{"id":2594,"date":"2010-09-18T23:41:20","date_gmt":"2010-09-19T06:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2010\/09\/should-joaquin-phoenix-get-the-james-frey-treatment\/"},"modified":"2010-09-21T10:45:32","modified_gmt":"2010-09-21T17:45:32","slug":"should-joaquin-phoenix-get-the-james-frey-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/18\/should-joaquin-phoenix-get-the-james-frey-treatment\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Joaquin Phoenix get the James Frey treatment?"},"content":{"rendered":"

from SCENEPR!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Casey Affleck \u2013 the New James Frey of Documentaries??<\/h1>\n

Posted on<\/span>\u00a0September 16, 2010<\/span><\/a>\u00a0by<\/span>\u00a0Jessica Lee<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>In a\u00a0 recent\u00a0New York Times<\/a>\u00a0interview, Cassey Affleck admitted that almost all of his new movie \u201cI\u2019m Still Here,\u201d including Joaquin Phoenix\u2019s appearance on Letterman in 2009, was a staged performance.<\/p>\n

In the interview, Affleck calls Phoenix\u2019s act \u201c\u2026. the performance of his career.\u201d\u00a0 For two years, Phoenix embodied a caricature of himself as scraggly bearded, drug-addled, incoherent,\u00a0 actor pursuing delusions of a rap career. The \u201cmockumentary\u201d\u00a0 was released last week by Magnolia Pictures to scathing reviews by a number of critics. Roger Ebert wrote that the film was \u201ca sad and painful documentary that serves little useful purpose other than to pound another nail into the coffin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Affleck discloses to the newspaper that not even the opening shots, supposedly of Mr. Phoenix and his siblings swimming in a water hole in Panama, was real. Those opening shots were taken in in Hawaii with actors, then run back and forth on top of an old videocassette recording of \u201cParis, Texas\u201d to degrade the images.<\/p>\n

Like Mr. Frey, who played his readers\u00a0 \u2013 most damagingly Oprah \u2013 for a fool, Mr. Affleck dupes his viewers (many of them who saw the film prior to this articles publication), adding contrived details to enhance his story. Again, a major public figure is injured in the process. This time the victim was David Letterman who was not in on the joke when Mr. Phoenix showed up on his show as a man who\u2019d lost his marbles who happened to be an actor.\u00a0 Mr. Letterman concluded: \u201cJoaquin, I\u2019m sorry you couldn\u2019t be here tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Affleck, who is married to Mr. Phoenix\u2019s sister and has been his friend for almost 20 years, claims he wanted audiences to appreciate the films message about the disintegration of celebrity authentically.<\/p>\n

Affleck claims that as the film progresses, subtle cues were supposed to provide hints of his real intention. Scenes in which Mr. Phoenix appears to snort drugs, consort with hookers, and display violent behavior used actors and required several takes.<\/p>\n

Whatever, their intentions, the viewer never gets a disclaimer. Nothing ever confirms or denies the truth of what you are watching.\u00a0 Unlike Borat and its ilk, where the audience (if not the participants) are always in on the joke, the audience might be duped by these shenanigans. Phoenix, one of five children of a hippie family, embodied a persona that could very possibly dissolve into the bizarre. It\u2019s all very possible.<\/p>\n

Joaquin Phoenix is set to make another appearance on the David Letterman Show on September 22nd, 2010. What do you think \u2013 should he get the the James Frey treatment? Will you still go see the film?<\/h3>\n

[ click to read at scenepr.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from SCENEPR! Casey Affleck \u2013 the New James Frey of Documentaries?? Posted on\u00a0September 16, 2010\u00a0by\u00a0Jessica Lee   In a\u00a0 recent\u00a0New York Times\u00a0interview, Cassey Affleck admitted that almost all of his new movie \u201cI\u2019m Still Here,\u201d including Joaquin Phoenix\u2019s appearance on Letterman in 2009, was a staged performance. In the interview, Affleck calls Phoenix\u2019s act \u201c\u2026. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}