COLUMN: Too Cool to be Cool: Philip Seymour Hoffman

By The Fordham Ram on February 5, 2014 • ( 0 )

By DEVIN SHERIDAN
COLUMNIST

As an admitted, addicted adherent to the social world via my phone, I was fumbling with my apartment keys on Sunday morning, attempting to unlock the door as I held my phone in one hand and my keys in the other. My phone buzzed, and I glanced down to learn of the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, a man who was one of my first favorite actors. Shocked, I paused for a moment in my fruitless attempt to enter my apartment.

Philip Seymour Hoffman got big in the early 2000s; in four years he shaped symbolic roles for himself, as Scotty J. in Boogie Nights (1997) and Lester Bangs in Almost Famous (2000), as well as smaller but nonetheless striking characters, such as Brandt in The Big Lebowski (1998)and Phil Pharma in Magnolia (1999). Concurrently, at that time in my life, I was turning the leaf on my first decade of existence. Like all youngsters in this phase of metamorphosis, I was subconsciously attuning myself to the impressionable world of the arts, mainly film and music. As a result of coincidence, the loving nature of the movie gods and the undeniable and enigmatic talents of the man, Philip Seymour Hoffman became the first actor I truly noticed.

The role responsible for the genesis of my deep admiration for Hoffman may be considered an uncool selection (relative to other Hoffman roles and movies). Lester Bangs would be proud of the formative, uncool Hoffman experience I had with Owen Davian, the pallid and evil debonair villain of Mission Impossible III. This would also mean that at a young age I watched movies that inspired me (hey, that’s cool) to do the stuff I’m doing in my life nowadays: writing about culture and caring way too much about music.

You know what, I will gladly admit to and stick to the Owen Davian character as a personal favorite of mine. Hoffman steals every scene in that movie; he’s the coal fire to its out of control, locomotive action. Even though Davian is cruel, I didn’t gladly accept his death because I knew that, for the most part, all the good scenes in the movie probably ended after Hoffman’s character’s demise.

Now that I’ve had the chance to think about him, I always liked Hoffman because his characters were simply human. They were unimpeded by the permeating hubris of actors, which many times seeps into their characters and in turn makes them a little less real. For instance, I love Brandt in the Big Lebowski because, God, he is just so freaking lame.

It’s sad to think that maybe Hoffman’s personal struggles were a result of the nagging sense of “uncool” that so many of his characters addressed and transcended. The reminder that “cool” doesn’t need a definition is also what drives us to art, like Hoffman’s films. “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool,” Hoffman said as Lester Bangs. It’s just a damn shame that Philip Seymour Hoffman won’t be around anymore to share his wonderful uncool with the rest of us.