Phoenix Is Hot This Time Of Year

"I'll teach you for not understanding my rap career or my scalp odor!"

We aren’t sure what’s what. Who knows whether Joaquin Phoenix is really that cracked out or if he is building a character for an ultimate role? He could be merely creating buzz for an alternate persona; a weird, pseudo-cultural, pseudo-fringe, desperado-savant. Or he could just be another disconnected doofus who can’t rap.

Maybe Casey Affleck’s documentary on Phoenix will shed some light on these questions. I’m Still Here is an insider’s look (Affleck is married to Summer Phoenix, Joaquin’s sister) at the retired actor-turned-rapper. And it is not flattering. The movie shows Phoenix snorting coke, having a sexual encounter with a publicist, and buying hookers, not to mention what the LA Times called “a stomach-turning sequence in which someone feuding with Phoenix defecates on the actor while he’s asleep.” Add this to his already much-maligned appearance on Letterman, during which Letterman tells Phoenix that he is sorry Phoenix didn’t show up:

Far be it from us to judge an eccentric actor whose childhood trauma included hippie parents and a famous brother who overdosed in a place called The Viper Room. Things were tough. Obviously, mistakes were made. So we can grant him a misguided mulligan. But this reinvention leads us to ask What’s your reinvention? If you could start all over in a new persona, not just a new career, what would your persona be?