It’s fair to say that Joaquin Phoenix is either a) playing an elaborate hoax on the world or b) a ludicrous whackjob.
Which one is it? Nobody can say, although it’s almost definitely the first one. So far, Joaquin Phoenix has quit acting for hip-hop, let Casey Affleck make a documentary about it, fallen offstage during a show – and now he’s just done a berserk, incomprehensible interview on Letterman too.
Of course, if this is all a hoax, we’re sure that it’ll have a very important point. Right now we’d guess that the point is ‘Joaquin Phoenix is a turd’.
He can deny it until he’s blue in the face – not that you’d be able to tell anyway, what with his matted hair, manky sunglasses and wolfman beard – but if Joaquin Phoenix’s new rap career doesn’t turn out to be a great big prank, then we’ll put a wasp up our bum on the internet.
True, when Joaquin Phoenix quit acting we were momentarily fooled. When he wrote ‘Bye! Good’ on his knuckles to prove that he was serious, we believed him a little less. When he announced that he was going to become a professional rapper under the tutelage of Diddy while Ben Affleck‘s little brother filmed it all for a documentary, we believed him a little less still. And then when Joaquin Phoenix fell off the stage during his first-ever show, we started to think that something might be afoot.
And now this. Last night Joaquin Phoenix appeared on David Letterman in full lunatic get-up and proceeded to babble and snarl his way through an interview which was just one high-kick away from entering legendary Crispin Glover status. Here’s the video…
So what do you make of that? Is Joaquin Phoenix really that weird, or is it all just part of an increasingly tedious prank to prove his brand new revelation that some celebrities are self-obsessed and the media often enjoys kicking people when they’re down?
Judging by the video, we’d go with the latter. The interview is littered with little touches that suggest Joaquin’s only playing at being mental – like not being able to remember that his new movie is based on a story by Dostoevsky, and the moment near the end where he involuntarily grins at David Letterman’s “I’m sorry you couldn’t be with us tonight” quip before doubling down on his rubbish Sean Penn I Am Sam twitchface to compensate.
So let’s just assume that Joaquin Phoenix is pulling our leg and this is part of one long, utterly directionless, fairly unfunny episode of Punk’d. And if it is, we’ll never be so pleased to see Ashton Kutcher emerge at the end of it. We might even control our compulsive urge to throw things at his stupid face when he does.
No, that’s going too far. We’ll never lose that urge. Never.
Tom J says
The only thing that could make this hilarious hoax any funnier would be finding out that it really is the effects of a crippling mental illness.