Yesterday a date was announced for Casey Affleck’s “documentary” about the career turns of his brother-in-law, Joaquin Phoenix. You know, the supremely talented actor who gave up acting for a hip-hop “career.” I use quotation marks because it has been hard to tell whether Phoenix’s strange change of heart was genuine, whether he had gone insane, or whether it was just an extreme example of performance art. This is not a psychology blog, so we will have to assume for the purposes of this post that Phoenix has some grip on reality. Two possibilities that come to mind:
1). Phoenix is so established as an actor that he feels he can do whatever he wants, or
2). He really has taken his acting to another level, and is introducing himself in a somewhat shocking, avant-garde way. He has not been shy about publicizing his moves, as you can see in the Letterman clip above. If Affleck is looking for a career as a director, he is taking a big risk by starting with a film this controversial.
Is it wrong to marginalize this all as a publicity stunt when there might be actual human dreams and aspirations involved? Maybe. Either way, Affleck and Phoenix have certainly made a lot of people curious about their next moves.
So what do you think? Is this all a publicity stunt? Is it worth the potential damage to their careers?
