Russell Brand allegedly thinks Philip Seymour Hoffman was on the road to an early death for a while. While it doesn’t mean he isn’t agreeing that the man was a brilliant actor, the 38 year old comedian is trying to keep an outside perspective while weighing the facts he knows.
It can be difficult to be objective when you know more than the media is giving you, and the comedian believes that the late actor was simply following the destructive path of a disease made glamorous by pop culture icons. Admittedly, one can accuse him of simply being jealous.
Philip Seymour Hoffman has been in a good number of memorable films such as Twister , Mission Impossible 3 , and the first two Hunger Games .
Russell Brand, on the other hand, has hardly been in any films that anyone actually wants to see.
However, the comedian’s apparent cynicism is fed mostly by the fact that he’s not letting the mourning of the late Hoffman change the way he sees him. The man had apparently had a heroin problem that he was trying to quit, when he allegedly got a hold of a bad strain and it killed him.
The comedian told the press:
“Whilst routinely described as tragic, Hoffman’s death is insufficiently sad to be left un-supplemented in the mandatory posthumous scramble for salacious garnish; we will now be subjected to mourn-ography posing as analysis. I can assure you that there is no as yet undiscovered riddle in his domestic life or sex life, the man was a drug addict and his death inevitable.
“A troubling component of this sad loss is the complete absence of hedonism. Like a lot of drug addicts, probably most, who ‘go over,’ Hoffman was alone when he died. This is an inescapably bleak circumstance. When we reflect on [Justin] Bieber’s Louis Vuitton-embossed, Lamborghini cortege it is easy to equate addiction with indulgence and immorality. The great actor dying alone denies us this required narrative prang.”
If anything, Russell Brand ‘s analysis of the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman is more an observation of drug addiction itself.
Brand’s take on the situation concluded:
“Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death is a reminder, though, that addiction is indiscriminate. That it is sad, irrational and hard to understand. What it also clearly demonstrates is that we are a culture that does not know how to treat its addicts. Would Hoffman have died if this disease were not so enmeshed in stigma? If we weren’t invited to believe that people who suffer from addiction deserve to suffer? Would he have OD’d if drugs were regulated, controlled and professionally administered? Most importantly, if we insisted as a society that what is required for people who suffer from this condition is an environment of support, tolerance and understanding.
“The troubling message behind Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death, which we all feel without articulating, is that it was unnecessary and we know that something could be done. We also know what that something is and yet, for some traditional, prejudicial, stupid reason we don’t do it.”
What do you think of Russell Brand’s view on the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman?