Late lunch at Cafe Cluny in Manhattan's West Village.
SCOTT RAAB: You wanna face the room or the wall?
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN: You can face the room if you want.
SR: I saw The Master Monday night. Have you seen it yet?
PSH: I've seen cuts of it.
SR: It's intense. It's beautiful. I walked out of the screening into Times Square really dumbstruck.
PSH: Paul Thomas Anderson is incomparable.
SR: Do you think the Scientologists are going to be upset about the premise?
PSH: I have no idea. It's obviously not a movie about Scientology. Anyone who sees it walks away and realizes that. I think there's an interest to make something of it. I think the film is about so many things. I've been involved with it for three years, so I see it differently.
SR: Three years is a long time.
PSH: That's the best way to do a film. That's the way you rehearse — you develop it, you work with the writer and director and talk and bullshit, and then you eventually shoot and you're on the same page. Film's hard when you don't have any relationship with the director at all and you just show up. Then you really are just a gun for hire. But that doesn't happen so often with me. I'm lucky that way. [To waiter]: I'll go with the frisée salad with chicken.
SR: I'll do the same. [To Hoffman] Are you working now?
PSH: I've got stuff coming up in the fall.
SR: You're going to be in the next Hunger Games.
PSH: That, and hopefully this other film in Germany.
SR: Do you live around here?
PSH: I do live around here.
SR: Are you in the phone book?
PSH: I have no idea. Maybe.
SR: There's a Philip S. Hoffman listed in the phone book.
PSH: It might be someone else.
SR: I wasn't going to call.
PSH: I'm just saying, there's another guy, Philip Hoffman. That's why I have a middle name, because there's another guy in the union.
SR: You're all right with that?
PSH: I'm okay with that.
SR: I was hoping to get Philip Baker Hall and now I got you. It's a joke. I love that guy.
PSH: But when you say it's a joke before you finish with the joke...
SR: Halfway through I thought I might be insulting you.
PSH: But I like Philip Baker Hall.
SR: I recently saw you in Death of a Salesman on Broadway. That had to be a very hard job.
PSH: It was a very hard job, yeah. In plays like that, you kind of have to go there so that everyone goes there with you. It's difficult. It's a hard job. Those are hard jobs.
SR: Physically and spiritually.
PSH: You've got to be ready. You've got to want to do it.
SR: Something like Mission: Impossible III has got to be less taxing.
PSH: There are things that are less taxing. Theater's the most taxing. But to act well is always difficult, no matter the material.
SR: Do you ever try to do something that you know isn't going to make the same emotional demands?
PSH: I don't make the choice based on that. That's just how it works out. I also direct and stuff, so I can take the break from the acting.... Some people keep going back into those kinds of roles. I don't think they have kids.
SR: In The Master, the level of intensity between you and Joaquin Phoenix is just unbelievable. How do you not carry that around while you're not shooting?
PSH: It's what we do, so we know it's about the work and the film and the story and the characters. But acting's a personal thing. Hopefully the people you work with have a healthy enough sense of that, so it doesn't carry over into something else. But you go through something together, for sure. If you're in the middle of a scene, it's very tough, but hopefully you finish things before meals, so you can relax.
SR: Do you write at all?
PSH: No. I'm just not a screenwriter. Maybe someday I will. I've left that alone, but I like writing.
SR: I'm always amazed at the range of talents people have.
PSH: People want you to stay in your corner a lot of the time. You kind of want to change, you know? Everybody does.
SR: I think you have to.
PSH: It's been less of an issue for me, since from a very young age I've been doing other things. I've been directing and producing. People who are my age now [45], you can tell that they want to do something else and it's difficult. It's tricky.
[Raab pops a lozenge.]
SR: Nicotine replacement.
PSH: Yeah, I quit a year ago.
SR: I've been addicted to these a long time.
PSH: What is that?
SR: Just two milligrams of nicotine. I'm addicted. The same behavior rules my life when it comes to food.
PSH: I'm with you. The amount of weight I gained doing Death of a Salesman, I'm trying to take off. [To waiter] Can I get a double macchiato?
SR [To waiter]: Just a coffee. Regular coffee. [To Hoffman] How much weight did you gain for Death of a Salesman?
PSH: I didn't gain weight for it. I gained weight while doing it. I've lost some since then. But I've got more to go. I can't carry the extra weight. My knees and hips are fked.
SR: I just bought a treadmill.
PSH: I'm not working out as much as I want to, but it's more about the eating. The weight comes off, you know? If you stop with the bread and the pie, it really does. It really works.
SR: And you have more energy.
PSH: When I was getting ready to do The Master, I lost a bunch of weight. It was the best I've felt in a long time. I was light on my feet.
SR: Did you get under 200?
PSH: No. Two hundred for me, I'm thin.
SR: You're a thick guy.
PSH: That's how us Hoffmans are built. My ideal weight is 205, actually. When I did Capote, I was rail-thin. It was the only time I had a six-pack. I was 195. Can you imagine? I'm five nine and a half. That's crazy.
SR: Last time I talked to my mother, she asks, "Who are you interviewing next?" I say, "Philip Seymour Hoffman," and she says, "Who?" I invoke Capote. "He won the fking Oscar," I say. She's in her 80s and lives in Cleveland, but she does watch movies. It's amazing that you've been able to have this body of work and maintain some anonymity.
PSH: I think about that a lot. I feel it cracking lately, the older I'm getting. I think I'm less anonymous than I was. And I think nowadays it's so easy for people to watch things. In the past five years, our images — yours, everyone's — are everywhere. No one's watching more movies. It's just that the images are being seen more. It's going to be more difficult for the young actors coming up today to keep a low profile. No one can.
SR: I don't know how many young actors want to keep a low profile.
PSH: I think some people don't, but I think some people do. And it's going to be very hard for those young people who do, because there's no way around it. It's not just actors. It's people in general. Everyone's being Twittered about.
SR: Do you read reviews?
PSH: Sometimes I take a temperature of things just because everyone else does. Especially when I'm doing a play. I want to know what people are thinking, positive or negative. So I take a temperature and then I stop. I'll read a couple and then skim a couple more and then, all of a sudden, that's it. Then I don't have the desire anymore. And that's true whether the response is good or bad. Mixed, bad, good — they all make you feel the same way. That's why you have to stop. Because none of them ultimately make you feel okay. But I think you're asking a lot of other people to be responsible for your feelings when you don't read anything. I don't know what you mean, I didn't read it. I don't know. It's like, C'mon, really? There's too many people I have to interact with, and I don't want them to have to worry about hurting my feelings.
SR: You said about Magnolia, "It's one of the best films I've ever seen and I will fight to the death with anyone who says otherwise."
PSH: It's true. It's a smorgasbord of pleasure, that movie. Filmed pleasures.
SR: Especially Jason Robards. He lived hard. He drank hard. And that was really the end for him.
PSH: That was the end. That was his last thing. That speech he has is like three times longer on the page. It's like an eight-page monologue. It's massively long. I remember he came in and they needed a 20-minute mag [film-camera magazine] to shoot it, because that's how long it's going to take for them to do it. And he did the whole thing. He didn't call for a line. Boom. I looked at Paul and he was gobsmacked. Wow, not only was that really well done, but he wasn't well at the time.
SR: Paul has an amazing eye for talent. I can understand recognizing talent, but to assemble it and let it rise and have its way, how many people can do that?
PSH: People who are honest about their humanity can do that. I think Paul's honest about who humans are. I think you gotta have an honesty and a humility about human nature and that it's not about you at the end of the day. He knows what he's good at. That's the thing about Paul. And what he's good at he's better at than probably anybody.
SR: Are you aware of [former Oakland A's manager] Art Howe's reaction to your portrayal of him in Moneyball?
PSH: Yeah. He's not very happy. I kind of hope I get to meet Art Howe one day and tell him, Listen, Art. I actively did not play you, okay? You should've taken your name off it.
SR: They did that with Jonah Hill's character, [Paul] DePodesta.
PSH: This wasn't enough of a part that it was gonna represent Art Howe at all. So I had to do a job. I was a tool. I had to play him a certain way to create a problem. But I knew there's no way I could fill out who Art Howe was with what was written there. And so he has every right. He needs to know. Art, I know that was not a fair representation of you as a person whatsoever. The story was about something else.
SR: I've read that you hate the thought of singing. But in both Magnolia and The Master, you sing.
PSH: It's a very nerve-racking thing for me to sing, though it's perfect for that scene in The Master. It was a very nerve-racking scene. I remember practicing that song just to learn how to sing it and not thinking about the scene at all. It's such anxiety. I can hold a note, but I have admiration and respect for the people who can actually do that in front of 2,000 people. It just blows me away. It's a vulnerable thing to do.
SR: Does working on a film like The Master create the same kind of vulnerability even though you're not on a stage?
PSH: What you go through with another actor in a good play or film, something that's well-written and that means something deeply to both of you, is a very intimate thing. It's like, I'm here for you, you're here for me. And you're silently pushing each other forward and up. You'll never look at those people the same way again for the rest of your life. I can go ten years and not see Joaquin Phoenix or John Reilly [Hoffman's costar in the play True West] or Andrew Garfield [his costar in Death of a Salesman], and then when I see them, the connection's immediate — and that connection might be awkward — but it's definitely going to be informed by the fact that we did something together that I'm not going to do with pretty much 99.99999 percent of people. Even people in my family. The really good actors go there — and Joaquin's definitely one of those people.
SR: He seemed older, thinner. He looked like a different human being.
PSH: He was something else while we were shooting. His commitment was unparalleled.
SR: Hope you don't mind if I look at my notes. I just want to make sure that I'm not leaving out anything important.
PSH: Oh, no. Definitely. I'm going to leave in five if that's cool.
SR: Oh, here's my favorite quote of yours. "It isn't easy to love something as much as you love a child."
PSH: The thing I realized when I became a father is why parents stay and why they take off. The love you feel and the responsibilities you feel, I can see why some people go. They think, I'm never going to make this. Because it puts all of the heartbreaks you've had in your life in perspective. You're like, Oh, I thought that was a broken heart. That's been my experience. Now I'm sure there are some people whose relationships with kids are different. My kids are just, uh, they're good. They're just good kids, man.
SR: Will they be able to see The Hunger Games, you think?
PSH: I don't know. Maybe.
SR: Boogie Nights?
PSH: No, no. Oh, God, no. You can't let them watch Little Bill blow his head off. That movie's so upsetting in that way. It surprises you every time. Oh, I forgot! You forget how upsetting that movie really is.
SR: Go, go. I don't want to keep you.
PSH: Let's, uh...
SR: No, the magazine pays. Thank you so much, sir. It was nice to meet you.
PSH: Thank you, sir. It was my pleasure.
SR: Keep on keepin'.
PSH: I'll try.
THE ESQUIRE DOSSIER: PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN
DATE OF BIRTH: July 23, 1967
BORN AND GREW UP IN: Fairport, New York, outside Rochester
PARTNER: Mimi O'Donnell (2002 to present)
CHILDREN: Three
WHEN THEY CAN SEE HIS WORK: "I don't think I've made anything my kids can watch until they're like 40.... It's funny, because I did a voice in an animated movie called Mary and Max.... And a guy like kills himself in it.... The one animated movie I make is for adults."
FAVORITE MOVIE: Bad News Bears
FORMER OAKLAND A'S MANAGER ART HOWE'S THOUGHTS ON HOFFMAN'S DEPICTION OF HIM IN MONEYBALL: "Philip Seymour Hoffman physically didn't resemble me in any way. He was a little on the heavy side. And just the way he portrayed me was very disappointing and probably 180 degrees from what I really am."
HOFFMAN'S TAKE: Agreed. (See interview.)
BASEBALL ALLEGIANCE: Yankees; grew up watching them at his grandparents' house.
DESCRIPTIONS OF HIS PHYSICAL APPEARANCE BY REPORTERS: "He came dressed as though he may have slept in the park." "Unshaven, nicotine-stained." "His demeanor and appearance are so fundamentally regular that it seems impossible that he has played such a vast array of anything-but-regular characters."
NUMBER OF PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON FILMS IN WHICH HE'S FEATURED: Five
TWISTER, HUH? "I was living in L. A. at the time.... and I knew if I took that job, I'd be able to move back to New York."
Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 02:16 A Minute With: Philip Seymour Hoffman on "The Master"FILM-SEYMOURHOFFMAN:A Minute With: Philip Seymour Hoffman on "The Master"
Source: Reuters
By Christine Kearney NEW YORK (Reuters) - Since the release of director Paul Thomas Anderson's new movie, "The Master", talk by filmgoers and critics alike has spanned its link to Scientology, themes of control and its Oscar hopes. Much discussion has rested on the film's main performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, who plays his unhinged protege. Both actors split the top acting award at the Venice Film Festival, where the film debuted. Hoffman spoke to Reuters, dispelling suggestions that his character of Lancaster Dodd was purely based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and discussing the broader themes of the film. Q. You seem to just roll from one great role to the next. A. "Yes, it's going awful, I mean, Paul Thomas Anderson ... giving me these opportunities. I just can't bear it." Q. How did you create your character, Lancaster, and who did you base him on? A. "Ultimately it was just knowing what we didn't want to do. I think most people have been interested about the Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard stuff, and the thing is Paul used that stuff to have a venue to write the story. And a lot of our discussions early on were like, 'I don't want to play L. Ron Hubbard because that would be very distracting because that is not the movie.' So a lot of the choices had to do with how not to be L. Ron Hubbard. "It is pretty clear we made choices to make sure that the way I behave, the way I talk, it is all very different from L. Ron Hubbard ... One person's religion is another person's cult. We know that. And so we didn't want to be too on the nose about it ... Ultimately it was about creating a unique person that was a piece of fiction." Q. Perhaps fueling that fascination were mysteries about Scientology to begin with? A. "That's a worthy discussion, that is a worthy article to write. People's feelings and what Scientology brings up for people and how would you compare that to other movements of that time and how would you compare that to religion or Catholicism? That is very interesting because to me this guy is the head of anything you want him to be. You know what I mean? "We always talked about this film being a life-changing moment for both of them, and things happen in your life to change your life. After they happen you think, 'Did that actually happen? Did I actually go through that?' Something that is so profound is sometimes so elusive and so hard to nail down. And it becomes a memory and an anecdote and some weird dream." Q. People are fascinated by broader themes of what this film is about. What are your thoughts? A. "It is about an intense emotional connection between two men and how they both need each other, and are both the mirror opposite but ultimately very much alike. So I think all that is very specific and clear in the movie and it creates a strong emotional attachment that both of them are scared to walk away from for fear of finding out they are nothing without the other person. "I think that is what the movie is getting at. And then what happens, that Paul does so brilliantly - that he doesn't do in such a simple, banal or obvious way - is he brings in that time period, post-World War Two. He brings in a movement that is somewhat like Scientology, that time-warp kind of movement ... It is about all those things and how they feed into the core thing, which is this relationship." Q. People also seem focused on the scene where your character sings to Joaquin Phoenix. Can you shed light on that? A. "I think it is beautiful. And it is not about ... sex. It is about intimacy and obsession and wanting to control somebody, because you are so scared to lose them. Anyone who has been in love before understands that. Again, there is a lot of like, well, it must be homoerotic. No. No, can't men love each other like that, because they do. They really do." Q. Was it difficult to establish your own presence opposite Phoenix? A. "It's not an everyday occurrence, no, but when I see it I am happy because it makes my job easier. He (Phoenix) is actually playing the part, which is a guy who is obviously severely damaged. "Lancaster isn't a walk in the park either. He is a bull in a China shop too. There are a lot of similarities between them if you look hard enough. But they are both pretty volatile guys, but one realizes he wants to control it and the other one can't." Q. What do the Oscars mean to you now that you have one? A. "I think it is important to respect the attention that gets brought to something that everyone worked really hard on." Q. Talking about respect, actors like Meryl Streep sometimes joke about actors' current high stature. What do you think? A. "No one wants to be pretentious about what they do or take it seriously, because that is just weird. But I think, too, you have to respect it and to realize where it can take you and what power it can have, I think is important. But that is true of anything." Q. Salman Rushdie said recently that movie stars have replaced writers since the '50s in terms of their influence. A. "I do feel that there are some really smart people, who are doing that, who are actors. And I think they do it well, I don't judge that so much." (Editing by Patricia Reaney and Dale Hudson) |
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