Brilliant, talented Philip Seymour Hoffman. He created awe. He suffered flaws. I knew him forever. Like when Phil escorted blond mom, Mrs. O’Connor — same face, different last name — to an event and was then so eager.
Fame’s demons can eat away one’s entrails. 2010 I saw a change. Friendliness had become crankiness. Playing the lead, he made his directorial debut in the film “Jack Goes Boating.” With intense gravity, he told me:
“I don’t like directing myself. Too subjective. I co-edited it, and creativity’s a living thing. Watching the finished product, I see things I’d want to change. It’s as if you’re suffering with OCD. The project’s never finished.”
I joked about his gracing this premiere in jacketless open-collar sport shirt, baseball cap, scuffed brown shoes, torn khaki jeans. Deadly serious, he said: “These pants fall down because I have no ass so I don’t round them out enough. That’s why the cuffs rip.”
Scowling, this guy I knew for centuries added: “And is this what you’d really like to talk about tonight?”
I somehow knew then that things weren’t 100 percent right.
All hail king Frank
Barbara Walters opened Sunday dinner for Frank Langella with, “We’re the only ones not watching the Super Bowl.” And: “Understand King Lear is used to regal respect and standing ovations,” whereupon all rose and applauded His Maj, whose first ever Shakespeare shot was ” ‘Othello’ with James Earl Jones. I was 23.”
A gracious English guest added: “Frank’s super, but Brits usually rate Americans trying Shakespeare as s - - - ty.” Abdicating his stage throne this week, HRH Langella will recoup “in some warm, sunny, quiet tropical isle.”
Super party
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones — whose idea of a mule train has pilots and jet engines — had a Super Bowl power suite hotter than a Texas tamale. Kissing his ring was CBS’s Scott Pelley, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, Harry Connick and Papa John’s Papa John. Harvey Weinstein made a cameo appearance.
Odds & ends
After “After Midnight” at the Brooks Atkinson, a patron muttered: “Lindsay Lohan is Justin Bieber’s role model?” . . . Sunday Times, “paper of record,” Style Section, Page 10 under an old photo of Cher’s daughter, the caption “Chasity” Bono . . . So where did NFL Hall of Fame footballers Derrick Brooks, Ray Guy, Claude Humphrey dine? At Yankee baseball’s NYY Steak restaurant.
Farewell max
This column’s tough to write because we also just lost Maximilian Schell, whom I’ve known since 1961. He’d just won his first Best Actor Oscar. Holed up alone in a hotel, seeing nobody, he told me:
“I have already become frightened. Too much happiness too soon. I don’t read fan mail. Takes too much time. I’m at the top of the pyramid and must come down. I’m waiting for it. For the first time in my life, I feel fear.”
Blue woody?
Woody? Or could he? Stage pros asking will Woody Allen’s lousy p.r. hurt box office for his “Bullets Over Broadway” play. One star polled said: “Morality’s slipped so low it won’t matter. But women’s groups might picket.”
Even if he didn’t do what’s being said he did — his scurvy nervy move on then-partner Mia’s adopted daughter, whom he photographed nude, romanced then married is “not nice.” Could it dent “Blue Jasmine’s” Oscar noms? LA says “Could.”
Society lady on her treadmill. Eating a sandwich.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.