I'm Still Here Trailer: Joaquin Phoenix Took This More Seriously Than You Thought

Did you think Joaquin Phoenix's rap career was a smirky stunt? It may well have been, but now that a trailer's been released for I'm Still Here, the documentary Casey Affleck directed about Phoenix's Hollywood sabbatical, it appears the joke is on us.

Perhaps you expected the trailer to touch on some of the famously described debauchery that's included in the film, including defecation, full frontal nudity, and drug use. Instead, you get a solemn, self-serious teaser devoid of a single wink, a clip that makes Phoenix's sojourn into insanity seem less like a put-on and more of a drag.

"You're on top of the mountain with success," recites the trailer's narrator, "But one day you start sliding down the mountain, and you think 'Wait a minute, I'm a mountaintop waterdrop. I don't belong in this valley, this river, this low dark ocean with all these drops of water.'"

OK, two things: 1) That sounds like a monologue that a Native American would deliver on The X-Files, and 2) Isn't it a little ironic that the "low dark ocean" of the media that Phoenix is supposedly desirous of an escape from -- visualized here by the glare of eternally popping flashbulbs -- was drummed up by his own antics?

VERDICT: But of course I'm still going to see it.