Far be it from me to make enemies with influential award-winning journalists, but I’d like to rip Tom Junod’s head off and use it as a croquet ball. Nothing makes a worse pairing with pretentiousness than obliviousness. Junod’s take on the death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman provides a lethal dosage of both.
I had two contradictory but complementary responses to the news that Philip Seymour Hoffman had died of a drug overdose at the suddenly tender age of 46 — two responses, that is, beyond how terrible and damn, he was great.
The first was that there was no way Hoffman had died with a syringe still in his arm — no way that an actor who brought such finicky dignity to his portrayal of the most desperate characters had permitted himself to die so ruthlessly unmasked.
The second was that of course he had died in such a sordid manner — how else was Philip Seymour Hoffman supposed to die? There was no actor, in our time, who more ably suggested that each of us is the sum of our secrets…no actor who better let us know what he knew, which is that when each of us returns alone to our room, all bets are off.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was indeed a great actor, but he was first and foremost a human being. Scarcely two years older than me, he was the father of three children, born in 2003, 2006, and 2008. He died of a heroin overdose in his bathroom, but he didn’t die that way to make an artistic statement. Nothing about what made him a great actor had even the slightest relationship to his inability to avoid the deadly pleasures of opiates. To say that “of course he died in such a manner, how else, after all, could such a great character actor die?” is an act of such profound insensitivity and idiocy that it just enrages me.
But, it gets worse.
…in reading the early reports of his death, I was surprised that he’d battled the demon of addiction, because I’d always confused Hoffman’s mastery with detachment, and assumed that he had lived by Flaubert’s charge to live an orderly life so that he could be violent and original in his work. But I shouldn’t have been surprised, and — here’s that contradictory and complementary response again — I wasn’t. I’d never met Philip Seymour Hoffman, never knew anyone who knew him, never even read a passably revealing magazine profile of him. All I really knew was that he was a character actor who came as close to being a movie star as character actors ever get, and that he played the lead in more Hollywood movies than any other portly, freckly, gingery man in human history. And that, in its way, is all I, or anyone else, needs to know.
Where to begin with this crap?
Let’s take it from the top. Mr. Junod assumed that Hoffman was orderly in his life because he was violent and original in his work. Evidently, he is unfamiliar with the personal lives of people like Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, and Hunter S. Thompson. It’s already a mark against him that he thinks that artistic violence and originality are signs of a staid and sober lifestyle.
But then Junod takes a turn and argues that he isn’t really surprised to learn that Hoffman was a heroin addict because he was very successful for a portly, redheaded man. Are we supposed to follow this logic?
Then comes the capper; the argument that made me feel homicidal:
Character actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman and James Gandolfini have found themselves getting more and more leading roles because they are permitted to behave onscreen in ways that George Clooney and Matt Damon never could. But the same permission extends offscreen, and that’s where we see the cost; indeed, we pay to look at men who look like us only when they convince us that that they live in psychic spaces that we could never endure…unless, of course, we happen to be enduring them.
Would Matt Damon ever be found dead, with a syringe still hanging from his arm? Would George Clooney essentially eat himself to death? No, for the simple fact they both have way too much to lose.
“Would Matt Damon ever be found dead, with a syringe still hanging from his arm? No, for the simple fact [he has] way too much to lose.”
What does this mean? That Hoffman didn’t have enough to lose? He wasn’t famous enough? He wasn’t rich enough? He wasn’t good-looking enough? He didn’t love the mother of his children enough? He didn’t love his three young children enough?
And Matt Damon. What of him? Could he never discover that he couldn’t kick the post-operative percocet habit he developed? Could he not go down the same slippery-slope that thousands of teenagers are going down every day in this country, and discover that heroin is the only opiate that can fully satisfy his cravings? Can it be the case that Matt Damon is too smart to overdose? Too well-adjusted to despair of his powerlessness to kick?
Or maybe Matt Damon just isn’t an original enough actor to die in a sordid manner. Unlike Hunter S. Thompson, he isn’t violent enough in his creativity to blow his head off in his kitchen while he is on the phone with his wife.
That must be it. Hoffman’s death was a validation of his worth as an artist. It only enhances our appreciation of his many stunning performances on the silver screen. The lack of glamor in his death, it’s sheer sordidness, is but a reflection of the creative genius he demonstrated in his unglamorous roles.
Perhaps if Junod had speculated that Hoffman’s heroin addiction pointed to an unspeakable and unquenchable pain that he somehow tapped into to produce great art, then we might be inclined to show some sympathy. But Junod gives Hoffman credit for little else than not being as good-looking as George Clooney and Matt Damon. Oh yes, “he’s great,” but that is not why Junod is both surprised and not surprised that Hoffman died in his bathroom with a needle in his arm surrounded by 50 empty bags of heroin. For Junod, this is a sign that Hoffman couldn’t handle the undeserved fame he won by being a leading man in a character actor’s body.
He just didn’t have enough to lose, so he died the way he had to die. Pathetically and alone with a family he should have been raising left to wonder why he couldn’t slay his own dragon.
Junod is an award-winning journalist, but this isn’t his first major embarrassment.
something has gone wrong in your opening paragraph
Fixed now?
For the record, it was fixed very promptly!
I’ve always loved Junod’s writing, but that piece read like something he should have sat on for a day. The piece you linked to condemned his Michael Stipe profile, but I thought that was brilliant, since Stipe himself worked so hard to make himself an enigma. (I don’t think I read the Jolie piece.)
I read the piece yesterday; he must have churned it out in about an hour or two given the timing. But I think he was trying to make a point about how unknowable great character actors are. George Clooney is either playing George Clooney or Not George Clooney (like in The American). Hoffman was so much his roles, it was hard to know who he was.
I remember about a decade ago taking a cab ride down Broadway (I think) and seeing Hoffman blissfully peddling a bike against the traffic with a serene smile on his face. I could have written some metaphor of serene self-destruction, but luckily I don’t have to write celebrity profiles.
Junod is an excellent prose stylist. He sometimes reaches beyond his grasp. His “profile” of the “Falling Man” from the 9/11 photos is brilliant. So is his profile of Fred Rogers.
He should have sat on that piece. It just didn’t make sense.
Angry Booman is an excellent writer.
I get where Junod was trying to go with that, but it’d hard to believe that such a competent and experienced writer could, even on a very short turnaround, churn out something so inartfully worded and with such insensitivity.
Perhaps Junod is trying to communicate a message about his own tendency to self-destructiveness. Or that he just doesn’t have enough to lose.
Or, maybe, perhaps, Junod just made a couple of bad decisions doing something he’s done thousands of times before, and there’s no great artistic statement to be had concerning his inner demons. Shit happens. Occasionally it’s lethal shit.
The thing about “not enough to lose,” though, is utterly head-scratching. The very wealthy and very famous make horrible decisions all the time – that’s why we have an entire industry (tabloid newspapers, magazines, and TV) devoted to chronicling, and on a slow day inventing, their train wrecks. I’m sure they’ve been swarming like locusts in Greenwich Village today.
It is interesting that he picked Clooney and Damon who have made an art of self-control, especially in the media.
Clooney and Damon have also made an industry of being “Clooney” and “Damon”. So have “Cruise”, “Pitt” and “Roberts”. I think that’s what he was saying about “too much to lose”. They have a “brand” that needs protecting.
There was no “Hoffman” brand. (Okay, Dustin became that.) He was a great character actor who seemed so at home playing the desperately sad, but he could also be a villain in a popcorn flick, comic relief in Lebowski or anything he wanted.
Whenever a supremely talented person dies, it seems inevitable that people need to say something PROFOUND, when really they should just STFU and offer condolences to the family and friends.
Clooney and Damon have also made an industry of being “Clooney” and “Damon”. So have “Cruise”, “Pitt” and “Roberts”.
Isn’t it interesting to see how far things have come? I remember when TMZ, or whatever, was all about what starlet Cooney was shagging at the moment. But you don’t hear about that anymore. It’s all about his political/humanitarian activism these days.
Just appalling. Hoffman was a human being first and an artist second – just like all artists.
And just like Bob Dylan, on whom Junod’s recent article also sucked, though not in as offensively.
It’s not just celebrity coverage; I felt this way about an article of Junod’s on the drone wars back toward the end of 2012. It’s a certain way of being a leftist by branding, tossing around the signifiers without thinking them through and ending up with some sentimental soup that sounds leftist and compassionate but is more merely indignant, sputtery, and misdirected like the New York Post. It’s something that’s been afflicting really good writers like Wallace Shawn and even Tom Stoppard and it’s annoying.
Usually I refrain from commenting on stories about the tragic death of some celebrity. What can you say about someone who died when you don’t even know them?
The media coverage of events like this is almost always pretty horrible. I dare say that Mr. BooMan’s coverage isn’t any better.
The question remains open whither or no Thompson actually shot himself in the head while talking on the phone to his wife. Like “9/11”, the official story is just to pat.
Don’t know who Hoffman is, don’t particularly care.
No fear.