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No Oscar for Phillip

dzaemz [PersonRank 0]

Saturday, January 28, 2006
18 years ago

Phillip Seymour Hoffman seems poised for an Oscar this March, and it pisses me off. Granted, PSH is a wonderful actor, as is on evidence in many a film, but he’s not right for everything, as anyone who saw his Treplev or James Tyrone can tell you. Hollywood tends to crown certain performers and anything other than the party line is not so subtly ignored. I’ve sat around dinner tables and stood around buffets since Thanksgiving, listening to industry folk prattle on in awed and reverential tones about Hoffman’s brilliance and sensitivity in that piece he produced, “Capote”. I saw the film and was bored by the pace and the shots and his performance. When he first hit the screen I thought, Oh, how interesting, what’s he going to do? And ten minutes in I realized he did it all in the first five and I’d better strap myself in for some mood. Then I saw the nails. His hand came into frame and his nails were dirty. At that time I hadn’t read the biography the screenplay is based on, but something about those dirty fingernails shrieked off the NO siren in my head. The film ended and I was left nonplussed. Then I read the book and marveled at how Mr. Futterman would have chosen that episode from such an extraordinary life, and why the production designer let those dirty finger nails be shot. Truman, at the rock bottom end, may have let his appearance go, but not while he was writing “In Cold Blood”.

Mr. Capote had great sociological obstacles- a small, effeminate man with a little girl’s voice, he possessed all the outward appearances of prey, but could turn a room of alpha males around with a twist of his wit and an atom bomb charm. Mr. Hoffman displays none of that. His characterization seems rooted in a sort of lazy, put upon pout, more Garbo than Capote. His Truman parades around Kansas every inch the star, looking out at the world from under half closed lids, posing, which passes for fathomless depth. This platitude of a performance is interpreted as genius and I beg the question why? Why, because he’s straight?

We Americans are more comfortable with neutered clown-like homosexuals than with ordinary, straight-like ones. Which is why Heath Ledger, another straight actor, whose portrayal of a regular guy in love with another regular guy, has been heralded, even nominated, but won’t be Oscared. It’s also why Larry Kramer’s op-ed piece in last Sunday’s New York Times is so funny. Mr. Hoffman’s performance is skin deep at best, and I beg the academy not to award a sexless, tortured, freak show of a sketch as the best performance by an actor in a lead role. Philip is good, but not in this folks, not Oscar good.

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