Jonah Hill has dropped his coffee. We repeat: Famous actor, writer, and director Jonah Hill, while strolling down the street unawares, dropped his coffee. Normally, this would not be noteworthy, but two facts come together to make it so. The first is that Hill is a celebrity and the second, related to the first, is that being a celebrity means he’s photographed so incessantly that the exact split-second when the coffee dropped from his hand has been captured in an entrancing image.
Here, see for yourself:
This photo is beautiful in its simplicity. Hill is captured, stoic in all-black, sunglasses, and AirPods, as he surveys a city street, holding the lid of a coffee cup as it begins to detach and plummet to the ground. He is not aware this is happening yet, but will be in the immediate future when his pant legs are splashed and his chance to enjoy the coffee snatched away by the cruel whims of cup physics. To the side, a woman in sandals smiles serenely as if she knows what’s about to happen. The same photo, taken a moment earlier or later, would be disposable. By some stroke of fortune, however, a masterpiece is born.