#the most stunned I've ever been was when. halfway through this movie. my mom said 'his cute hair :)'

[philhoffman]

This week’s Monday Philm is Jack Goes Boating (2010), directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I can’t say how relieved I was that this happened to be this week’s movie. The anniversary of Phil’s death last week wrecked me all over again and brought up a lot of complicated feelings and I felt pretty isolated from him, so for a few days I’ve been trying to find my way back. Jack Goes Boating is his labor of love in every way, made with his closest loved ones, from his LAByrinth family to his Mimi as the costume director to his very own production company. It’s easy to find him again here.

We talk a lot about how Phil never did a “traditional” romcom and what a shame that is (it is!), but the more I fall in love with Jack Goes Boating, the less I mind. He was never a conventional actor and this funny, awkward, earnest love story is more true to his heart than any mainstream picture could ever be. I really felt for Jack on this viewing, felt his emotions so strongly. When he’s sitting in the hospital waiting room, koala on his knee, preparing himself to visit Connie alone—I can feel the butterflies, that churning anxiety, wanting to see someone but feeling so nervous and wanting to be good and right for them. His meltdown at the dinner party, that wave of massive rage and frustration covering up for plain sadness and disappointment, adrenaline racing through your body you can only shake and tremble and try not to put your fists through everything you see. The embarrassment, the fear.

I love this soundtrack. “Peace Piece” by Bill Evans is my favorite jazz song in the world, if not my favorite song period, and I’ve developed quite a history with it. Hearing it as the credits rolled the first time I watched JGB, sobbing my eyes out. A few months later, listening to it while making pancakes in the kitchen past midnight, suddenly overwhelmed by Phil’s influence on my life and all the beauty and art and love I’ve found because of him. Further still, it played in Madison Square Garden before a concert I’d traveled to NYC to see, listening to it with thousands of people and thinking of Phil and everything that brought us to that moment. It’s a good song, is all. 

Jack Goes Boating is a directorial debut and maybe it is not the most perfect and polished film in the world but it’s honest. It is New York City and koala bears and the transit authority and saying yes, I will be hurt by you, and getting hurt and real bodies and nervous tics and Fleet Foxes and awkward conversation and kissing in the snow because sometimes that really happens. “Take me, yeah, I want you to take me, c’mon, take me.” He is really so beautiful.

Phil was so looking forward to his next opportunity to direct a film. He really fell in love with the job. He deserved the chance to explore it more.