In Thursday’s New York Times, Michael Cieply conducted an interview with Casey Affleck, the director of the controversial new documentary I’m Still Here, where the filmmaker confessed that the entire project was a work of fiction and not a verite portrait of Affleck’s brother-in-law, Joaquin Phoenix, as his career imploded.
“I never intended to trick anybody,” Affleck told Cieply. “The idea of a quote, hoax, unquote, never entered my mind.”
Phoenix’s erratic behavior and its subsequent documentation has been an ongoing subject of discussion in Hollywood for over a year. At the junket for Two Lovers in 2008, Phoenix announced that he was retiring from acting to become a rapper. Affleck was on hand to interview reporters afterward about their reactions to the news. Phoenix’s subsequent public appearances almost all met with disaster, as the hip-hop hopeful leapt into the crowd to attack a concertgoer at one of his shows, and a spot on Late Night with David Letterman earned him a reputation as uncontrollable and self-destructive.
Apparently, however, it was all a performance and nothing more. Affleck said, “It’s a terrific performance, it’s the performance of his career.” Unfortunately, the film has only been in release for a little more than a week, which means that the vast majority of its potential audience still hasn’t seen the film. In other words, to reveal the mystery at the heart of a movie everyone is speculating about seems like, well, a questionable decision from a marketing standpoint.
But with any luck, the film will go on to success as a piece of the zeitgeist, a cultural phenomenon that burned brightly before it burned out. Plus, we’re sure that almost two years of bad behavior will be forgotten by Hollywood when time comes for Phoenix to campaign for new roles. Because who likes unpredictable, trouble-making actors more than directors?
