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.