Philip Seymour Hoffman "A Small Boy Chased by Furies"
I first noticed Philip Seymour Hoffman in a big way when I was reviewing movies for this magazine and spotted him—I referred to him as “the scene-stealing Philip Seymour Hoffman”—playing Scotty J., a chubby gofer with an abject crush on Mark Wahlberg’s character in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 film, “Boogie Nights.” Hoffman made an impression on me then, as he continued to do in his later roles, as someone who was more than familiar with the forces of darkness in himself—to be specific, with the nub of chagrined self-loathing that impels many of his best moments on film and on stage. In this instance, he was called upon to plant a lunging run of a kiss on the mouth of unreceptive porn star Dirk Diggler (Wahlberg); that he does so with such aching klutziness, such awareness of the debasement that lies in wait, made me think that he was drawing on something he knew intimately, some psychic well down which he had fallen in the past and remembered, up here on the ground.