Aaron Sorkin Pens Touching, Chilling Tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman

Credit: HBO

Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplays for two of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman's films: 2007's Charlie Wilson's War and 2011's Moneyball. Needless to say, Sorkin was well-acquainted with the late actor, and it's clear his respect for Hoffman ran deep.

Case in point, the following tribute Sorkin wrote for TIME, as the Oscar-winning writer of The Social Network, and creator of HBO's The Newsroom, spoke out on the tragedy of Hoffman's heroin-related death. It's both touching and slightly chilling: Sorkin recounts a conversation with Hoffman in which he declares that if he were to die from his heroin addiction, it would at least have the benefit of scaring ten people into quitting. It's a conversation that is even more profound now with the benefit of hindsight, yet Sorkin doesn't stop there. He calls the media to the carpet for implying that he died of an overdose instead of actually saying it plain: "[He] died from heroin. We should stop implying that if he’d just taken the proper amount then everything would have been fine."

It's a potent tribute from an immensely gifted writer, and you can read it in full below:

Phil Hoffman and I had two things in common. We were both fathers of young children, and we were both recovering drug addicts. Of course I’d known Phil’s work for a long time — since his remarkably perfect film debut as a privileged, cowardly prep-school kid in Scent of a Woman — but I’d never met him until the first table read for Charlie Wilson’s War, in which he’d been cast as Gust Avrakotos, a working-class CIA agent who’d fallen out of favor with his Ivy League colleagues. A 180-degree turn.

On breaks during rehearsals, we would sometimes slip outside our soundstage on the Paramount lot and get to swapping stories. It’s not unusual to have these mini-AA meetings — people like us are the only ones to whom tales of insanity don’t sound insane. “Yeah, I used to do that.” I told him I felt lucky because I’m squeamish and can’t handle needles. He told me to stay squeamish. And he said this: “If one of us dies of an overdose, probably 10 people who were about to won’t.” He meant that our deaths would make news and maybe scare someone clean.

So it’s in that spirit that I’d like to say this: Phil Hoffman, this kind, decent, magnificent, thunderous actor, who was never outwardly “right” for any role but who completely dominated the real estate upon which every one of his characters walked, did not die from an overdose of heroin — he died from heroin. We should stop implying that if he’d just taken the proper amount then everything would have been fine.

He didn’t die because he was partying too hard or because he was depressed — he died because he was an addict on a day of the week with a y in it. He’ll have his well-earned legacy — his Willy Loman that belongs on the same shelf with Lee J. Cobb’s and Dustin Hoffman’s, his Jamie Tyrone, his Truman Capote and his Academy Award. Let’s add to that 10 people who were about to die who won’t now.

Via: TIME