Theater News

New York State of Mind

Academy Award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman discusses playing a theater director in Charlie Kaufman’s film Synecdoche, New York.

Philip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New York
Philip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New York

“I feel burned out right now, but it won’t be like this forever,” says a scruffily bearded Philip Seymour Hoffman. He has just returned from directing the London production of Andrew Upton’s Riflemind to help promote Charlie Kaufman’s film Synecdoche, New York, which opens in New York and Los Angeles on October 24, in which he co-stars alongside Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dianne Wiest, Hope Davis, and a slew of theater actors.

The film, which marks the directing debut of the Oscar-winning screenwriter, is a complex and multilayered treatise on life, death, and art. (The title is a film term which means “a part used for the whole.”) Hoffman plays the central role of Caden Cotard, a 41-year-old stage director with an unhappy artist wife (Keener) and whose plays at his local Schenectady theater are mediocre at best. Out of the blue, he gets a prestigious and financially rewarding MacArthur Grant, which Cotard uses to rent an airplane hangar-sized space where he recreates the city of New York as a backdrop for the ongoing story of his own life.

“You know, the film tells the story of a man’s life with all the peaks and valleys, so we cover the whole gamut of that life,” Hoffman explains. “So you might just have to see the film more than once, like reading and then re-reading a good book. Synecdoche is not a short story kind of film. It’s very emotional, and that’s the toughest kind for me as an actor to make. But there are also parts of the script that made me laugh out loud when I was reading it.”

Given his own experience as a director, it seems logical to ask what Hoffman wants from another director. “A director should instill in everybody that this is a unique and extraordinary event and make life exciting for the actors so that this is the only place they all want to be. Charlie wanted our experience on it to be as dynamic as live theater, and I believe he succeeded,” he says. “Of course, a director should also be able to empathize with the actors’ minds and give directions that are sharp and to the point.”

Hoffman, who has two children with his longtime companion, costume designer Mimi O’Donnell, is a man with constant irons in the fire. Among the biggest is that he is the very involved co-artistic director of the LAByrinth Theatre Company; he just participated in their star-studded Celebrity Charades benefit, acted not long ago in their production of Jack Goes Boating, and directed good pal Stephen Adly Giurgis’ Little Flower of East Orange, starring Ellen Burstyn, earlier this year. What does he like about directing? “For an actor especially, directing can be very therapeutic because it’s all about helping others, while to be a good actor you have to always think about yourself and your role,” he says. So will he be directing a film anytime soon? “Maybe” is all he will say on the subject.

Having won the Academy Award for his riveting portrayal of author Truman Capote in Capote — and having been a nominee last year for Charlie Wilson’s War
— Hoffman should be prepared for the already-loud Oscar buzz for his work as Father Flynn in writer/director John Patrick Shanley’s upcoming film adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt, co-starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis. “Hey, I’m grateful for all the accolades even if I still dread that much energy coming at me,” he says.