It was the summer of 2000. I was working for a gourmet grocery store on South Street in Philadelphia. This was part of my routine in college. I'd go to school during the school year, then work full time during the summer to make enough money to go back in the Fall. This summer was particularly memorable for several reasons: I delivered a catering order to a party at the home of then 76ers head coach, Larry Brown. Briefly met Dave Matthews backstage after a concert. And the Republican Party held their convention in the city where our country was founded.
It was also the year I met Philip Seymour Hoffman.
It was the same week the RNC was in town to nominate George W. Bush to be their candidate for President. The grocery where I worked was near the corner of Second and South Streets. During breaks, employees would often walk down Second Street to sit in a type of urban gazebo shaded by trees.
It should be said that at the time I had recently seen both Magnolia and Boogie Nights. I found Magnolia long and pretentious but found John C. Reilly quite likable. I enjoyed Boogie Nights much more and found it both funny and sad...and John C. Reilly was quite likable in that as well. But the most poignant parts of Boogie Nights for me were the interactions of the characters played by Mark Wahlberg and Mr. Hoffman.
If you haven't seen it, Hoffman plays a sound guy for a pornographic film studio run by Burt Reynolds. He's shy, unsure of himself, wears clothes that don't fit, and is clumsy especially around Mark Wahlberg's character - Dirk Diggler - for whom he's acquired an immense and unrequited affection. Watching the film, one isn't sure if Hoffman's character has romantic feelings for Dirk or if he's just so socially inept that he cannot differentiate friendly from romantic affection. There's a certain pity one feels for Hoffman's character as well as humor. You laugh at him, but do so out of this rush of empathetic embarrassment. You're not really laughing at him. It's more like you're laughing at yourself as if you were making the same mistakes in the same setting.
This tension comes to a point of climactic humiliation when Hoffman's character decides to express his affection by kissing Dirk full on the lips. It is not returned and Dirk scolds him for the impasse but Hoffman just replies: "Please. Please can I kiss you on the mouth?" Dirk runs off. I laugh at the Laurel & Hardy-esque farce before me; but it ceased upon seeing Hoffman sitting there alone in his car sobbing, saying over and over again: "I'm a fucking idiot." My laughter turned to sadness, then to embarrassment, then to shame for being so cruel as to laugh at this person in such pain. In those few seconds, this socially awkward character reveals to us the truth about who he is - a lost and lonely soul so desperate for human contact that he mistakes casual affection for intimate affection.
We've all faced awkward moments in life where we've done something we wish we could immediately take back. In such moments, regret comes on so quickly that it almost seems like we could erase it if we really tried, but the more we try, the more that moment slips away into a stone-like permanence. One of the things that distinguished Mr. Hoffman for me was his ability to harness such a complicated emotion and brush it on a canvass with apparent effortlessness. I've never experienced an actor with such an ability to convey all the tiny nuances of shame and humiliation. Everybody's felt this - I've felt this - but I could never consciously portray it outwardly.
This one day on Second Street, I was walking to my usual spot for break. It was the week of the RNC and news people were everywhere with their lanyards and cell phones. I bumped into a chubby guy on the crowded sidewalk and saw his lanyard with some sort of laminated identification hanging from it. At first, I thought: Fucking douchebag not paying attention. Then, I heard the most sincere baritone apology ever: "Oh, so sorry."
Truth is, the collision was probably my fault. I looked up and said: "No problem." I recognized him immediately but, at the time, the name: Philip Seymour Hoffman meant nothing to me. To me, he was just the goofy boom mic operator from Boogie Nights. "Oh my God! It's you," he smiled and looked down shyly as if nodding. This must be a reflex celebrities develop once they become known. I screamed: "You're uh, you're uh, can I kiss you on the mouth!"
The people around us looked at me strangely. But he chuckled. He knew what I meant. He knew it wasn't to be taken literally. "Yes, yes, Boogie Nights," he said and shook my hand. It was one of those moments I wish I could erase. One of those feelings of embarrassment he could have portrayed so easily. But instead of just laughing at my embarrassment he saved me from it by acknowledging who he was and how I was trying to connect with him.
I went and had lunch at my spot as he stood there on Second Street talking to a group that appeared to be a film crew. Because I'm the type who inflicts anxiety on myself, I obsessed over: Oh my God, what if he didn't recognize the line? He's been in so many movies, Boogie Nights was so long ago? But I could rest in the reality that he did know what I meant even if I expressed it poorly. He was quite kind to save me from embarrassment and maybe any other celebrity would've done the same, but it seemed like he was being more than polite. He was being sympathetic.
I learned later he was filming his documentary, The Party's Over, about the blurring boundaries between the interests represented by our two political parties. A worry which seems inconceivable now, 14 years later but was quite real as we closed out the 20th century. I still have yet to see it.
I would go on to admire his work knowing the name, Philip Seymour Hoffman. From a gambling addicted bank president in Owning Mahowny, his Oscar winning performance as Truman Capote, to his sympathetic portrayal of Andy the despicable manipulative son in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - he has shown such tremendous range. Unfortunately, we will never know how much further he could have gone in his career. I'm hearing rumors of a heroin overdose and sincerely hope them to be proven wrong. I'd hate to think that he was subject to the kind of pain which leads to opiate abuse. I didn't know Mr. Hoffman outside of his work, or that sunny afternoon on Second Street but I am ever grateful for what I was able to learn from him about being human...and the fact that he didn't let me look like a fucking idiot there on Second Street.
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