I'm Still Here staring Joaquin Phoenix as himself is, a challenging piece of cinema. The film itself is not particularly enjoyable to watch, although people who have spent time in the film industry will find certain cliches funny and ironic. I definitely classify it as a film and not a documentary or mockumentary- it feels like a movie and is portrayed like a movie- it employs absolutely no techniques customary to the documentary genre- interviews, facts, the filmmakers point of view. Instead the point remains vague and the director, Casey Affleck, is never featured as the documentarian, but only as himself, an actor who is Phoenix's brother in law, and is briefly in a play that claims to be Phoenix's final performance. To go down the avenue of "Is this film real? Or what specific parts are real?" is a waste of time. The film, the marketing, the PR, the cast / crew,  makes no allusion to it being real, therefore it is a fictitious film. There is one too many camera angles during important scenes, that are just a little bit too well shot.

The plot is minimal and meandering- the Phoenix character abandons his acting career to take up a new career as a rapper who goes by the name J.P. The story is set against Phoenixes apparent personal meltdown. He is portrayed as an insecure, narcissistically deluded and depressed whiner who is too self obsessed with his "new dream" to decipher the reality of the life he finds himself in. There is no way Phoenix is this out of touch and crazy- and it is this reason I'm Still Here is pure fiction. My disbelief is not suspended that someone as talented and seemingly soulful as Phoenix is really this one dimensional in real life.

If the filmmaker had wanted to make something brilliant- that the public really couldn't decipher reality from fiction-  perhaps they would have leaked various clips on the internet from different fictitious or real individuals. They would have used social media channels to create credibility behind the myth. Then, in culmination, the filmmakers (or a fictitious fan) perhaps would have assembled a collage of the leaked clips. But, instead, they presented a well produced and edited film with pretty titles and a nice poster. The film is, whether intentional or not, a nice dissection of reality admits the backdrop of the modern age- cinema, video games, documentaries with agendas, camera phones, viral videos, paparazzi, staged shock value at Super Bowls, and celebrity obsession- theatre!

The film is about, the absurdity of celebrity lifestyles and the financial machine that is the mainstream film / music industry. Perhaps the film's main point is a jab at musicians who make terrible actors and should never swap the mic for the screen but do only because their celebrity allows them. If this be the primary point, the antagonist is really the P. Diddy character, who J.P. is obsessed with getting to produce his album. The film follows J.P. as he has an extremely hard time meeting Diddy in person. When they do finally meet in a hotel room, the Diddy character is skeptical and repeatedly asks: "If you're gonna do this [rap career], are you gonna really do it? Do you got the money you gotta spend in order to do it?" The main point of the film is then summed up in a climax scene where J.P. is finally at Diddy's studio and plays his rap songs on cd for the hip-hop mogul. Diddy is clearly not impressed and quickly says "Nah turn that off, I don't need to hear anymore of that." Eagerly J.P. asks "So what's next? Are you gonna start working on my tracks?" Diddy responds "No way. You're not good enough yet to work with me as a producer!" Diddy is straight forward and sincere as he encourages J.P. to keep working on his music and that anything is possible if you want something  enough. With this scene it is as though the filmmakers are pleading with the film industry "Next time a 50 Cent or Jennifer Lopez wants to act in a movie, please tell them 'no, you're not ready yet!' instead of saying yes and polluting the screens and jacking up the budgets that should be available for actually talented actors!"

A couple weeks ago, back when we were on day 50 or so of the Deepwater Oil Spill I designed this graphic and wrote an article called I ♥ Oil the title is pretty self explanatory and the article elaborates my thoughts on the the best solution for the problem. 

I plan to migrate my blog posts to this style of "blog-o-zine" designed articles in the near future. I was tremendously inspired by Dustin Curtis and how he does this on his site.