Maybe "I'm Still Here," is an elaborate hoax, aimed at bringing Joaquin Phoenix back to center stage, back to the limelight and the spotlight. Maybe it's a true, and very sad story where Phoenix decided to explain his life and (on one level, anyway) incipient death in a film directed by his brother-in-law, Casey Affleck. It opens here today.
I lean to the former explanation, especially as Amanda White, the producer, and Magdalena Gorka, the cinematographer, settled harassment lawsuits against him on Wednesday, providing another shot of publicity in People magazine the week before opening. Phoenix, from a family of considerable talent and strange behavior, dropped out of the movie business two years ago, announcing that he was going to be a rap musician and DJ, two fields already overloaded with ambition, if not talent.
Of course, maybe Phoenix has nothing else to talk about than the failure of his life and a couple of years filled with pain and depression, drugs and excessive behavior. It would be interesting, if not important, to find out the reasons for the harassment suit, but some of Gorka's cinematography in a scene with some visiting prostitutes could bring its own harassment.
I'm Still Here opens today at the Tivoli.
—Joe
Comments
2 responses
Wasn’t that a hoax?
Yes, as it turned out, Phoenix, in a NY Times interview just as this was being posted, said it was.