I’m Still Here

I’m Still Here

108 Minutes

I wouldn’t exactly call it a privilege, but the other day at Bumbershoot I had the opportunity to witness a private, acoustic performance from Courtney Love. Rather than fill the time playing music, Love spent most of the “performance” spewing a stream of consciousness that touched on designer clothes, Kurt Cobain’s penis, her proficiency for giving blow jobs, the people who owed her money and some other nonsense. I am not sure I’ve ever encountered a person as out of touch with reality and self-enveloped as Love. Two days later I witnessed I’m Still Here, a documentary about Joaquin Phoenix’s “Lost Year” and Ms. Love immediately found herself quite the rival.

The film chronicles Phoenix’s “retirement” from acting to pursue a hip hop career. Along the way he puts on about 40 pounds, canoodles with hookers, does shitloads of drugs and devolves into an incoherent, petulant child while brother-in-law Casey Affleck documents his descent with a shaky, handheld camera. Like the dark side of Borat, Phoenix and Affleck push both the concepts of celebrity and performance artist to painful limits in I’m Still Here.

Early in the film, Phoenix quits the acting life because he claims he is tired of always performing and losing the real Phoenix somewhere in the process. His true self happens to be a drug-addled, bearded rapper that writes some of the worst rhymes since Shaquille O’Neal tried his hand at the game. But Phoenix and Affleck walk a fine line with the project as they must choose how far they can push their audience before the absurdity of the film overtakes its purported veracity. I am assuming an audience can take a lot since I’m Still Here features vomit, dicks, Puff Daddy and Phoenix carrying on about his desire to sniff buttholes without completely tipping over into farce.

If you look deeply enough, I’m Still Here is an elaborate joke about career suicide. It is precisely why people like Courtney Love and Britney Spears still have fans despite the years of horrific shit they have pumped onto them. Phoenix has “handlers” in the film, two men he routinely abuses and treats as emotional punching bags. The only time he drives himself anywhere results in him crashing his Benz into the curb. But nothing is more telling than the scene where he is carrying on about rap being the only outlet for his true self to come out, all the while gently trapping a bird that has gotten into his studio and then releasing it.

Unfortunately, the “is he or is he not fucking with us” aspect is really the only thing driving the film. Some stretches are dreadfully boring or painful to watch. The camerawork is especially horrific and the audio is so bad, some scenes need to be subtitled. There are many celebrity cameos such as Mos Def, Ben Stiller and Diddy, but whether they are part of the joke or being put upon isn’t really that important. The film culminates with Phoenix’s disastrous interview with David Letterman. It is interesting because we come into that appearance with “context,” giving it more gravitas than if we are just tuning in at night. But since that gravitas is most probably a put-on, it gives the whole thing a new dimension. Unfortunately, meta is no longer the new black.

So where does Phoenix go now? Before the screening, we had to sign a waiver that stated we were not allowed to write about the film until 8pm on September 7th. The screening was held at noon on September 7th. Perhaps this is a sign that Phoenix will continue fucking with us beyond the film. However, by attempting to make a film about the pretensions of being a film star, Phoenix may have actually become even more pretentious. God help the people who believe that all they see is true.

by David Harris