It’s so hard to believe it’s been 10 years since Philip Seymour Hoffman passed away. Such a huge loss. His younger sister, Emily Barr, has just written a touching, heartfelt tribute to her brother in The Paris Review. In the piece — which I highly recommend reading in full — Barr recounts going to her local library in the wake of Hoffman’s death and asking what happens to old magazine issues once they’re outdated. Barr had always tracked her brother’s career by saving his articles, interviews, and reviews. So when the librarian responded that the old magazines were donated to schools for children to use in collages, Barr felt horrified by the idea of her brother’s obituary being a part of a little kid’s art project. So she checked out every issue and cut them out herself.
“My brother had a lot of loud parts, like his laughter and big gestures of annoyance,” Barr wrote in a piece published Monday, April 22, in The Paris Review. “The way he would jump up and dance around when teasing you — even after you’d pleaded for him to stop, he just couldn’t help poking fun one last time. He knew it was wrong, but he was going to do it anyway, and laugh until you were laughing too.”
Immediately after her brother’s sudden death, Barr began diligently searching her local library for “every periodical that even mentioned him,” which wasn’t an unfamiliar habit.
“Early in my twenties, I’d begun saving every magazine or newspaper article Phil was ever featured in — at least the ones I knew about,” she explained. “I even had all his interviews on VHS. And here were the final magazine stories detailing his life cut short.
As Barr began her collection, however, the purpose began to shift.
“At first, I just wanted to be sure I collected all the glowing obituaries reviewing the life and unexpected death of this talented young actor who mesmerized us with his art,” she continued. “But then I became obsessive. Even the weekly TV Guide put his name in the crossword: 15 down, 20 letters, ‘Oscar overdose.’ I added it to my pile.”
Barr noted she “didn’t want to read these articles,” but she also wanted to make sure they didn’t get in the wrong hands either.
“I didn’t want children cutting them up in class next year,” she wrote. “More importantly, I didn’t want one of my children to be sitting in art class and get handed one of these magazines and open it up to see their Uncle Phil.”
So, Barr checked out every magazine from the library that featured her brother and got to work.
“I hid in the small space between my bed and the dresser with a pair of scissors I’d stolen from my daughter’s backpack,” she revealed. “I sat on the floor and cut all the articles and photos of Phil out of each magazine. I tried to make the missing pages look inconspicuous. But there was no way to really hide it, especially when he was on the cover.”
After returning the sliced-up magazines back to the library, Barr couldn’t help but reflect on the reaction of the bemused librarian and, of course, her late brother.
“I walked home in the snow, thinking about the mystery I’d created for her with the missing pieces,” Barr wrote, “and also how Phil would think I was ridiculous for doing all this.”
Grief is such an idiosyncratic thing, to both the griever and the one who’s being grieved. When my grandmother passed away, one of her possessions that I took was a clump of two necklaces that were hopelessly knotted together. I did not like these necklaces, in fact I thought they were hideous. But before she died she had once asked for my help in untangling them, which I failed to do at that time. I took the necklaces home and methodically, gently worked the chains loose until there were two separate pieces again. And only then did I throw them in the trash. (They were not worth saving, trust me.) So while I do not publicly condone tampering with library property, I empathize with Barr’s journey here.
Shortly after Hoffman won the Oscar for Capote in 2006, my mother and I were lucky enough to see him at a live Q&A. He spoke with nerd-like enthusiasm about doing the play True West on Broadway in 2000, in a production where he and John C. Reilly switched roles every few performances. I remember thinking, “Wow, that’s an actor’s actor.” And his fellow actors clearly adore him. I’ll never forget Sam Rockwell closing his 2018 Oscar acceptance speech with “This is for my old buddy Phil Hoffman. For my old buddy Phil Hoffman.”
“My brother had a lot of loud parts, like his laughter and big gestures of annoyance.” An essay on Philip Seymour Hoffman, by his sister, Emily Barr.https://t.co/83ycXKT5ir
— The Paris Review (@parisreview) April 22, 2024
Photos Credit: Matteo Mignani/EIDON/Avalon, WENN/Avalon, Joy Scheller/Avalon, imago stock&people/Avalon