Phillip Baker Hall, who was still alive, is dead to me

Was it AIDS?

RIP. One of the all-time great character actors. Awesome in PT Anderson's first film, Hard Eight. Probably most known for his role as the library investigator Mr. Bookman on "Seinfeld."

I think I remember him best as the child molester in Magnolia and the private investigator in Talented Mr. Ripley.

RIP. His monologues as Mr. Bookman on "Seinfeld" were hilarious.

Alive-alive or dead-dead?

Link

Philip Baker Hall was in at least 3 films with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, two of which were directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

He never worked with Sarah Jessica Parker, Mary Louise Parker or Mary Stuart Masterson.

But did he work with Philip Charles MacKenzie?

Or Jennifer Jason Leigh Taylor Young?

Anna Maria Alberghetti in a taxi, honey!

Good actor.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Hall.

I never miss a Steve Tesich musical.

he worked with 'em all......

I think he and Sarah Michelle Gellar would have been great in something together.

He was brilliant in Magnolia.

I immediately thought of Zodiac. He played Sherwood Morrill - the guy who authenticated the Zodiac letters.

he had a recurring role on General Hospital

He had a guest role on Modern Family playing a crabby neighbor who died.

He was great in Boogie Nights too.

He was the only funny thing in that Joseph Gordon Levitt movie about cancer.

His son Anthony Michael requests privacy during this difficult time.

I've never heard of him. Did he ever win an Oscar?

What a great Nixon he was in Secret Honor. Now, the Faye Dunaway of Mommie Dearest might have watched that performance and said, "I dunno, Philip, you're going a little big," but it works...both on stage and in the movie version. Is that what put him on PTA's radar? PTA is such a Robert Altman fanboy.

Classic Seinfeld scene. Flashy joy boys making the scene indeed.

RIP.

He was amazing in Hard Eight, my favourite PTA movie actually.

"Hard Eight" backstory -- Hall's character is named Sidney, which was also the original title of the movie. Eight years earlier, Hall had a small role in the movie "Midnight Run," with DeNiro and Pacino. He played a sort of fixer/consigliere to Dennis Farina's mob boss, and the character's name was Sidney.

PTA, apparently, came up with "Hard Eight" initially by asking himself by envisioning a future for Hall's "Midnight Run" character. It's a sort of unofficial spinoff/sequel.

I don't doubt that PTA had also seen him in "Secret Honor," r23.

* DeNiro and GRODIN ... not Pacino. Sorry, Charles.

Anderson said he'd seen "Secret Honor" before he met Hall:

Anderson got another PA job on a PBS movie about an English professor who was accused of racism by his students. The star was Philip Baker Hall, the man who played Sidney in Midnight Run. "He seemed about sixteen," Hall remembers. But Anderson said he loved his performance in Robert Altman's Secret Honor -- a movie few humans had seen -- and asked him what it was like to work with such an innovative and brave director.

So they got to talking. Anderson would bring him coffee, and they'd smoke cigarettes and chat. And one day Hall asked him what he wanted to do with his life. "Write movies," Anderson told him. "Incidentally, I've written a twenty-eight-minute minidrama, and there's a good part in it for you. If you're interested, maybe I can borrow some equipment and we can shoot it." Not long after, Hall received a script called Cigarettes and Coffee.