#queen latina and the power posse versus the evils of society

[philhoffman]

Phil’s theater work in the 90s <3

[philhoffman]

“It’s funny, I’ve grown to really love musicals, but the fear I have around singing is so extreme that [doing a musical] would have to be… It would be like, you know, choosing to play Capote a little bit. It would be a tough one.”

"I can't sing. Don't make me sing. I'm not singing that."

Philip Seymour Hoffman + singing

[philhoffman]

[philhoffman]

This week’s Monday Philm is... wait a minute, didn’t I finish PSH’s filmography last week? Yes, I did — and yet! through the wonder of the internet, my obsessive personality, and VHS tapes, here we are again with an awfully special find.

I was kind of dreading this first week without anything new to watch. For the better part of the last year, I’ve met a new version of Phil on screen every single week — a new movie, new character, new world. His range and body of work felt expansive. Finishing it all, finally acknowledging the finite, felt a little claustrophobic.

And then one thing led to another, and this weekend I stumbled upon Queen Latina and the Power Posse Versus the Evils of Society, a LAByrinth Theater Company production from 1997. Not much info out there but it’s described as “a musical comic book for the stage.” First I found just a couple cast photos, then a full video recording of “Episode V: Jim Dandy” featuring 29-year-old LAB member Philip Seymour Hoffman!!! I saved it to watch tonight as a special Monday “Philm.”

Phil plays Jim Dandy, who is... well, just watch it. Stills and screengrabs rarely do his performances justice, which is especially true in this case. How fucking beautiful it is to see PSH on stage, even a small one like this, a goofy role like this — dancing, singing, absolutely hamming it up with his LAB family. Shades of several of his previous and later characters, too — I caught some Lancaster Dodd, Brandt from Lebowski, even a bit of Capote, but mostly this is an entirely new thing, unlike any of his screen performances. He’s SO funny and so alive and so magnetic, in his scenes everyone and everything just gravitates towards him. “And you can play in my—shhhhh!—secret playroom!”

I don’t expect to find video recordings of lost PSH performances every week for the rest of my life, but this was a nice surprise, especially this week. Just a nice reminder that there’s always something more — whether it’s discovering a performance that I didn’t know existed (and if I found this one, there must be more out there...), or unseen photos or a different perspective on an old film or the work of his friends or just a new feeling he inspires, there’s always something to be found, nothing is really ever over. Phil is still with us in so many ways.

You can check out LAByrinth’s Queen Latina and the Power Posse, filmed January 17, 1997, on YouTube in four parts: (Part I) (Part II) (Part III) (Part IV)