What is Joaquin Phoenix doing in 'I'm Still Here'?

By Sarah Sluis

Perhaps you remember about a year ago Joaquin Phoenix announced he was quitting acting.  Soon after, news surfaced that Phoenix was going to film a documentary (or was it a mockumentary?) about his experience leaving the movies and becoming a rapper.  His celebrity friend Casey Affleck would direct.

Now, the trailer is out, giving audiences a first look at the movie, I'm Still Here.

The film is a rather baffling project, especially for a two-time Oscar nominee, and apparently film buyers were unsure about whether the movie was a mockumentary or documentary.  Nevertheless, it was picked up by Magnolia, and will release in less than a month, as a special presentation at the Toronto Film Festival.  I'm not placing much money on it doing well: it has a confusing premise that could likely backfire, and Phoenix is not a public figure that graces the tabloids regularly, which means there is limited interest in his personal life.

What's odd and sad, however, is that his decision to give up acting and pursue music seems like some kind of tribute to his brother.  According to that crowd-sourced encyclopedia Wikipedia, his brother River Phoenix was in the process of developing a career as a musician when he died of a drug overdose outside of a club.  Joaquin was the one who called 911 and tried to save him.  Joaquin Phoenix has had an interesting life in his own right, enough to create a biographical documentary, not a mock one: his family grew up in the cult Children of God before rejecting it and changing their last name from "Bottom" to "Phoenix." He has struggled with fame before, quitting acting for a year after his brother died, and also gone to rehab for alcohol addiction.  Despite the solemn, existential voiceover at the beginning of the trailer, the movie apparently is a hard R, including graphic sex and gross-out moments.  That seems like some hiding from the truths of his life rather than searching for discovery.  Then there's the fact that the production is currently the target of a lawsuit by someone alleging sexual harassment from Affleck.

Despite my reticence to see the movie because I suspect it will be narcissistic and navel-gazing (and, apparently, gross), there's something intriguing about someone who is drawing a thin line between reality and fiction.  Nowadays reality shows have become more scripted, leaving audiences to wonder--was that set up, or was that for real?  Phoenix, though he may loathe to say it, seems to following in the path of those MTV series "Laguna Beach," "The City," and "The Hills," which purported to follow the lives of the cast members but were in fact scripted to an inscrutable degree.  In such a case, the fictional world spills over into the real world. Just as Phoenix acted oddly on "David Letterman," perhaps while in character, the storyline in the MTV shows was extended to the tabloids, which followed the fictional relationships created on television--and to further blur the line, some of them actually existed.

I'm Still Here may hit theatres and generate lots of publicity, or it may quietly fade like so many other specialty releases. But it reflects an impulse in our society to experience "reality," even if that reality is scripted.