The movie Philip Seymour Hoffman called his greatest experience: “The best that I’ve ever had”
When Philip Seymour Hoffman starred as the lead in Todd Louiso’s little-known film Love Liza, he had already appeared in two Paul Thomas Anderson films, as well as The Big Lebowski, The Talented Mr Ripley and Almost Famous. However, he credited the tiny independent film as being his greatest experience above the huge productions he’d had the privilege of working on.
Written by Hoffman’s brother, Love Liza followed the actor as a man dealing with the suicide of his wife by huffing petrol fumes and flying model planes. During a chance visit to their mother’s house, Hoffman read his brother’s script and became insistent he would have it made. And that he did, on a budget of only $1million with the director flying LA-based actors out on his own money and featuring Hoffman as the main character – his first time in a lead role.
But this struggling, low-budget experience is what endeared the experience to Hoffman. Speaking to Film Freak Central, he explained, “Artistically, my experience on Love Liza is the best that I’ve ever had. It was this interaction of sort of these struggling artists doing their best to make the best movie that they could in the four weeks we had to shoot.”
Despite the circumstances, the team made the film that they had set out to create and were happy with this rare success. “We struggled creatively and, in the end, basically made the film that we wanted to make, which is basically impossible if you think about it,” Hoffman remarked. And in the world of big-budget studio films, it is an impressive feat.
Especially considering it went on to win his brother the ‘Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award’ at the Sundance Film Festival. While it only made a total of $200,000, the film was a major success in the eyes of its creators.
However, making the film on such a low budget did have its drawbacks. One of Hoffman’s favourite parts of the script had to be dropped due to money constraints, “The scene where Wilson goes into the lake, it’s supposed to actually be filmed underwater, it was one of my favourite parts of the script–you follow him down there and you can hear the boats buzzing around overhead,” he said. “That feeling of detachment was something I really loved.” However, they simply didn’t have the money to capture The Graduate-esque scene in its full glory.
None of this, however, had an impact on Hoffman’s joy at working with his brother and having the real experience of struggling creatively to see something through. Plus, the freedom that comes with making the exact film you want without worrying about the studio and its need to get bums in seats, “Here you have $900,000 and it’s not much, but like Mr Schrader says, in the end, you don’t have to apologise for what’s on the screen.”
And Hoffman managed to have his usual Midas-like effect on the film, turning Love Liza from something that could have been forgotten entirely into a fun experiment in the filmography of a great actor who turned every supporting role into something golden.
