Obituary

An Uncool Icon: Our Brief Tribute to the Work of Philip Seymour Hoffman

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Celebrity deaths rarely make an impact on me. It’s not that I’m heartless or unsympathetic to the family of the departed, but the passing of someone I never met is more often a curiosity or bit of information than a moment of reflection and mourning. There are exceptions, of course. I felt a profound sense of loss when Roger Ebert passed away last spring, and it seemed as though the whole world was filled was sad reminders of that fact for days and days. Similarly, I will spend this week being quietly reminded that Phillip Seymour Hoffman died of an apparent drug overdose on Sunday morning in New York City.

The news itself staggered me this afternoon. I was helping my wife make lunch when Travis texted me the news, and I ran to the computer to confirm. It seemed impossible that a man who was still so young, only 46 at his passing, with decades of more great performances waiting, should be gone so suddenly. The sad details of his struggles with drug addiction and the young family left behind will make for a lot of tabloid fodder. Personally, I didn’t know the man and can only be sympathetic about such things from a distance. What I wanted to write about for The Recorder is what I know Phillip Seymour Hoffman as: an actor of the highest order who improved every project he was in through his sheer talent.
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What You Are About To See Has Never Been Seen Before the Human Eye!: In Memory of Ray Harryhausen

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harryhausen

There’s quite a lot that has to happen for me to truly mourn the passing of a celebrity, an artist, or a noteworthy figure in popular culture. Quite often, the problem for me is that “celebrity” naturally inspires a distance between myself and the noted member of society. It’s sad for me to realize that I’ll never read another Roger Ebert review, never get to listen to a new track by Levon Helm, or that Stan “the Man” Musial has joined the ranks of the great All-Star team in the sky. It’s natural to feel some sense of loss, and to gain a true appreciation for what they’ve done. (Check out my colleague’s touching tribute to the late Mr. Ebert here, to whom all of us at the Recorder are deeply indebted to.) More often than not, however, it’s only a momentary blip in the never-ending stream that is life. It’s sad to know that Whitney Houston has passed away, but in the end, I’ll still dance like a fool to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” without thinking more on the subject than “hmm…she’s passed away…we’re all getting old.”

And then I came home from work today to discover that Ray Harryhausen has passed away.

Somebody like Harryhausen is not a well-recognized name in the general lexicon of popular culture. He didn’t discover a cure for a disease, he didn’t play quarterback for the Cowboys, and he never had a #1 Single on the Billboard Top 40. He did headline several movies of his own, but we’ll get to that in a second.

No, what he did was to provide hope, inspiration, and a wave of dreams for countless people the world over.

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Democracy In Action: Memories of Culture in Boston

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According to our records, this will be the 100th post on the Addison Recorder. Hard to believe we’ve done so much since that night in Julius Meinl when Travis concocted this idea.

Speaking of “we,” I’m almost positive that we, like so many of our friends and loved ones in our age group, spent the past week glued to televisions, web sites, and above all a startlingly dynamic Twitter to mourn, follow, and ultimately rejoice over the tumultuous week in Boston. A piece on just how much Twitter replaced media as our major source of information and our shaper of reactions may be due once we have a little more time and distance. But during the entire week, as I was doing all of the above actions with tears and laughter alike, the most significant rush of memories came about what that city means to me.

I went to Emerson College to study film, with a bit of writing and philosophy, and lived in Boston from 2003 to the very end of 2006. For the last two of those years, including the summer of ’06, Boylston Street was actually my home; I lived at the beaux-arts Little Building, the main Emerson dormitory, on the corner of Boylston and Tremont, right next to Boston Common, the Green Line stop, a CVS and a 7-11, a Dunkin’ Donuts (though that’s not surprising since there’s one on every corner), a little Chinese restaurant which had the best Crab Rangoon you could ask for, a magnificent dive of a New York style pizza establishment, and a Loew’s multiplex.

Even on Newbury Street, the fanciest in town…they use how many Dunkin’ Donuts are here to stump people on tour buses.

In short, everything a college student needed. Especially a slightly withdrawn college student trying to absorb everything he could in terms of art and culture, trying to learn from the masters of every art.

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In Memory of Roger Ebert

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Roger Ebert was a tremendous film critic and is pretty easily the most well-known and beloved writer about film in American history. His death today after a long, very public, battle with cancer is a tremendous loss to the entire film community and we here at The Addison Recorder extend our deepest condolences to his family and friends. There have been a lot of tributes to him pouring in since the news of his passing broke this afternoon, and I wanted to whip something together that expressed how important Ebert was in my life. The thing is, I cannot begin to express the impact he had on me.
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