Joaquin Phoenix - The Movie

  On 8/20/2010 at 10:52 PM, Billov said:

I'm rather intrigued... and I'm pretty sure its safe to say its all a hoax, in which case I think he deserves a pat on the back for living the troll life :)

It would have been interesting if he gave us any reason to give a shit.

diggin the narration in that clip though

i treat joaquin phoenix and casey affleck like 7up: never have, never will

I hope there's a scene where he does a speedball of cocaine and heroin in front of the Viper Room.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/8008744/Im-Still-Here-Casey-Affleck-admits-Joaquin-Phoenix-film-was-fake.html

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Casey Affleck has finally admitted what many critics suspected all along – his documentary about Joaquin Phoenix was a fake.

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Affleck says he even faked home movies of Phoenix as a child.

But he insists he never meant to trick anyone, and rather was dabbling in "gonzo filmmaking."

Some critics called it a fascinating look at celebrity. Others assumed it was all staged.

bravo to the critics who thought it was a 'fascinating look at a celebrity' thing was fake as shit

edit: whoops rubin beat me to it

haha wtf -

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While it can be argued that trickery seems like an odd way to accomplish the goal, some critics have nevertheless embraced the unconventional film. Roger Ebert gave the movie a positive review and called it "sad and painful." Of course, that was when he thought he was watching something "real." It'll be interesting to see if the famed critic changes his tune.

ok roger ebert has lost his mind as well

This movie looks really bad

I think they should make a movie about why Phoenix chose to make the film, in other words narcissism masquerading as something else. This goes down as one of the most elaborate, pretentious, yet excruciatingly boring exercises in self-ego-stroking I can remember in tinseltown. Phoenix revealed more about himself than about the nature of celebrity, methinks. I used to really like him as an actor, up through Gladiator, but then he seemed to get all lizardy

*have not seen film though, maybe it's hilariously deadpan, dunno

I haven't seen I'm Still Here, but I really think these guys thought they had a genius idea and it's all gone horribly wrong. A few mainstream, braindead, (in Ebert's case, one foot in the grave) critics bought it. Everybody else kinda tuned Phoenix/Affleck out and didn't even want to watch the film. It simply took too long in the age of an internet news cycle to keep people invested in the concept of a famous actor's downward spiral, etc.

If he had made the announcement and released a film three months later, it still might have backfired. However, to take a year and a half to release this? It was dead in the water before it even premiered.

The other obvious issue is that whatever they were trying to say about celebrity culture and reality TV has been said 1000 times in recent years. Yes, people still love reality TV. No, people don't care that it's all scripted/staged/embellished, etc. It's as though the entire generation who grew up watching MTV's Real World realize there's no such thing as "non-fiction" and they're okay with that.

Ideologically, I think it's important to doubt the existence of "truth" in filmmaking, whether it's Michael Moore or Casey Affleck behind the camera. Whereas Moore clings to the extinct viewing faith in documentaries as truth, Affleck wants to encourage people to be incredulous. Unfortunately, he's at least five years late. The memo went out a long time ago and people are incredulous when they watch reality TV. They're incredulous, but they're still addicted. Call it...incredulous credulity if you will.

Haven't watched it, but a review from the one site that I generally trust to provide thoughtful, insightful reviews that I don't always agree with but respect for their depth, posted this review:

It's far too easy to believe that Casey Affleck's I'm Still Here hinges on whether or not its subject has perpetrated a hoax. Joaquin Phoenix grows a lunatic's beard, declares he's quitting acting, and starts planning a hip-hop career? Surely, he can't be serious. But here's how it ends, kids: yes, I guess you could call it a "put-on" in the strictest sense of the word--yet at the same time, he is deadly serious. What needs to be understood about Phoenix, and this film, is that there was a kernel of truth to everything the man mumbled through that maniacal persona. I do believe that Phoenix is tired of acting (or, at least, tired of stardom), and, for his farewell performance, he's blurred the line between actor and role so completely as to obliterate all our preconceived notions of who he is and what he is supposed to represent. The false Phoenix--the bedraggled, abusive prophet spouting non sequiturs--is, for all intents and purposes, the "real" Phoenix, the iconic artist who pulls a disappearing act by forcing the art and the iconography to consume his entire being. You can't call I'm Still Here a mockumentary, exactly, because, inside and outside of the "act," that is precisely what happened. And what came out of it is a harrowing thought exercise about artistic failure and the baggage of celebrity.

Call it "performance art," if you must. Brashly announcing his retirement to entertainment reporters during a red-carpet event, Phoenix set himself up for failure with surgical precision. We doubt that he has anything to say in his subsequent dabbling in hip-hop beyond the unspecific desire to "make art;" he recites his lyrics in a scratchy half-shout that doesn't boast much regard for meter or tempo. Phoenix grows more frustrated, self-destructive, and dangerous as he fails to get the kind of attention he wants, waiting for that one call from Diddy that would change everything and exploding when he can't earn anyone's respect on command. He draws himself further inward, chattering to himself in fractured sentences and coming to blows with his assistants, who are helpless to do damage control. These sequences are outrageous, terrifying, and, yes, occasionally hilarious. But as everything comes crashing down, as Phoenix eventually suffers a nervous breakdown upon realizing what he's thrown away, the "reality" that Affleck and Phoenix are trying to represent is thrown into sharp relief. The ambition, the sense of entitlement, the dawning recognition of failure--they're all far too familiar for comfort.

I'm Still Here thrives on an unshakeable sense of existential dread, haunted by the question of whether anyone (an actor, an artist, a man) can ever really break away from their assigned role(s) in life. The more Phoenix tries to distance himself from his film career, the more he reminds us that he will always be an actor--which in turn alienates him from the human race entirely. Throughout his quest to be taken seriously as a musician, he invokes his success as an actor (and the favoritism he believes he deserves) with tiring regularity. His incoherent complaints about the shabby treatment he receives from the commoners wedged between gleeful indulgence in hookers and blow, Phoenix becomes a parody of a parody, the kind of self-centred Hollywood dickhead we love to read about in the tabloids. It is, ultimately, as much a fantasy as the nice, clean-cut fellow we recognized from pandering interviews on the talk-show circuit. And here's the thing: we all ate that fantasy up without question.

The American public took such umbrage at the actor's sudden transformation that they were ready to dismiss his claims out of hand. He would either turn out to be a musical washout or an attention-seeking charlatan, it didn't matter--and with I'm Still Here, Phoenix paradoxically defies our expectations by playing right into them. If Phoenix doesn't want to be an actor anymore, that's too bad, because that's all we ever expected him to be. His only alternative is to be the Laughingstock of Tinseltown. Affleck intercuts videos that chronicle the evolution of the story as it unfolded in the tabloids, their mocking cruelty eventually coming to mirror Phoenix's own. (Notice, too, the moment when Ben Stiller shows up to discuss the Greenberg script with Phoenix, receiving a helping of abuse for his trouble. It's a fair indication that Stiller was in on this particular joke--so when he does Phoenix's shtick at the Academy Awards, it's the bemused reaction from his Hollywood contemporaries that hurts the most.) I'm Still Here offers a fairly stunning portrait of the artless sociopathy that dominates celebrity/Internet culture by throwing our own malice back at us. America loves a freakshow, and by gawking at Phoenix's "failures" with such interest and contempt, we've proven ourselves to be just as petty and small-minded as his fictitious counterpart. After a brief montage of video parodies, the final eulogy for Phoenix's career is delivered here by some David Spade-esque punk with a webcam--a scraggly dude hidden behind familiar sunglasses--who is no less of a sneering asshole than Phoenix himself.

Still, the direct relationship between Phoenix and his real/hypothetical audience cannot be pinned down so easily. I'm Still Here is about the chasms separating art from entertainment, performance from identity, success from doubt. Where is "here," exactly? Appropriately, the movie primarily conveys these ideas as a visceral experience, one that could only be imagined by a couple of actors with a few choice words for their chosen profession and the madness that surrounds it. Make no mistake: this film, this experiment, this persona, probably marks the end of a career. I doubt there's any way around that. And yet, true to his name, Phoenix has gone out in a blaze of glory, offering himself up as a nasty, ignorant mirror to the Hollywood grind

  On 9/30/2010 at 5:35 PM, The Overlook said:

I haven't seen I'm Still Here, but I really think these guys thought they had a genius idea and it's all gone horribly wrong. A few mainstream, braindead, (in Ebert's case, one foot in the grave) critics bought it. Everybody else kinda tuned Phoenix/Affleck out and didn't even want to watch the film. It simply took too long in the age of an internet news cycle to keep people invested in the concept of a famous actor's downward spiral, etc.

 

If he had made the announcement and released a film three months later, it still might have backfired. However, to take a year and a half to release this? It was dead in the water before it even premiered.

 

totally agreed. it was so slow.

joaquin was on letterman again and letterman pwned the shit out of him

EDIT- They should have never said that Casey was involved at all. or that it was being filmed or documented.