Philip Seymour Hoffman starring in Capote, 2005 © United Artists and Sony Pictures Classics.
In the wake of shock and grief trailing yesterday’s news that Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his Manhattan apartment of an apparent drug overdose at the age of forty-six, it’s easy to get caught up in the graphic details of breaking news reports.
Images of the great actor unconscious on his bathroom floor with a syringe in one arm and remains of “Ace of Spades” brand heroin in the apartment are haunting. That his survivors include three children under the age of ten only intensifies the loss.
Though the Academy Award-winning actor was public about his struggle with addiction dating back more than two decades and spoke openly about entering rehab last year, the fact is, as an audience we know next to nothing about his interior life. Through clues to be found in interviews, we try to understand the suffering and beauty inherent in his great talent.
In a 2005 conversation with Charlie Rose leading up to the release of "Capote," for which he would win the Oscar for Best Actor, Hoffman said:
“I didn’t accept this film to play Truman Capote. I accepted this film to take part in telling that story, because that story to me is about -- you know, I’m getting very corny here -- but it’s about life. It’s about those decisions at every moment, where you’re like, should I go there or should I go there? No, I want both. And you realize that these things that are so different, that are so opposite, that are battling with each other, coexist together inside of you, and how difficult that is. You know? And this is an incredibly extreme example of that, I think, very human dilemma, that ambition and greed and all these things will bring up.”
In the same interview, Hoffman cites the twenty-nine minute documentary "With Love from Truman," made by the Maysles brothers famous for their cinema verité films ("Salesman," "Grey Gardens"), as serving a crucial function in his preparation for the role. Released in 1966, just following the publication of Capote’s nonfiction novel In Cold Blood, the Maysles’s black-and-white documentary (named for a scene depicting Capote signing copies of his acclaimed book in the Random House office, with a close-up of "With Love from Truman" inscribed on a title page) was a "beautiful, beautiful film," in Hoffman’s words.
It's a story of the writer’s craft in chronicling the 1959 Holcomb, Kansas murders of four members of the Clutter family, along with the investigation and trial that led to death penalties for the two killers. "It helped me a lot," Hoffman told Charlie Rose of watching it in preparation for his "Capote" role, "because it was from that period, and capturing him in his private moments and his private settings in a lot of different areas…And that was very helpful, just to keep yourself open, because you don’t know where something is going to come from that’s going to inspire you to the next place."
Hoffman, Capote, and the Maysles brothers all shared that tendency toward openness in their work. In his book The Direct Cinema of David and Albert Maysles, Jonathan B. Vogels writes:
"...the Maysles brothers saw Capote as a fellow traveler, as they, too advocated an art form that would not cater…to a popular audience without challenging their sensibilities. An authentic text presents the world and its people honestly, asking difficult questions without providing easy answers…In the end, both the Capote concept of the nonfiction novel, as realized in In Cold Blood, and the Maysles brothers' film about him offer a possible remedy to the celebrity fixation and mass merchandising of popular entertainment."
It’s no wonder Hoffman was drawn to these kindred spirits striving for what David Maysles described as the "poetry that comes out of nonfiction."
Hoffman, often referred to as an "an actor’s actor," gave possibly unprecedented and focused attention to directing, supporting local theater in New York, and performing in a stunning range of roles on stage and in small and blockbuster films. Through his openness, he was able to humanize characters in all of their struggles and secrets. In our return to his work, and to that which inspired him, may that legacy continue.