Love Maury Chaykin. And it's a fascinating relationship in the film. You don't often get a bookie who's so put off by a sucker's bad bet that he (nearly) turns it down.
I saw this when it came out and, like many who enjoyed it (and Love and Death on Long Island), waited patiently for Richard Kwietniowski's follow-up. Strange that we're still waiting two decades later. (Apparently, he made a six-minute short in 2014, but that's the extent of his post-Mahowny CV.)
"Both of Kwietniowski’s features have fallen through the streaming cracks..."
If I was at home, that's the part where I would lovingly, and perhaps not a little smugly, glance over at the shelves upon which DVDs of both reside. HashtagPhysicalMedia.
Love the attention given to this unfairly unforgotten gem, but somewhat offset by the unavoidable reminder that three-quarters of its terrific leads are no longer with us.
Is there any dispute that Hoffman was the greatest actor of his generation? This guy made an Aaron Sorkin villain seem like a flesh-and-blood human being. I don't think anyone else has ever done that.
I meant Moneyball. I guess Art Howe isn't really the "villain" in that movie, but he's certainly a bit of an antagonist - your trademark Sorkin character who isn't as cool and smart and pure of heart as the hero.
I thought about Howe as someone who naturally sees a threat to his way of doing things, now that analytics has changed the thinking in the front office. I don't think it makes him a villain-- the old-school scouts, digging in their heels, are much less sympathetic-- so much as a veteran manager who's a little stuck in his ways.
Yes, agreed - I was just attributing the relative non-villainy of the character to Hoffman's performance, but you could be right that he's also not written as that bad of a guy.
Agreed, I think Howe in the script is intransigent and borderline obtuse in an artificially-inflated way that doesn’t fully harmonize with the source material. That’s not a knock--I love Moneyball, and sometimes you have rewrite things that way to help turn journalism into drama--but Hoffman’s performance fleshes out a good but one-note character and makes him sort of majestic. I bet actual Art Howe dug the performance even if he might not have agreed with the portrayal. PSH was peerless.
Yeah, I could just be coloured by being a longtime fan of Art Howe's and not thinking he's much like he was depicted in the movie - but I really think Sorkin wrote him as a cretin and Hoffman pulls him back closer to what Scott describes, a decent guy who's a bit set in his ways and isn't fully on board.
Boy, did Hoffman play the villain in Mission Impossible III or what? That character actually scared me.
After his death, we had this idea to watch Hoffman's major works in order...we started with Love Liza...and paused there. Goodness, was that movie a downer! We still hold out hope that we can gird ourselves and start again. Though, if this is the next one, I have a feeling we'll take another pause.
One thing I never understood about this movie is the title, and I feel this way about any film that chooses to name its characters in a nonstandard manner. Like why not Mahoney? Is it the "honey" that's in there that doesn't work? Did the filmmaker like the repetition of "own"? One of the many great mysteries of the universe I'll never grok...
Jack Nicholson made Col. Jessop seem like Jack Nicholson, who is, in theory at least, a flesh-and-blood human being.
At the risk of being overly literal, has anyone ever defined what a generation is in a "greatest of" context? Born five years either side? That means Benicio Del Toro, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Paul Giamatti, Mads Mikkelsen, Nicolas Cage, Andy Serkis, Jodie Foster, Jennifer Jason Leigh are part of the debate. Seven years? Add Tucci, Fishburne, Bale, Joaquin Phoenix, Olivia Colman, Michael Shannon...
Wow - I wasn't thinking of chronological age so much as the time period when he was working. Hoffman never had a performance as canonical as Iris Steensma, but nor would it ever occur to me to think of Hoffman and Jodie Foster as generational peers.
Cage is an interesting case because he's so all over the place.
Determining "greatest of" is also sometimes about the body of work. Michael Shannon had the tools to be the Jack Nicholson of his generation, but he just hasn't had the quality of roles. I'd argue that of your list, only Blanchett, Bale, Phoenix, and maybe Colette have given as many great performances as Hoffman did.
Unrelated to this (typically excellent) piece by Scott: For those wondering what happened to Kwietniowski, he became a professor at the London Film School. Apparently he's very happy there. LOVE AND DEATH and MAHONEY were both major for me, so while it's my loss, it's definitely the students' gain. https://lfs.org.uk/staff/546/richard-kwietniowski
Fantastic movie. I waited for it to stream somewhere, anywhere, for years. When I finally got sick of waiting I bought the DVD. It’s the only DVD I’ve bought since probably 2010.
Nice timing - I finally caught up with Before the Devil Knows You're Dead last night, and Hoffman's sad sack in that one could basically be Mahowny, right down to the neglected gf and famous supporting player from across the pond. Devil on the whole is maybe a bit less complex, though he gets to deepen the character by adding an erratic, bullying edge. He was a master at making unknowable people compelling.
Hoffman was untouchable. I got to see him onstage, playing Jamie in Long Day’s Journey Into Night in an unabridged production also starring Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Dennehey, and Robert Sean Leonard. It was everything you could have hoped for.
Here’s a true story. A good friend of mine understudied for a role in a play that Hoffman was starring in and they become close and stayed close after the show. Let’s call my friend Steve. Hoffman would show up whenever Steve was in a play and vice-versa. Much later, a couple more good friends from my circle were hanging out after work at a very normal East Coast Irish bar watching a West Coast Knicks game late at night. Hoffman came in, sat at the bar by himself, ordered a beer, and settled in to watch the game. My friends recognized him, of course, and though they aren’t the sort to bother celebrities, they felt the need to say hello and mention that they, too, were friends with Steve. Hoffman shook their hands and sang Steve’s praises as an actor and as a person. They watched the game and shot the shit. At some point, my friends asked Hoffman what he was doing at a totally normal Irish bar at an odd hour, watching a basketball game by himself. His response was “I’m working nights these days.”
What he didn’t say, but what my friends well knew, was that his night job was doing Wiley Loman in Death of a Salesman at the Barrymore Theater, directed by Mike Nichols. He had come from the theater to watch some ball after the show before he went home.
His sobriety had been well-publicized, so this wasn’t necessarily a joyous story to hear the next morning, but I still find a lot of joy in it, even though a year later he was gone. He wasn’t just the actor of his generation, even though he was certainly that. He was also a mensch. What a loss.
Yet another MEBJH (Movie Enhanced by John Hurt) !
A great film filled with great performances. I particularly loved the late, great Maury Chaykin as his long-suffering bookie.
Love Maury Chaykin. And it's a fascinating relationship in the film. You don't often get a bookie who's so put off by a sucker's bad bet that he (nearly) turns it down.
"He doesn't respect the process!"
I saw this when it came out and, like many who enjoyed it (and Love and Death on Long Island), waited patiently for Richard Kwietniowski's follow-up. Strange that we're still waiting two decades later. (Apparently, he made a six-minute short in 2014, but that's the extent of his post-Mahowny CV.)
"Both of Kwietniowski’s features have fallen through the streaming cracks..."
If I was at home, that's the part where I would lovingly, and perhaps not a little smugly, glance over at the shelves upon which DVDs of both reside. HashtagPhysicalMedia.
Love the attention given to this unfairly unforgotten gem, but somewhat offset by the unavoidable reminder that three-quarters of its terrific leads are no longer with us.
Is there any dispute that Hoffman was the greatest actor of his generation? This guy made an Aaron Sorkin villain seem like a flesh-and-blood human being. I don't think anyone else has ever done that.
Moneyball? Charlie Wilson's War? He's not the villain in either
I meant Moneyball. I guess Art Howe isn't really the "villain" in that movie, but he's certainly a bit of an antagonist - your trademark Sorkin character who isn't as cool and smart and pure of heart as the hero.
I thought about Howe as someone who naturally sees a threat to his way of doing things, now that analytics has changed the thinking in the front office. I don't think it makes him a villain-- the old-school scouts, digging in their heels, are much less sympathetic-- so much as a veteran manager who's a little stuck in his ways.
Yes, agreed - I was just attributing the relative non-villainy of the character to Hoffman's performance, but you could be right that he's also not written as that bad of a guy.
Agreed, I think Howe in the script is intransigent and borderline obtuse in an artificially-inflated way that doesn’t fully harmonize with the source material. That’s not a knock--I love Moneyball, and sometimes you have rewrite things that way to help turn journalism into drama--but Hoffman’s performance fleshes out a good but one-note character and makes him sort of majestic. I bet actual Art Howe dug the performance even if he might not have agreed with the portrayal. PSH was peerless.
Yeah, I could just be coloured by being a longtime fan of Art Howe's and not thinking he's much like he was depicted in the movie - but I really think Sorkin wrote him as a cretin and Hoffman pulls him back closer to what Scott describes, a decent guy who's a bit set in his ways and isn't fully on board.
Boy, did Hoffman play the villain in Mission Impossible III or what? That character actually scared me.
After his death, we had this idea to watch Hoffman's major works in order...we started with Love Liza...and paused there. Goodness, was that movie a downer! We still hold out hope that we can gird ourselves and start again. Though, if this is the next one, I have a feeling we'll take another pause.
One thing I never understood about this movie is the title, and I feel this way about any film that chooses to name its characters in a nonstandard manner. Like why not Mahoney? Is it the "honey" that's in there that doesn't work? Did the filmmaker like the repetition of "own"? One of the many great mysteries of the universe I'll never grok...
Jack Nicholson made Col. Jessop seem like Jack Nicholson, who is, in theory at least, a flesh-and-blood human being.
At the risk of being overly literal, has anyone ever defined what a generation is in a "greatest of" context? Born five years either side? That means Benicio Del Toro, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Paul Giamatti, Mads Mikkelsen, Nicolas Cage, Andy Serkis, Jodie Foster, Jennifer Jason Leigh are part of the debate. Seven years? Add Tucci, Fishburne, Bale, Joaquin Phoenix, Olivia Colman, Michael Shannon...
Wow - I wasn't thinking of chronological age so much as the time period when he was working. Hoffman never had a performance as canonical as Iris Steensma, but nor would it ever occur to me to think of Hoffman and Jodie Foster as generational peers.
Cage is an interesting case because he's so all over the place.
Determining "greatest of" is also sometimes about the body of work. Michael Shannon had the tools to be the Jack Nicholson of his generation, but he just hasn't had the quality of roles. I'd argue that of your list, only Blanchett, Bale, Phoenix, and maybe Colette have given as many great performances as Hoffman did.
Unrelated to this (typically excellent) piece by Scott: For those wondering what happened to Kwietniowski, he became a professor at the London Film School. Apparently he's very happy there. LOVE AND DEATH and MAHONEY were both major for me, so while it's my loss, it's definitely the students' gain. https://lfs.org.uk/staff/546/richard-kwietniowski
Good to know. Such a bummer that neither of his films are easy to see anymore. We need more work like it.
Fantastic movie. I waited for it to stream somewhere, anywhere, for years. When I finally got sick of waiting I bought the DVD. It’s the only DVD I’ve bought since probably 2010.
Nice timing - I finally caught up with Before the Devil Knows You're Dead last night, and Hoffman's sad sack in that one could basically be Mahowny, right down to the neglected gf and famous supporting player from across the pond. Devil on the whole is maybe a bit less complex, though he gets to deepen the character by adding an erratic, bullying edge. He was a master at making unknowable people compelling.
Hoffman was untouchable. I got to see him onstage, playing Jamie in Long Day’s Journey Into Night in an unabridged production also starring Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Dennehey, and Robert Sean Leonard. It was everything you could have hoped for.
Here’s a true story. A good friend of mine understudied for a role in a play that Hoffman was starring in and they become close and stayed close after the show. Let’s call my friend Steve. Hoffman would show up whenever Steve was in a play and vice-versa. Much later, a couple more good friends from my circle were hanging out after work at a very normal East Coast Irish bar watching a West Coast Knicks game late at night. Hoffman came in, sat at the bar by himself, ordered a beer, and settled in to watch the game. My friends recognized him, of course, and though they aren’t the sort to bother celebrities, they felt the need to say hello and mention that they, too, were friends with Steve. Hoffman shook their hands and sang Steve’s praises as an actor and as a person. They watched the game and shot the shit. At some point, my friends asked Hoffman what he was doing at a totally normal Irish bar at an odd hour, watching a basketball game by himself. His response was “I’m working nights these days.”
What he didn’t say, but what my friends well knew, was that his night job was doing Wiley Loman in Death of a Salesman at the Barrymore Theater, directed by Mike Nichols. He had come from the theater to watch some ball after the show before he went home.
His sobriety had been well-publicized, so this wasn’t necessarily a joyous story to hear the next morning, but I still find a lot of joy in it, even though a year later he was gone. He wasn’t just the actor of his generation, even though he was certainly that. He was also a mensch. What a loss.
Great story. What a loss.
I think back to the end of this movie a bit. Heartbreaking