But, more than William Miller, I wanted to be Lester Bangs. I wanted the seniority, the status, the experience, the authority. If possible, I would skip the William Miller phase and go right to Lester Bangs. This is a real writer, I remember thinking. But, at the time that I first saw Almost Famous as an ignorant teenager, I did not know who Lester Bangs was outside of the context of the movie. In short: I wanted to be Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs.

Almost Famous was just the beginning for me. Capote, Doubt, Synecdoche, New York… I cheered in the theatre when he appeared in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. But while we mourn the loss of such an incredibly talented actor for such a tragic reason, don’t ever forget those words spoken by Mr. Hoffman in that first role that won me over:

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool.”

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The first thing I notice about the book is its weight. The Wes Anderson Collection by Matt Zoller Seitz is almost a square foot large and weighs over 4.5 pounds. I think, as I hoist the solid book, the bright cover wrapped with intricate drawings by Max Dalton: this is a good deal for forty bucks. The book has the feel of a photo album—dense with decades of memories—and I open it with a similar reverence, because there they are: all my old friends.

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