirdly reductive to reduce him to a 20 minute tv spot, wonderful though it was, and also seems out of place in a memorial thread for an entirely different actor.

To haul things back on topic, here's Philip Baker Hall on his memories of working with Hoffman.

While Along Came Polly is far from a great movie, Hoffman does steal (along with Alec Baldwin) every scene he's in...

From the Labyrinth Theater Company

To our Labyrinth Family,

We are overwhelmed and touched by the outpouring of support we've received over the past few days. All of us at Labyrinth are heartbroken by the loss of our beloved friend, Company Member, and former Artistic Director, Philip Seymour Hoffman. He was a friend, leader, and an extraordinary artist whose lasting impact on Labyrinth will never be forgotten.

In his honor, Labyrinth is hosting a community prayer and candlelight vigil tomorrow, Wednesday, February 5th at 6:30pm in the courtyard of the Bank Street Theater (located at 155 Bank Street in Manhattan). The prayer will be led by Labyrinth Company member Fr. Jim Martin.

Plans for a memorial ceremony to honor Phil and his legacy will be announced in the coming days.

Thank you again for your kind words, thoughts, and prayers.

Sincerely,
Danny Feldman
Managing Director

Actually preferred this New Yorker article much more than Brody's.

Just want to write that I'm shocked at his passing, and that I really regret not seeing him in Death of a Salesman. Philip Seymour Hoffman was a great actor, and I will always love him for his performance in Boogie Nights. It's such a shame someone who helped so many with their addictions couldn't be helped out of his spiral.

Black Hat wrote:What I find most remarkable about Phillip Seymour Hoffman was that as great as he was there are so many films that you forgot he was in, then remember and say, ''man was he great in that". That might at first glance seem like a knock but I think it's a testament to how great he really was, that unlike other 'greats' he never overwhelmed the screen with his performances. He was always in character, never Phillip Seymour Hoffman great actor.

Perkins Cobb wrote:Who would've thought we'd lose PSH before PBH.

I'm going to kick myself when you tell me but who's PBH?

That is so spot on. I am watching him right now in A Late Quartet (not a great film), and you almost forget he's there, in the way that he is so utterly immersed in the character. As an audience member you actually sense that he is genuinely feeling whatever his character is feeling. Of course, this is the mark of any truly gifted actor, but I think PSH may have been able to do it more convincingly than anyone I have seen. I wanted to write that in the present tense, I still can't believe he is gone.

For me, Hoffman was almost always the stand out in all the films where he was part of an ensemble, and there are many.

I came upon this rather fascinating and prescient conversation PSH had with the philosopher Simon Critchley at the Rubin Museum a little over a year ago. If you haven't seen it, it's highly recommended.

"Pleasure is not happiness. I kill pleasure. I take take too much of it and therefore make it unpleasurable. Like too much coffee and you're miserable. I do that to pleasure often. There's no pleasure that I haven't actually made myself sick on. And so I look at pleasure and kind of get scared."

Thanks for sharing that. I got way more of a sense of how he operated as an actor than a lot of things I've read on him lately. It also made me appreciate The Master much, much more.

Yes, The Master is my favorite film of this century, and he really emphasized what I always felt, that its premise of cult/scientology is surface at most. And his explanation of the scene where he and Joaquin Phoenix are rolling around on the ground is both beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time.

Jim Healy, former Assistant Curator at the Eastman House, has posted a brief remembrance of Hoffman at the GEH website. I found this passage particularly touching:

The next month, Phil came back to Eastman House to present a documentary he appeared in called The Party’s Over. We talked afterward and he answered audience questions. I don’t remember much else about the evening, but my pal Bruce Bennett was there, and he reminded me that a teenage kid stood up and tried to explain how much Phil’s performances meant to him. He struggled in finding the right words and he finally just asked Phil if he could have a hug. Bruce remembers Phil as being “totally moved and disarmed and surprised by all the emotion clumsily and honestly pouring out of this young guy who clearly didn’t get to express his feelings too often” Phil quickly replied and said “yeah, sure, of course” and the two embraced. Bruce says, “People forget how much personal impact actors can have. I don’t think anyone’s ever asked to hug [Paul Thomas Anderson] because of a camera move he blocked or a line of dialogue he typed.”