By: Juan Antonio Bisono

To say that I’m angry right now as I write this wouldn’t do it justice. As a high school kid I’d often search out for those people that understood me. I felt pain. At times I thought it would overwhelm me and I’d end up blowing my brains out in the middle of pre-calc. I fantasized about it, letting my blood splatter onto the moccasin wearing douschebags who hung out at the back of the class gossiping and smiling because they knew better. I wanted them smeared in insecurities and suffering. I felt less-than, and maybe because in that given context that was what I had let myself become. I was never introduced to self- acceptance because such a thing wasn’t important. I needed to be liked.

So, when on a funky Thursday afternoon I saw “Almost Famous” for the first time, you can understand my excitement in finding out that being disliked might as well be the coolest thing about me. I could thrive in the nostalgia of cigarette smoke and classic rock. That movie had given me a solution, a way out. And it all came alive through the character named Lester Bangs. He was chubby, had a freckled face, and hair that pretended to not care but in reality was still stuck in middle school. There was a guy I could relate to, a nerd. A dude that had accepted the fact that society deemed him a misfit and henceforth he accepted it himself. He didn’t fight it, and that to me was a revelation.

That was the first time I ever saw Philip Seymour Hoffman on TV, and it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship between me, and well, me. In my mind I created a persona for the actor. Obviously, I based it on what little reality seeped through the media. But, I had never met the dude. The fact was that what he had become in my mind (interesting yet self-refrained, cultured but not pseudointellectual, tortured but self-aware) was not reality but a creepy boy-bandish fandom with an actor who seemed to reflect my beliefs through his work. I became his most avid supporter. The first time I watched boogie nights I thought it was weird and kind of slow. It was Paul Thomas Anderson trying to make fun of guys with big dicks and small brains. But I talked myself into the existentialism of Dirk Diggler and the reality that even the most deranged, oblivious people suffer as a result of moral depravation. I had to ride the PSH train until the end.

I defended Charlie Wilson’s war. I deemed irresponsible all so-called film lovers who did not appreciate the masterful subtlety and technique in Punch-Drunk Love. I even turned a blind eye to the recent selling-out of joining a franchise like the Hunger Games. Jennifer Lawrence is the future of Hollywood, and PSH is just smart for joining forces with her. I had a constant dialogue with myself to defend this man to the ends of filmmaking oblivion. Had he been riding on a cheetah with Neil Patrick Harris to get to White Castle, my wits would’ve formulated a perfectly reasonable argument saying that PSH was only trying to appeal to his bro-self of old, or that he wanted to expand his audience.

If someone said that the subject matter of the movie was unchallenging I simply would’ve looked down on that person and nod my head no as I said, stoner movies are movies too. I lost all objectivity when it came to Philip Seymour Hoffman, because I needed a figure to look up to and he fit the bill right.