Joaquin Phoenix Might Be Acting

If you’re a big star in Hollywood having a giant mental meltdown isn’t exactly earth shattering news.  Like they say, the bigger the star the brighter it burns.  Naturally, it’s the media’s job to watch that star explode and sizzle into nothingness because what else do we have to do?  Apparently, Joaquin Phoenix might have caught wind of this trend.

After Phoenix announced his retirement from acting people assumed it might have been a joke.  Then he took the stage in Las Vegas and performed his act in front of a crowd.  It was a stumbling, bumbling lackluster performance to say the least.  And once it was over Phoenix fell off the sage and into the crowd.

Now it appears his apparent decent into madness might actually be a huge hoax or as I like to look at it, true method acting.  Especially now that we know Joaquin’s brother-in-law, actor/filmmaker Casey Affleck is making a film documenting Phoenix’s career change.

According to Cinematical:

But now everyone is getting in on the fun, and there is a fake MySpace page with ‘demos’ and the competition is heating up to see who can solve the mystery first. But for those of us who still might be worried that Phoenix has lost it, you might feel better knowing EW’s source was also quoted as saying “It’s an art project for him. He’s going full out. He probably has told his reps that he’s quit acting. Joaquin is very smart. This is very conscious. He has a huge degree of control.”

Honestly, regardless if Phoenix is actually doing this as some sort of elaborate ruse in order to get people riled up for the film and not seriously pursing a career as a hip hop artist I’ll still be amused.  It takes a lot of moxie to put your integrity as an artist on the line and just fall apart in front of millions of people.

Then again, it’s actually sort of brilliant because there’s nothing the public loves more than watching someone go bonkers and then get put back together at some later date and time.  This sounds remarkably like the story of Britney Spears so I guess we’ll have to see where exactly Joaquin Phoenix goes with this one.  Hopefully, it’ll include getting really wasted and falling off more stages.