A labor of love and pain

I choose to write film criticism and about film news because it is a labor of love.  I love the movies and to borrow some words from writer/director Nancy Meyers' word processor, "...it's a love affair that's lasted a lifetime.  "

I was looking forward to finishing a couple of half-finished reviews this weekend, and writing a new one.  I saw a wonderful Japanese film, "Like Father, Like Son" on Saturday morning.  However I came home to find that Maximilian Schell had passed away.  While my preference would be that life come to us without the infirmities and finality that old age make inevitable; and that we would live forever, we know that is not the case.  83 is still too young in my opinion, but it happens.  Even in a movie as bad as "The Black Hole", I've always enjoyed his work and was more than willing to write an obituary for him.  So I pushed off those reviews for the moment, figuring I'd get to them on Sunday after work.

I was in my office with a client who happens to be a working writer in Hollywood when I got the text that informed me of the passing of the amazing Philip Seymour Hoffman.  If he is not the finest actor of his generation, he's certainly near the top of any list.  As I wrote in his obituary, his filmography by itself is worthy of its own film festival.  But I didn't want to write that obituary.  Writing it meant acknowledging that he is gone, never again to thrill and delight audiences on screen or stage.

Hey, I used to earn a living writing and reporting the news. I have the ability to divorce myself from my personal feelings and write the story.  I simply didn't want to.  Obituaries are to inform and inculcate the reader in the life of the deceased.  Possibly to tell them something they did not know about the dead, along with denoting those things that they did in that life.

Philip Seymour Hoffman died with a needle in his arm.  Apparently chasing something with drugs that life couldn't provide him.  Like John Belushi, Chris Farley, Lester Bangs (who Hoffman had portrayed in "Almost Famous), Amy Winehouse, Don Simpson, Robert Pastorelli, River Phoenix and an endless list, there was something missing from their lives that they hoped to find through drugs.  In the end, all they found was death.

Hoffman himself spoke about his use of alcohol and drugs in a 2006 appearance on "60 Minutes" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfVDZUAuqB0).  Apparently at some point he was no longer panicked for his life. 

It isn't just artists or creative people who suffer addiction to drugs and alcohol.  Every race, religion, gender, profession and any other way you categorize the human beings who populate this world, those categories will include people who try to escape their "regular" lives through chemical means.

Maybe I don't understand it because of my very limited exposure.  I've never smoked a single joint, or even one tobacco cigarette.  I've used alcohol, but that stopped over 30 years ago and I can't imagine taking even one drink now.  It's a running joke among my trivia teammates that when we are offered free shots at a trivia match, someone gets the extra one I won't drink (they take turns).  Maybe I've never had something missing in my life that drugs might provide.

Then again, I did get exposed to dilaudid when I was first coming out of my coma.  My body was in excruciating pain due to having been nearly motionless for two months and for the pain they were giving me that morphine derivative every four hours.  When they would occasionally administer it via IV push, I experienced a serious "high".  I can see how it would be considered a pleasurable experience, but I didn't want to become dependent on the stuff.

The worst part is I know that isn't the last obituary I will write because someone who did wonderful things dies of an apparent overdose.

Now to go work on those film reviews.