Phillip Seymour Hoffman
It's his barrel body that housed a furnace, uncool sweaty pallor.
A force of nature, a delicacy, born chafing, roving
hollowed suburban streets with bestial ogre in Rochester,
that vacuous crown jewel of zilch. Mirage without respite.
Death of a Salesmen at 17, theater kid to hooch, alky
growler, rehab at 21, off broadway footlight fiend, unbounded
sky rocket blast to a million moviegoers, needy and self-loathing
in Boogie Nights 'I just want to know if you like me, can I kiss you,
can I kiss you on the mouth?…ugh…I'm an idiot, idiot, idiot.’
Compelling darkness, the emotional flood gate nurse Phil
in Magnolia sneaking Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler into
his lunch order, singing resignedly the single anxiety ridden refrain
’It's not going to stop,’ with frogs raining down signaling the omniscient
impending meltdown. Channelling another tormented stranger Lester Bangs,
existential outsider grappling what it means to be human, ‘The only true
currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else
when you're uncool.’ Exhausted on Broadway playing onerous Willie,
life disintegrating, voice sonorously low, ‘Before it's all over we’re gonna
get a little place out in the country and I'll raise some vegetables, a couple
of chickens…’ Embracing Biff with gnawing physicality, face a moonlike mask
of unhappiness, a master of terminal uncertainty, seven nights a week,
blasted matinees, mining, circling, probing lines with relentless intelligence,
extracting the humanity out like a gold rushed nugget, chest cavity stripped
exposing a brute thump. And the bullied high pitched fay Capote, ‘It's as if Perry
and I grew up in the same house. And one day he stood up and went out
the backdoor while I went out the front.’ Stuffing his XL chest into an extra Small
tee, ‘Yeah, I've decided on a title for my book. I think you'll like it. It's very masculine.
In Cold Blood.’ How far is he willing to go, how deep to ingratiate? Everywhere,
apparently, as long as it’s true. Showing up for interviews unshaven nicotine
stained like he’d slept in the park, carrier of unclaimed shame and shuttered
vulnerabilities. ‘Being an artist is about saying I don't know.’ Accepting his
Oscar with astronomic generosity, not just ‘Thanking my friends’ but
‘I’d like to thank my friends, my friends, my friends,’ raw fragility, eviscerating
temper, aggressively stalked by death, loosing his own therapist to cancer,
falling out with friends, hating the loss of anonymity, lacerated with an insatiable
loneliness, the constant vigilance, tortured with 3 kids, a wife and enough guilt
to knife himself in half and on and on, relentless AA meetings, bearing down
into spiraling doubt, palpitant under the weight of astonishing greatness,
relapsing, Demmies, Oxy, Percs, Dillies, China White, Smack, a passing
quittance, the palliating rush, it's beautiful helplessness, speed balling, skag,
celestial flight, fatty hands open, grappling, turbulence grinding in the background
like the constant hum of a factory generating ominously into the night, the drum,
the itch, the lack, the creeping demons of despair, in winter hunched over
a bench in Washington Square Park, coat open, flapping, fingers blue,
illuminating exquisite ugliness, no prince, but man, was there magic.
It's his barrel body that housed a furnace, uncool sweaty pallor.
A force of nature, a delicacy, born chafing, roving
hollowed suburban streets with bestial ogre in Rochester,
that vacuous crown jewel of zilch. Mirage without respite.
Death of a Salesmen at 17, theater kid to hooch, alky
growler, rehab at 21, off broadway footlight fiend, unbounded
sky rocket blast to a million moviegoers, needy and self-loathing
in Boogie Nights 'I just want to know if you like me, can I kiss you,
can I kiss you on the mouth?…ugh…I'm an idiot, idiot, idiot.’
Compelling darkness, the emotional flood gate nurse Phil
in Magnolia sneaking Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler into
his lunch order, singing resignedly the single anxiety ridden refrain
’It's not going to stop,’ with frogs raining down signaling the omniscient
impending meltdown. Channelling another tormented stranger Lester Bangs,
existential outsider grappling what it means to be human, ‘The only true
currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else
when you're uncool.’ Exhausted on Broadway playing onerous Willie,
life disintegrating, voice sonorously low, ‘Before it's all over we’re gonna
get a little place out in the country and I'll raise some vegetables, a couple
of chickens…’ Embracing Biff with gnawing physicality, face a moonlike mask
of unhappiness, a master of terminal uncertainty, seven nights a week,
blasted matinees, mining, circling, probing lines with relentless intelligence,
extracting the humanity out like a gold rushed nugget, chest cavity stripped
exposing a brute thump. And the bullied high pitched fay Capote, ‘It's as if Perry
and I grew up in the same house. And one day he stood up and went out
the backdoor while I went out the front.’ Stuffing his XL chest into an extra Small
tee, ‘Yeah, I've decided on a title for my book. I think you'll like it. It's very masculine.
In Cold Blood.’ How far is he willing to go, how deep to ingratiate? Everywhere,
apparently, as long as it’s true. Showing up for interviews unshaven nicotine
stained like he’d slept in the park, carrier of unclaimed shame and shuttered
vulnerabilities. ‘Being an artist is about saying I don't know.’ Accepting his
Oscar with astronomic generosity, not just ‘Thanking my friends’ but
‘I’d like to thank my friends, my friends, my friends,’ raw fragility, eviscerating
temper, aggressively stalked by death, loosing his own therapist to cancer,
falling out with friends, hating the loss of anonymity, lacerated with an insatiable
loneliness, the constant vigilance, tortured with 3 kids, a wife and enough guilt
to knife himself in half and on and on, relentless AA meetings, bearing down
into spiraling doubt, palpitant under the weight of astonishing greatness,
relapsing, Demmies, Oxy, Percs, Dillies, China White, Smack, a passing
quittance, the palliating rush, it's beautiful helplessness, speed balling, skag,
celestial flight, fatty hands open, grappling, turbulence grinding in the background
like the constant hum of a factory generating ominously into the night, the drum,
the itch, the lack, the creeping demons of despair, in winter hunched over
a bench in Washington Square Park, coat open, flapping, fingers blue,
illuminating exquisite ugliness, no prince, but man, was there magic.