That wonderful human ability of turning something truly dreadful into something truly dreadful that you can also laugh at! When Joaquin Phoenix personified bipolar depression on his last visit to David Letterman we all (most of us anyway) felt truly sorry for him; this was obviously a man who had
a) stepped off the lithium way to soon
b) stepped up on other types of drugs way too often
c) suffered severe brain damage and murdered his stylist AND his agent in a fit of rage several weeks before the visit to the the show and most likely spent those weeks living in a barrel full of fish
It was truly excruciating watching that appearance, truly and utterly horrendous, in a way similar to witnessing a car accident and being unable to stop looking.
I mean, we love Joaquin. Not even talking about his gift for acting, we love his shy, akward but indie-handsome appearance, his seemingly no bullshit-approach to celebrity status and the fact that he was named "Leaf" as a child but switched to the much more manageable WAA-KIIN before going to Hollywood.
The simple fact that you seldom even look at him as River Phoenix younger brother is a testament to that rugged and rare charisma of his. He stepped out of the shadow of a dead legend with the same ease that Eddie Murphy got boring.
No one, I say no one, could have dropped the "Yeah man! Snuff 2 - the resurrection!" line in seriously flawed Nicolas Cage-flick "8 millimeter" better than Joaquin Phoenix. He even pulled of Johnny Cash in a way similar to Peter Jackson making "Lord of the Rings" work despite a zillion hardcore fans having impossible expectations on the movie. We want Joaquin to do good, even if that means him going postal and deciding to be a rapper all of a sudden - even if that decision is a pr scam - because we feel that he is, real.
Thats why it hurts. It hurts, watching him being ridiculed in front of millions of people on Late Night, it hurts to think of the humiliation and the damage done to his career on that evening.
And thats why clips like this makes being a human a little more bearable. Because at the end of the day we cant help Joaquin - we dont even know him - and Joaquin doesnt need our help any more than he needs our gossiping on the reasons for his horrible Letterman-performance. A mans sickness is on display for all of us small people to see and that is in itself more sickening than Letterman taking advantage of the situation for the sake of a few cheap laughs. Its all a depressing mess really, the cold, cynical essence of our cultural obsession with celebrities.
But! Enjoy this clip, the raw comedy of it, and we are suddenly all winners. We turn sadness into joy with a few strokes of youtubing, effectively creating a distance to real life - the real life where people get clinically depressed - thus enriching our own pitty existences by having something to show to our friends the next time we see them. Forget about responsibility, humanism, you just gotta see this!
Credit to the originator of the video of course, and even more credit to Joaquin Phoenix, who is not a real person any more than we are all real people watching a person who is not real to us. Keeping it real, in mediaworld.
And lets all hope for that resurrection to Joaquin Phoenix acting career. I would even watch him portray Letterman.
a) stepped off the lithium way to soon
b) stepped up on other types of drugs way too often
c) suffered severe brain damage and murdered his stylist AND his agent in a fit of rage several weeks before the visit to the the show and most likely spent those weeks living in a barrel full of fish
It was truly excruciating watching that appearance, truly and utterly horrendous, in a way similar to witnessing a car accident and being unable to stop looking.
I mean, we love Joaquin. Not even talking about his gift for acting, we love his shy, akward but indie-handsome appearance, his seemingly no bullshit-approach to celebrity status and the fact that he was named "Leaf" as a child but switched to the much more manageable WAA-KIIN before going to Hollywood.
The simple fact that you seldom even look at him as River Phoenix younger brother is a testament to that rugged and rare charisma of his. He stepped out of the shadow of a dead legend with the same ease that Eddie Murphy got boring.
No one, I say no one, could have dropped the "Yeah man! Snuff 2 - the resurrection!" line in seriously flawed Nicolas Cage-flick "8 millimeter" better than Joaquin Phoenix. He even pulled of Johnny Cash in a way similar to Peter Jackson making "Lord of the Rings" work despite a zillion hardcore fans having impossible expectations on the movie. We want Joaquin to do good, even if that means him going postal and deciding to be a rapper all of a sudden - even if that decision is a pr scam - because we feel that he is, real.
Thats why it hurts. It hurts, watching him being ridiculed in front of millions of people on Late Night, it hurts to think of the humiliation and the damage done to his career on that evening.
And thats why clips like this makes being a human a little more bearable. Because at the end of the day we cant help Joaquin - we dont even know him - and Joaquin doesnt need our help any more than he needs our gossiping on the reasons for his horrible Letterman-performance. A mans sickness is on display for all of us small people to see and that is in itself more sickening than Letterman taking advantage of the situation for the sake of a few cheap laughs. Its all a depressing mess really, the cold, cynical essence of our cultural obsession with celebrities.
But! Enjoy this clip, the raw comedy of it, and we are suddenly all winners. We turn sadness into joy with a few strokes of youtubing, effectively creating a distance to real life - the real life where people get clinically depressed - thus enriching our own pitty existences by having something to show to our friends the next time we see them. Forget about responsibility, humanism, you just gotta see this!
Credit to the originator of the video of course, and even more credit to Joaquin Phoenix, who is not a real person any more than we are all real people watching a person who is not real to us. Keeping it real, in mediaworld.
And lets all hope for that resurrection to Joaquin Phoenix acting career. I would even watch him portray Letterman.
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