The Phil I know

Between waves of grief on Sunday morning, when I learned that my friend Phil had died, I scrolled through old texts, landing on what would be my last chat with him, on Sept. 10:

Phil: Wanna meet tonite? I’d love to catch up. Much to talk about. Ugh.

Me: Hey, would love to but in Toronto for play reading. Maybe Tuesday eve? Miss you, think about you.

Phil: That sounds great. Let me know when you land. Miss you too.

We never met that Tuesday evening.

I’m not the only one, I’m certain, with similar incomplete threads of conversation from him. There are several of us — friends and family who were available for him to reach while being tugged further back into a disease that wants to get you alone and then kill you. Any of us who knew him well could pen this, and I do so understanding that my relationship with Phil was my own and no more or less singular or special than the relationships he had with many.

I know that I loved Phil and that Phil loved me. And it is to this point that all our collective anecdotes funnel. Phil loved — and was loved — deeply. For those who knew him, the seminal interactions and experiences with him are so plentiful that choosing one to reflect on is hardly different from closing one’s eyes, stabbing a map with a finger, and deciding where next to travel.

For me, this memory comes to mind: I didn’t like “Patch Adams.” It was 1998, I believe, and I’d seen a preview screening and Phil wanted to know what I thought. I don’t recall what I said exactly, but it was critical. Phil didn’t appreciate my assessment and told me so.

“We’re friends, and you asked,” I responded, but that didn’t land with him either. We never again talked about “Patch Adams,” but on reflection, I realized Phil taught me something about genius that day: It commits without prejudice, believes wholeheartedly and toils tirelessly and without restraint. It works with passion and enthusiasm and is always pushing, pushing, pushing toward the edge, wherever that may be. This is the Phil I know.

A few years later we were in Mobile, Ala., working on “Love Liza,” a film scripted by his brother, Gordy, and for which I was a producer. The film was deeply personal and endlessly challenging. Phil paced for six weeks like a grumpy polar bear with a cigarette attached to his paw. He was fearless and did things I’d never seen an actor do, before or since. He was extraordinary. The role was grueling, the schedule was short, and it was not at all fun. Phil and I weren’t talking. We weren’t officially not talking, but we were definitely not talking. We were in splits, where day was night, dinner was breakfast, and exhausted insides were in knots. We were shooting in a residential neighborhood, and locals came to watch and were invited to stay for dinner, a buffet thing on the front lawn. We queued up in silence. I was three or four people from Phil as an older woman sidled up to him.

“Mr. Hoffman, I thought you were great in ‘Patch Adams,’” she said. “I really loved it.”

Philip tossed a roll onto his plate, jerked a thumb in my direction and, without looking up, grumbled, “Thank you very much. It’s Roda’s favorite movie,” and walked away.

Phil held on to things like that. He was competitive, he was challenging, and he believed all the way in whatever he did. He had to.

Phil loved actors and writers and directors. He defended them, he protected them and he honored them. His sensitivity and grudge about my “Patch Adams” comments spoke to his communal disposition and the deep loyalty he felt for the people he met along his creative journey. Donal Ward, another friend of Phil’s and mine, said, “There was perhaps something in the dichotomy of his tribal nature and his loner’s impulse to explore the furthest edges on his own, in his work and his life. His addiction may have amplified the associated risks, but it wasn’t the total cause, or result, of who he was.”

Phil’s longtime friend and producing partner, Emily Ziff, reflected so wonderfully that additional sentiments in such short form here would seem redundant. On her Facebook page, she recalled the image of Phil as an artist at work:

Serious, head down, humble before the task at hand. A pencil in his hand, a script at his fingertips, questioning, seeking, an inscrutable character being drafted, drawn, beamed in from the cosmos, an unknowable man becoming known, an unknowable man becoming seen, because he had to be. Because for Phil, to not create would have been to die a different kind of death. And each role provided him with a different kind of life. We are blessed with all the lives he’s left behind. The ones onscreen, the ones he fathered, the ones he inspired, supported, enlivened and made better through his talent, generosity and humanity — mine included.

This same generosity of spirit was deeply rooted in Phil’s sober life. He was sober for 23 years, and there are sober addicts and alcoholics, many, who are alive today because of his help. He nudged people into recovery, paid for rehabs and kept people afloat while they found their sober footing. I heard accounts over the past year or so of Phil drinking beer in West Village bars. This does not negate his contribution to others’ sobriety, my own included, at all, and I choose not to remember him this way.

Rather, I’ll remember the enveloping hugs, the warmth, the love. I’ll remember his dirty Carhartt winter coats and knit caps that he rarely removed, even indoors. I’ll remember his laugh. Mostly I’ll remember how much I loved to make him laugh. This is what I will miss most and what will carry on forever — Phil’s explosive, love-filled laugh that made you feel you had just accomplished something important.

At the end of our last exchange, our last conversation, I adolescently texted something dirty about a pretty girl who walked by. Phil texted something dirty back. I texted something dirtier. Phil replied, “haha,” and I never spoke to him again.