I’m still not coping very well with the death of PSH, and spent the last hour or so going through youtube clips, and it really is amazing how prolific the man was. And he was funny- his serious roles have been covered in depth by critics who know what they are talking about and know how to turn a phrase, but so little attention has been paid to how funny he could be. Along Came Polly was a really not very good movie, and I’d almost bet that Hoffman agreed to do it while hammered with Ben Stiller somewhere in a hole in the wall bar in NY, but even in it, PSH was great:
If you can take that and make it funny, you can pretty much do anything. And that is why everyone from Broadway to Bama is mourning his death.
EJ
I’m actually surprised that none of the tributes I’ve read mentioned The Big Lebowski. Brandt was a supporting character, but he was absolutely hysterical.
Ruckus
I said it before, I’ll say it again. The man was one of the all time great actors. Not one of the all time great celebrities but who cares about that.
He didn’t take crap films and turn them into money makers but he did make them far better because he was in them and he did his best. Which was very, very good.
RIP PSH
Violet
I keep seeing his name on Google News and his image on various TV shows and every time it’s like hearing it for the first time again. I simply can’t believe it. He has been one of my favorite actors for so long–he’s one of the few actors that could get me to see a movie I wasn’t that interested in just because I wanted to see him do his thing. I’m so sad we won’t get to see him inhabit any more roles. Such a loss.
And heroin. Can’t even believe that. Awful.
JeremyH
One of my favourite roles of his was in “Charlie Wilson’s War”. Again, not a huge role, but he absolutely stole every scene he was in. A great barnstormer of an actor.
I’m so f*@%ing gutted that he died – my immediate involuntary reaction when my wife told me the news was an anguished “Noooooo!”
Sigh. The world is a little bit duller for him leaving it.
Alison
It’s so super sad…especially since, having three kids that I’m sure he loved to bits, you know things must have been really awful in his head and heart. Just so painful to think about :(
I admit I’m much more partial to his dramatic roles. Doubt, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, The Talented Mr Ripley…he was just so fucking good, and it seemed to come so easily. I’m sure it was work, but it never looked like he was working, you know? He just smoothly transformed into whatever role he was playing.
MomSense
@JeremyH:
That’s exactly how I felt when I heard the news. I just loved to watch him.
Suzanne
He was just so mindblowingly good. Like with Kurt Cobain and David Foster Wallace, I just feel so….robbed. All that brilliance, gone.
NotMax
Guess I’m relegated to a tiny minority. Found his performances perfectly passable, but too studied and over-rehearsed, inhabiting a character rather then being the character. It’s the eyes. They always seem to be focused on what the cadence of his next line will be.
As always, YMMV.
Goblue72
As an ex-Bostonian, one of my favs was PSH in “Next Stop Wonderland” – a cute indie rom-com flick from the 90’s. PSH was the loser ex-BF to a young Hope Davis.
Anne Laurie
@Alison: There was a shot of his three young kids on some news show, and they looked eerily like their dad.
I can’t imagine how hard it must be for the adults in the family to look at them right now, seeing their sire in their faces (& wondering about their futures with his genes and in his absence.)
One among many reasons I never had kids of my own!
TG Chicago
Wow, forgot about Polly. Dumb flick, but yeah — PSH was great in it.
Other actors may have had more charisma, but I can’t think of anyone with his range.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
All the actors that could play the lead role in The Life and Times of John G. Cole keep dying. That has to be a little disturbing.
Mustang Bobby
What’s been especially painful for me is to read the tributes from friends of mine in the theatre community who knew him and worked with him. They are all at a loss. They knew about his addictions, but they thought he was in recovery and his lapse last spring was just that; a lapse that we who deal with addiction all go through and work to get through. Not only do they mourn for his loss, it hits them because they thought if he could make it, we all could.
? Martin
@NotMax: What the fuck do you know. You’ve never eaten a girl scout cookie.
;)
Amir Khalid
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: It’s a sign from FSM that that movie is just not meant to be.
Tommy
I recall just once. I used some heroin. It was the most amazing thing ever. I puked everywhere and wanted to lick it up to keep that high. I told myself this is NOT something you will do again. Never again. Never again. Never again. I think I understand. I just wish we lost less people like this.
Schlemizel
I was actually stunned when I started remembering movies he was in, and which he owned the screen while on. He was so good I forgot it was him playing the part.
That said I am not particularly sad about missing any future parts he may have played, at least not as as sad as they young children are today. Thats a real loss ours is just a very mild inconvenience.
Keith G
PSH seemed to have the ability to be fearless when the camera was rolling. In the end, much of the final performance of acting on “film” is left up to the choices in the editing bay. With that in mind, some performers act defensively. PSH work suggests that he did not.
@Anne Laurie:
The last I read, only about 50% of addiction tendencies are attributable to genetics. The fact that PSH returned to drug use makes me wonder about the underlying conditions that made him so vulnerable. It seems that folks who are well, who have found a way to identify, confront, and appropriately treat what is hurting them are able to stay in recovery.
Comrade Jake
The tribute to him over at Grantland is quite well done. For whatever reason, this one is affecting me quite a bit more than the usual “celebrity death.” Watch him accept his Oscar for Capote. He spends five minutes thanking his Mom, who raised him as a single mother, for Chrissakes.
Comrade Jake
@Alison: “Tom, how’s the peeping? How’s the peeping Tom?”
Steeplejack
@Goblue72:
Yes! I just watched this again last week and had forgotten that P.S.H. is in it. Good movie with a good soundtrack—bossa nova. Weird but it works.
And I always wondered what happened to Cara Buono, who played the ditzy college girl in that movie. Did a spit-take a few months ago when I saw that she ended up on one of the Law and Order shows as a D.A. (I don’t usually watch those shows but just happened to catch part of one.)
jibeaux
@Goblue72: I love that movie, seems like it’s been all but forgotten. It just has all those nerdy comic touches like “I’m looking for a woman who is tall, yet clean “, and consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. I have a pretty limited field of rom-coms that I like, too few of them have intelligent humor to them.
Steeplejack
@jibeaux:
The other thing that astounded me when I watched it recently was that H. Jon Benjamin (Archer!) has a bit part in it as one of the weasely date guys.
P.S. Looked up Cara Buono on IMDB and saw that she was Kelli Moltisanti on The Sopranos and Faye Miller on Mad Men. So there is life after indie cinema.
Paul in KY
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Thank God Mr. Goodman is still with us.
Ripley
@Paul in KY: I vote for Melissa McCarthy. She could really rock the late-night cat fetishizing / self-loathing.
Cris (without an H)
@EJ: This was how I heard the news, from my wife.
Her: Did you hear that the guy from The Big Lebowski died?
Me: David Huddleston?
Her: No, the fat guy, from the toenail polish scene.
Me: …. John Goodman wasn’t in that scene.
Her: No, the other guy.
Apparently I was in denial already.