“You Traded Peña?”

The late Philip Seymour Hoffman conquered many great roles, but the one that immediately came to my mind when I heard he died was Art Howe in Moneyball. What a perfect portrayal of the surly baseball manager, the guy on the edge of the dugout who wants to look even-tempered but who you can see is just simmering with rage. Hoff got all the mannerisms and the physical attitude down pat. The scene the above still comes from, where Brad Pitt shows up to reveal the Peña trade, sheesh. That’s all I can say: sheesh. I would have gladly watched him a spinoff w/ PSH covering all of Howe’s other travails.

[I had a macabre little bet with myself to see what movie Hoffman’s New York Times obit would mention first. I didn’t imagine it would be Moneyball. I thought maybe Boogie Nights. I feel like that’s the point film-going America really became conscious of him (yay, nay?). At any rate, the Times, after several paragraphs discussing recent theater work, opened the cinematic discussion with Doubt. Conventional wisdom suggests it should have been Capote, the work that earned PSH his Oscar, but whatevz, it’s a beautifully written obituary regardless of this inane quibble, go read it already.]

Goodnight, Philip. Please have peace where ever you are.