Artist.

I had a pretty good day most of the day today. I went skiing with my dad, it was a lot of fun, and there was a ton of powder. And not a cloud in the sky. Not too crowded either. Oh, and I got to meet my cousin's new baby. Awesome baby. Hung out with most of the rest of the family for a super bowl party thing and had delicious food. I didn't particularly care about the football game (the original plans were to either go to a movie or a brewery bar without TVs) so I don't care that the Broncos lost. It was mostly kind of amusing that people cared so much about it.



But now I kind of take it personally when people get so distraught over this. It hurts me that you can get upset today because a bunch of grown men were bad at throwing the ball to each other and other grown men were good at taking the ball away from the first bunch.

Because we lost my favorite actor of all time.

Yes, he is only one man in the billions on this earth. And he was "just" an entertainer. And I did not know him personally. But my care for his work perhaps rivaled your passion for the super bowl. And the Broncos have next  year. PSH is gone.

Happiness. This is when I fell in love with his work. His talent. Fearlessness. The sympathy he made me feel for a character that was super creepy and gross, comically gross at times, but so sad. The non-ironic appreciation I have for Air Supply has a lot to do with that movie and that character.

Love Liza. I watched this one obsessively in college. So many times. I don't know if I'll be able to watch this one anymore. I feel like I have to at least once but it's going to hurt. The script was silly at times but the way he sold that sadness of losing a wife and not knowing how to deal with it, resorting to huffing paint, I don't know how I'll deal with watching it again. It will ring a little too true.

Boogie Nights Magnolia Punch Drunk Love The Master. I know Paul Thomas Anderson can still make a great movie without him (There Will Be Blood) but he seemed to be quite the muse and such growth can be seen just going through his PTA movies. And he wasn't afraid to play terrible people that I still somehow sympathized with because of the underlying sadness, just like Happiness.

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead. Owning Mahowny. Capote. Doubt. Synecdoche, New York. Oh My God. The list could just keep going. He owned every role and it's an intimidating filmography he amassed in his tragically short career.

Savages saw him team up with another master of the craft (Laura Linney) for the greatest acted movie in recent memory. Sorrow.

I saw a news story fairly recently (was that a year ago??) that he had entered rehab. Even though he'd been clean for 20 years. How does this happen? It disturbed me greatly. I didn't know he'd ever had such problems. But I was glad he got ahead of it and was taking care of himself.

One more year and here we are.

I guess for us the letter is all of the movies he left for us. I'll have to tackle those (the ones I haven't seen, and seeing the ones I've seen again) once I'm ready.