The 9 Most Unsettling Things About Joaquin Phoenix's Mock-Documentary, I'm Still Here

Weird Sex

At one point, Phoenix hires two prostitutes to visit him, but in this onanistic boys club, there's no a whole lot of room for women. His assignation with the hookers is mercifully brief but memorably weird, as Phoenix appears to snort coke off one's breast before suckling at it.

A cameo appearance by Newsweek's controversial Ramin Setoodeh

Remember Ramin Setoodeh, the Newsweek writer who infamously posited that openly gay actors aren't convincing when they play straight, then failed upward into a job at People magazine? He appears in I'm Still Here (tagged only with the dehumanizing chyron "Journalist") while conducting a one-on-one interview with Phoenix during the press junket to promote Phoenix's last film, Two Lovers, and Phoenix rips into him when Setoodeh tries to pass the buck on a particularly aggressive question by prefacing it with "Some people say..." Seethes the actor, "It's hard not to get offended when you sit there with your smile."

Phoenix gets pooped on

You know the movie maxim that if you see a gun in the first act, it's going to go off in the third? Let's update that for the I'm Still Here era: If Joaquin Phoenix spends the entire movie berating his assistant Anton with threats to poop on the man's face, then in the third act, Anton will seek revenge by beating his boss to the face-defecating punch. Oh yes. That happens.

Phoenix vomits continuously in one epic take

You can't go on a long, nationally televised bender without a little time praying to the porcelain gods, and when Phoenix finally does upchuck, it's an epic gross-out moment that never ends, as though he's throwing up his very soul. (Fortunately, he then goes on to experience shirtless "rebirth" in a Panamanian river as the camera follows him from behind in a sustained long take that makes I'm Still Here look like the world's most bloated first-person shooter).

Drug use

Surely you've been there: You're at a party enjoying yourself and suddenly you're confronted by the most high-as-a-kite person there, who somehow gets you into a corner and won't stop talking. Imagine being unable to wriggle yourself out of the conversation for two hours, and you've got I'm Still Here. Phoenix is constantly stoned or high or cutting coke on camera, and considering that he's a recovering alcoholic and Affleck is his brother-in-law, it's a little weird that his antics are filmed so comprehensively and edited together for maximum comic impact. Then again, for the entirety of I'm Still Here, you may be wondering why any of this exists -- didn't we already see the movie as it essentially played out last year on blogs, in newspapers, and on David Letterman? Consider this film the behind-the-scenes DVD extra, for those rare and masochistic few who followed Phoenix's crazy trip and still, somehow, wanted more.

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