I know a lot of people believed that Joaquin Phoenix was putting us on when he embarked on that strange rap career, complete with crazy hair, a overgrown beard, incoherent mumbling, and no skill at rapping whatsoever. I was pretty convinced that it was real though. It all started in November, 2008, when an unkempt Joaquin was doing the press tour for Two Lovers and announced his retirement from acting. He even showed up on the red carpet with the words “Bye” and “Good” written on his hands in the wrong order. Around January of last year it came out that Joaquin’s friend, Casey Affleck, was going to make a documentary of Joaquin’s music career and that he was supposedly serious about his rapping.

Then in February of 2009, Phoenix had an interview on Letterman that went down in history as one of the worst ever. He just sat there and barely said anything, at one point sticking his chewing gum under Letterman’s desk. It was incredibly convincing and I thought that Phoenix was either on drugs, suffering from mental illness, or a little of both. People pointed out that he’s an actor, though, and that this whole thing could be performance art. If it was all a hoax, the guy had many people, including former costar Gwyneth Paltrow, and his last director, convinced.

For a while Phoenix disappeared from public and I even got concerned about him and wondered if he was ok . In August there was a sighting of a still-wacky Phoenix at a clothing store in LA, but that was the only news we heard about him in months.

Then, in January of this year, Phoenix made a clean cut and completely sober-looking appearance in a charity video. He seemed back to his old self again and it was kind of amazing after all we’d seen of him over the past year. So was it all an Andy Kaufman-esque elaborate scheme? Was Phoenix genuinely mentally ill and/or on drugs and did he finally get some medical intervention or detox? All these questions might be answered with the upcoming release of Casey’s documentary, or they might not. Casey is shopping the film around now and there’s real interest in it. Sellers are working to keep the story as secret as possible:

Casey Affleck has completed that much-talked about and long-awaited mockumentary he directed about his brother-in-law Joaquin Phoenix’s eccentric metamorphosis from actor to hip-hop musician (or so we’ve been led to believe). I’m told that the film made its debut in a private lunchtime screening at WME headquarters last week for buyers — including Harvey Weinstein — who were sworn to secrecy. WME is selling the film, and it may only take a couple of days to reach a deal. I hear the agency and the distributors intend to keep the mock’s content under wraps for as long as they can for maximum shock value. (So it won’t be part WME Global’s sales push at the Cannes Film Festival.) Presumably, the film answers Hollywood’s bewilderment about whether Joachin was serious about quitting acting — or whether he was just, well, acting. His long months of bizarre behavior culminated in his semi-mute interview with David Letterman that was as surreal as anything Andy Kaufman ever did. And, his musical debut at the Las Vegas night club LAVO where he claimed to be a homeless rapper, jumped around the stage, and fell off.

[From Deadline]

Whatever happened to Joaquin, I’m just glad he’s ok now and that this all has a happy ending. I’m also incredibly interested in seeing this documentary. It could be fascinating. Even with the news of this film, I don’t think that it was all an act and believe that Joaquin had some serious issues at the time. Casey just seemed too flustered to me in the brief red carpet interview where he confirmed Joaquin’s retirement. Maybe these guys planned it all out though and were able to pull a huge hoax on the media. Or maybe they tried to play it off as a hoax and got sucked into the game. I hope we find out.