Both Guns Drawn: Feelings of Unreality

The trailer for the Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck documentary I'm Still Here hit last week and with it the re-ignition of a nearly two-year argument. Phoenix, who announced in 2008 his retirement from acting to pursue a rap career, has, as a result,  been the subject of much speculation and has had people the world over wondering if his motivations are earnest or if they may be the result of some Andy Kaufman-esque stunt, set to culminate with the film's release. Though it's hard to say the debate is polarizing (there seem to be few who believe wholeheartedly that Phoenix has lost his mind. The defensive camp tends to maintain a purely skeptic front), the "he's faking it" crowd predominantly falls to extreme dissatisfaction with Phoenix. Not only is he putting on an act, they seem to shout, but we'll have none of it and how dare he even attempt such trickery. While not necessarily in support of the film itself, it's to this opposing reaction that I find myself at odds.

 

I should note that I have not yet seen I'm Still Here and, having never had the pleasure of interviewing either Phoenix or Affleck, have little insight into any of the documentary's (or, if it can indeed be considered another creature, reality's) specifics. To this end, I want to make it clear that I'm not stepping up (at least at this stage) in defense of the documentary because the quality of the film has little to with what I  do wish to say. That is A) truth is not fact and B) something well said by a fictional character in the first place: "We all go a little mad sometimes."

 

Reality is a strange place. I know. I spend a good deal of time there. The ins and outs  of any person's daily routine, no matter how seemingly mundane, are riddled with contradiction and coincidence. In fact, the goings on of the universe as a whole are often summed up even by people who believe in a special order to said universe with the catch-all mantra, "the Lord works in mysterious ways." That is, regardless of whether we're headed to a concrete destination, the way that we're traveling can be quite silly indeed.

 

Hollywood is, let me suggest as far as silliness goes, one of the more openly eccentric forums for the bizarre . I've had the pleasure of working somewhat adjacent to the industry as a reporter for much of the last three years and can safely promise you that it gets more than a little unreal at times. It means meeting and carrying on conversations with the living faces of characters you grew up with and stepping into fictional worlds on a daily basis. It's sometimes being asked to speak to puppets or muppets or robots or dogs and to then turn and try to offer that experience to the world. It's wonderful, that weirdness, and I'm grateful for every moment, but even in gratitude there's the surreality asking "Why me? How did I get so lucky?" and keeping a hold of that thought against the same kind of personal fault and tragedy that any individual has to face.

 

Imagine the magnification involved in actually being a celebrity. When I say this, I'll point out that I mean magnification as a superficiality. I wouldn't presume to suggest that any level of fame gives anyone a deeper understanding of themselves or of the world. Merely that fame, as a superficial construct, can easier become a vehicle for delivering that understanding (or attempt at understanding) to a third party (i.e. through a film). Case in point, Joaquin Phoenix, a man who I've never met but presume (as do we all)  to know a great deal about. A man who has publicly lead a bigger than life existence and whose equally public personal loss has been as great as anyone's. Do I mean by this that I think he's snapped and that I'm Still Here was made to expose that fact? Not at all. In fact, I would argue that if that were the case, the documentary would have never been made. But I do believe that, in the same way that you or I can privately indulge our in own darkness and pull back, living an everyday life without being considered mad for it, someone like Phoenix is in the rare position to do the same on a more grandiose scale. That's not "faking it" but even if you wanted to call it that, it certainly doesn't mean there can't be truth there.

 

But, hey, let's say for a moment it's not even that. Let's say it is a big inside joke and that I'm Still Here is completely played for comedy. Why would even that be wrong? Because it pretended to be something else? No one would attack, let's say, The Expendables for being a work of fiction. Audiences just accept it as a story and the filmmakers would never begin to make a claim to the contrary. The same is true for Inception and yet there's a film that is actively trying to make a point about levels of perception and the balance between the real and surreal. But audiences will only accept that discussion within the confines of the fiction. We'll argue whether or not the narrative was a dream or a reality, not whether or not the film was a reality or a narrative. Move on to anything "based on a true story", though, and you'll instantly find criticism in the complaint, "that's not the way it really happened." It's a cheap defense because it's an intellectual dead end. It's the embarrassed notion that being seen as even a little bit gullible is a worse than sacrificing the exploration of a temporary reality.

 

Let me hold on off furthering this line of thought for the time being as there's another upcoming film that I have already seen (but upon which I'm currently embargoed) that I expect will fuel a similar controversy in the very near future and, as such, will surely feed another column's debate about facts versus truth. 

 

But I'll wrap up my pre-screening thoughts on I'm Still Here by reminding you that Andy Kaufman famously stated that he never told a joke in his life. What is funny, what is strange, what is painful is ultimately left to the experience one is willing to embrace. But I will caution that there is a trap carried with any rigid act of perception. The penalty involved in embracing reality and reality alone is having to spend your time there.