{"id":930,"date":"2010-09-17T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-17T16:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/09\/casey-affleck-comes-clean.html"},"modified":"2010-09-17T09:02:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-17T16:02:00","slug":"casey-affleck-comes-clean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/09\/casey-affleck-comes-clean.html","title":{"rendered":"Casey Affleck Comes Clean"},"content":{"rendered":"

I DON’T think anybody’s terribly surprised. But Casey Affleck just admitted to the New York Times that is bizarre documentary on Joachin Phoenix, I’m Still Here<\/i>, was a piece of performance art.<\/p>\n

From Michael Cieply’s piece<\/a> in today’ NYT:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a>His new movie,<\/i>\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m Still Here,\u201d<\/i><\/a>\u00a0was performance. Almost every bit of it. Including\u00a0<\/i>Joaquin Phoenix<\/i><\/a>\u2019s<\/i>disturbing appearance on David Letterman\u2019s late-night show in 2009<\/i><\/a>, Mr. Affleck said in a candid interview at a cafe here on Thursday morning.<\/i><\/div>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a terrific performance, it\u2019s the performance of his career,\u201d Mr. Affleck said. He was speaking of Mr. Phoenix\u2019s two-year portrayal of himself \u2014 on screen and off \u2014 as a bearded, drug-addled aspiring rap star, who, as Mr. Affleck tells it, put his professional life on the line to star in a bit of \u201cgonzo filmmaking\u201d modeled on the reality-bending journalism of\u00a0<\/i>Hunter S. Thompson<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/div>\n
Of course, the rumors were already swirling that the Phoenix film — which involved the actor-cum-rapper ordering hookers, snorting what seemed to be coke, etc. — was a mockumentary or something Andy Kaufman-esque. When I wrote about Affleck in June — here’s<\/a> my LA Times story — \u00a0I asked him about this directly. Affleck — who I found smart, engaging and sometimes very uncomfortable — seemed a bit offended I would question his motives like that, and answered in his most sincere voice.<\/div>\n
“There’s nothing ‘mock’ about it,” Affleck asserts, adding that speculation has grown “strange and twisted” because of his silence. “It’s just a film about a real man who had a period of his life that was pretty dramatic. In order to make the film I had to reveal certain private things and put them in the\u00a0<\/i><\/span>
proper context. JP feels this will correct certain misperceptions.”<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
Affleck told Cieply:
\u201cI never intended to trick anybody,\u201d said Mr. Affleck, an intense 35-year-old who spoke over a meat-free, cheese-free vegetable sandwich on Thursday. \u201cThe idea of a quote, hoax, unquote, never entered my mind.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Confused? Me, too. But we are talking — after all, folks — about an actor.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I DON’T think anybody’s terribly surprised. But Casey Affleck just admitted to the New York Times that is bizarre documentary on Joachin Phoenix, I’m Still Here, was a piece of performance art. From Michael Cieply’s piece in today’ NYT: His new movie,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m Still Here,\u201d\u00a0was performance. Almost every bit of it. Including\u00a0Joaquin Phoenix\u2019sdisturbing appearance on David […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[230,76,231],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-casey-affleck","7":"category-film","8":"category-joaquin-phoenix","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}