Philip Seymour Hoffman's craft and attention to details impressed Detroit entertainment journalist Susan Whitall on screen and in a conversation 14 years ago.
She interviewed him for a Sept. 16, 2000 preview in The Detroit News of the rock music film "Almost Famous," as Whitall recalls for that paper a day after the actor's death at age 46 in his Manhattan apartment.
Hoffman, 33 when the film came out, played legendary music writer Lester Bangs -- a mentor and colleague of Whitall's for five years at Creem magazine, where she was a writer and editor from 1976-83.
In her new tribute, she recalls speaking with the actor:
He knew that I’d worked with Lester at Creem, so the first thing he asked me, after we exchanged greetings, was, “Did I get him?”
“You got his voice,” I said. “How did you do that?” It unsettled me a little to see Hoffman in the movie, looking nothing like Lester — his hair was reddish blond, Lester’s was dark brown, and Lester was a much larger, shambling presence — but there was Lester’s sonorous voice coming out of Hoffman’s body.
“I had some videotape of him, and a lot of audio tapes of Lester speaking,” the actor said.
Susan Whitall of The Detroit News notes that Hoffman and rock writer Lester Bangs each "died alone, from accidental overdoses." (Photo by Alan Stamm)
Whitall was impressed that although barely any film viewers would recognize the vocal similarity, "Hoffman took pains to capture it."
She quotes the "world-class actor" explaining how he approached the role, which included reading a 1988 compilation of Bangs' writing:
"It was a great challenge for me to try to create a sense of Lester Bangs, of somebody I would have enjoyed partying with.”
What Hoffman sought to portray was the essence of Lester, the heart behind the brilliant, biting prose.
Touchingly, The Detroit News writer and author of two music books reflects on how the life paths of Lester Bangs and Philip Seymour Hoffman converge a final time:
Both men died alone, from accidental overdoses. In Hoffman’s case, it appears to be heroin. For Lester, it was his standard party mix of prescription and over-the-counter meds that vanquished him in 1982, age 33.
