One of my favorite podcasts, Famous and Gravy, often gives a morbid topic an upbeat twist, profiling celebrities who died in the last 10 years and eventually asking whether the hosts would want their lives. Usually the answer is yes, warts and all, but there were a lot more layers when the discussion involved Philip Seymour Hoffman, an Oscar winner who died of a drug overdose.
Few of us would want to die at 46 and most would love to be as elite of a talent in our fields as Hoffman was in his, but host Michael Osborne and his guest host, actor Michael Warburton, went way beyond that, talking about everything from unconditional love and malaise to addiction and second acts.
I’ll give you snippets from their eloquent debate, throw in a quote from Hoffman’s life partner, a Peggy Lee song and a scene from one of his lighter films, then come back and make a mess of things at the end.
Hoffman had three children with his partner, Mimi O’Donnell, who wrote about their lives and his addiction nearly four years after he died.
“Twelve-step literature describes addiction as ‘cunning, baffling, and powerful.’ It is all three. I hesitate to ascribe Phil’s relapse after two decades to any one thing, or even to a series of things, because the stressors — or, in the parlance, triggers — that preceded it didn’t cause him to start using again, any more than being a child of divorce did. Lots of people go through difficult life events. Only addicts start taking drugs to blunt the pain of them. And Phil was an addict, though at the time I didn’t fully understand that addiction is always lurking just below the surface, looking for a moment of weakness to come roaring back to life.”
Warburton said Hoffman seemed to have unconditional love with O’Donnell, a great relationship with his children and an artistic career that fulfilled Hoffman’s promise to himself and his audience.
“To have lived that and experienced that — no matter the burden, no matter how difficult, no matter that it kept him awake at night — even with all of that, I would have wanted his life. That was a special life.”
He quoted from Tennessee Williams: “Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.” Warburton said art often lets people express deep feelings in ways that might be hard to do under normal circumstances. Hoffman did that with a range of memorable characters, but it took a toll.
“His life was rich and it was intense and it was bold and courageous. A really great life should be as dichotomous and eclectic as possible. This guy had his troubles and travails, and some of them on an epic scale, but he didn’t have boring. His life truly was a life lived as every life should be — but fundamentally, and for the most part, isn’t.”
“Let’s say that Philip Seymour Hoffman had not OD’d,” Osborne replied. “Let’s say that he had died in a plane crash. I would have said, ‘This man climbed the upward staircase.’ Does the nature of his death — and the fact that you can call it a death of despair — does it change my interpretation? It does. And it’s hard not to.”
Hoffman’s struggles hit home for Osborne, who recently celebrated 10 years of sobriety. He said Hoffman was elite, like someone who reached the ninth floor of a 10-story building and hung out there for decades before relapsing a couple of years before he died.
“There’s something to me very hard about the fact that he gets to a place where drugs and alcohol again make sense to him.”
Osborne would have liked Hoffman’s life to have a second chapter, as has happened with so many celebrities, where they might fade from the limelight but get more involved with loved ones, philanthropy or some other passion.
“I want to see that there are still stairs to be climbed, that there are still new heights to be reached and that the disease doesn’t win out,” Osborne said. “And that’s not what happened here.”
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, who died of tuberculosis at age 44. Peggy Lee had been married and divorced four times by the time she recorded “Is That All There Is?” in her late 40s. (She lived to be 81 and is often cited as the inspiration for the Margarita, in case you’re craving some early Cinco de Mayo trivia. Take it with a grain of salt, of course.)
My mom was an alcoholic who died at 60. Many of my friends and colleagues died even younger, not from addiction, but from bad habits and bad luck. If the fates happened to be particularly cruel, lots of us non-addicts could have died young from one substance or another.
I’ll always remember what one friend said in a eulogy for a loved one who died at 41: He did something uncharacteristic for him — he left the party early.
Tons of people struggle through their 40s, give or take a decade. You reach your potential — or fail —and are left staring at a 20-year pre-retirement shitstorm so heavy that you could use a Sherpa to get you through.
On the surface, Philip Seymour Hoffman had a better life than most, but that wasn’t enough to keep his demons at bay. Even if you envy his life, he owed himself a second chapter, one that might have let him lead a charity or be a professor or watch his children grow up. Or simply be comfortable in his own skin.
Maybe you’re luckier. Maybe there’s no affliction stopping you from a great second act. Maybe you just need to find another career or a fresh passion or the right person — or be a better partner or mentor or friend. Maybe you’ve already made it through the storm with your shit so together that you don’t even need that Sherpa.
Then be one. Others aren’t so fortunate.
Consider your first 50 years as a concert and the rest of your life as an encore. You can go through the motions and let people down or give them something to cherish. Your audience is waiting.
Murphy Slaw
Something old: Here’s evidence of how life used to be in the B.C. era (before cellular).
Something new: Time just came out with its annual list of the 100 most influential people. It’s no better or worse than tons of other lists, but consider this a challenge: Find one person you’ve never heard of and take a minute to read about them. I’m sure you’ll have several options (I did). I chose Alia Bhatt.
Something borrowed: If you want more great stuff from Warburton, follow him on Threads, where he has lots of posts about pop culture icons from the past. Here’s a recent favorite.
Something blue: The popular kids’ show “Bluey” is hinting that it might be near its end, or at least making substantial changes. Here are the details.
Just finished listening to this episode yesterday. It was interesting. I didn't even know he had kids.