By Geo Ong
Everyone saw Joaquin Phoenix’s infamous appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman in February 2009, and everyone had their opinions of it, which pretty much boiled down to two categories: either 1) Joaquin Phoenix has effectively lost it, or 2) it’s all a hoax.
More than a year and a half later, after another appearance on Letterman’s show on 22nd September 2010, Phoenix revealed that he didn’t, in fact, effectively lose it. Instead, Phoenix and Casey Affleck wanted to make a film that ‘explored the relationship between the media and the consumers and the celebrities themselves.’ But he never really used the term ‘hoax’, though that is what the film, I’m Still Here, is now referred to as.
Everyone saw his appearance on Letterman a year and a half ago, but did anyone see Phoenix’s intended end result? I did, but not as a ‘hoax’ per everyone’s label, but as a year-long artistic experiment.
For a year and a half (maybe longer), Phoenix was another person. I’m Still Here follows Joaquin Phoenix, a different Joaquin from the Joaquin whom the public never really knew in the first place, as he transitions from a successful career in acting (two-time Academy-Award-nominated, the media relentlessly reminds us) to a new career in hip-hop.
Along the way, we see Phoenix deteriorate before our eyes, taking more drugs, becoming more belligerent and less coherent, alienating those previously close to him, and, to quote the word of Gob, making a huge mistake.
But that wasn’t all I saw. I saw an artistic experiment unfold before my eyes. I saw a committed artist immersing himself in a role lasting a year and a half. Such dedication to the artistic experiment meant no other work for that amount of time in addition to career and health risks. But what sets this apart from your typical method acting role is that there is no guaranteed or semi-guaranteed payoff in the end. Phoenix’s performance won’t garner any award talk. So far, it has been hardly seen and heavily misunderstood.
Which makes, in essence, the artistic experiment a complete success. I’m Still Here provided what it set out to provide: a commentary on the media and its relationships with both consumers and celebrities. The film may have been fake, but the responses it created were very real. The Phoenix character was judged harshly by the media and the public, both of whom have quickly assumed the authority to scrutinise the celebrity. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert says, ‘If this film turns out to still be part of an elaborate hoax, I’m going to be seriously pissed.’ The media, of which Ebert is certainly a part, preys on the celebrity but in the long run only cares about itself. (However, after learning of the film’s true intentions, Ebert conducted an interesting interview with Affleck.)
For an hour and a half (maybe longer), I shifted back and forth between personalities: one being the viewer who knew it was all fake, and one being the viewer who forgot it’s all fake and submits, whether consciously or unconsciously, to Phoenix’s and Affleck’s artistic experiment. I sympathised with the character’s downfall. I felt sorry for him when he was being ridiculed and insulted. I believed his eyes expressed pain as he watched Ben Stiller make fun of him during the Academy Awards (Stiller was in on it, by the way). In between taking cheap shots at a human being spiraling downward, the media expressed sadness that we (the media and the public) were suddenly and unexpectedly denied Phoenix’s acting talents. Poor us. Little did we know that Joaquin Phoenix was still here, all along. Something tells us (me and myself, and perhaps you as well) that this Brechtian duality would please Joaquin Phoenix very much.
