Super Blow - Phillip Seymour Hoffman

As I was watching Super Bowl  XLVIII , and things looked brutally desperate for the Denver Broncos, my mind wandered back to those first couple of Super Bowls when one team looked woefully overmatched by the other. That was the case this past Sunday. I was thinking seriously about possibly breaking out my paint brush and doing a wall  just so I could watch  the paint dry. Even that would be more exciting than the one-sided game.

Interest in the game had already waned  by the third quarter when I was informed about the tragic death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, an actor whom I considered one of the most gifted of his generation. Sensitive and intense, his presence in any film lent immediate gravitas to it.

From the first time  I had seen him in the movie, Scent of a Woman, he displayed an onscreen presence that matched the  film’s leading man, Al Pacino. And that, even then, I thought, was quite an accomplishment for a young actor. Subsequent films and stage productions he appeared in gained him world wide acclaim and award nominations even an Oscar. But his flamed flickered out in prologue. And avid film buffs like myself were hoping for so much more to come.

By all accounts, he was a workaholic as his resume would attest. And he could be crumpy and curt as has often been said. Once in the Washington Square Hotel just off the park in the West Village, I was sitting in the hotel bar chatting with a young, aspiring actor working there in between auditions. He was  telling me about various  celebrities who lived in the area: Sam Shepard, Ron Perlman and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The young man  related a story to me about the very private Mr. Hoffman.

He walked  into a coffee shop to  find his cell phone on the fritz and Mr. Hoffman waiting for his coffee. The young man started shaking his phone, waving it around trying to get it to return it to functionality. Hoffman saw him and immediately thought he was trying to snap a picture of him.

The famous actor became quite surly, according to the young man, saying to him. “Hey, we all live in this neighborhood and we all should be afforded a certain degree of privacy. No pictures, please.”

The young man responded he had no intention of taking pictures, he was only trying to get his   service back, his phone  was broke. To which Mr. Hoffman responded with his trademark  sigh and raised eyebrow, “yeah sure you’re phone’s broke.”