"I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight."
Yesterday, the internet was set alight when the trailer for the ‘documentary’ I’m Still Here was released. It’s supposedly an effort by Casey Affleck to chart the rise and fall of Joaquin Phoenix as an actor, then his rise again as a rap artist.
Many people, including my good self, became worried/interested/aware of Phoenix’s problems when they watched this (piece of TV gold) interview on Latterman:
Now, taking a load of Barbituates or similar drugs and going on a talk show is all well and good, as is the paunch and beard, between movies he likes to let it hang out, fair enough. But for a long time, something never sat well with me, I never bought the idea that it was real. I thought the whole thing was some sort of performance piece, when he fell off the stage and got in a fight during a rap performance I was sure of it. I’m not the first person to figure this out of course, and perhaps Letterman was in on it, or it could indeed be some sort of huge ‘life as art’ performance as a comment on the nature of celebrity. If that’s the case, the documentary really needs to be great to pull it of. We’ll see.
If he actually has gone mad, and Affleck happened to start filming at the right time, then that’d be even better, but unlikely.
