By now you’ve heard that Joaquin Phoenix’s rap career and accompanying movie about that career was nothing but a big hoax. He still hasn’t really explained what the point of it was, though the mockumentary I’m Still Here would seem to suggest that he was somehow trying to make fun of his fans for liking him and the media for giving him free publicity. But whatever his goal was the movie didn’t accomplish much. All the nearly 2 years of fake Joaquin Phoenix really gave us that was in any way worthwhile was that one, truly hilarious, Letterman appearance.
Last night Phoenix returned to The Late Show with David Letterman for the first time since his bearded crash and burn a year and a half ago. This time he showed up shaved and, well, normal to tell everyone that the whole thing was just a character, he’s not a psycho, and really you can trust him to handle actual movie roles again. The joke was on you.
In case you missed it, here’s some of last night’s Late Show appearance:
There had been rumors that Dave was in on the joke the whole time, so it’s nice to see that cleared up. Both he and Joaquin make it pretty clear in the video that Letterman wasn’t told ahead of time what was up. That doesn’t mean he hadn’t half figured it out though, by the time the interview was over. Dave’s just good.
He makes an interesting point about royalties though. Shouldn’t they pay him? A huge portion of that interview is in the movie, heck in a pretty boring movie it’s the best part of it. Dave was probably joking about collecting, but I’d say Affleck and Phoenix really do owe him some money.
In case you missed it the first time around, here’s the original 2009 Letterman interview:
