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I didn’t think it was going to get much better than Joaquin Phoenix buying a velvet cape and rapping in a dressing room, but since I first reported Casey Affleck shopping around his documentary last week, some additional details have emerged. All I can say is, “Holy crap.” And I do mean that semi-literally, because human feces appears to be involved. Pop a squat on my chest, LA Times:
While some were apparently interested in bidding for “I’m Still Here: The Lost Year of Joaquin Phoenix‘s” distribution rights, the shoppers left the screening perhaps even more mystified by Phoenix’s behavior than when they walked in.
It’s far from the Joaquin Phoenix you’re used to seeing onscreen: snorting cocaine, ordering call girls, having oral sex with a publicist, treating his assistants abusively and rapping badly.
Several buyers said the film overflowed with Hollywood debauchery, including more male frontal nudity than you’d find in some gay porn films and a stomach-turning sequence in which someone feuding with Phoenix defecates on the actor while he’s asleep.
Wow. I’m not thrilled about the pretentious is-it-real-or-is-it-not open narrative (it can be done, but a lot of the time it just feels like a lazy director couldn’t choose a take on the material, a la JCVD), but also keep in mind that this confusion is being expressed by Hollywood people, who couldn’t recognize brilliance if it crapped on their chest while they were sleeping. Am I saying I think this is going to be good? No. I don’t know. But I think a Cleveland Steamer scene, oral sex, and cocaine will sure help the medicine go down. I guess I’m just old fashioned like that.
