Onscreen defecation. Back hair removal. Gay-shaming Newsweek reporter Ramin Setoodeh. Britney Spears's vagina. What do they all have in common? They're all featured in the insane Joaquin Phoenix documentary I'm Still Here, and if you can believe it, there are some things in it that are even weirder. Here are the 9 most unsettling things about the movie:
An obsession with full-frontal nudity
I'm Still Here has more flaccid penises in it than a retirement home production of The Full Monty. Phoenix is practically obsessed with getting the good-looking men in his entourage to show their dicks, and director Casey Affleck is not above, say, showing a naked man climbing out of a bathtub with no context whatsoever. Phoenix himself is the only person in the movie coy about going full frontal, but considering the wrecked physical state he's in, it's probably better that way. Still, there is a little something for audience members who aren't phallically inclined: a lingering picture, presented via YouTube, of Britney Spears's infamous no-panties car exit.
Phoenix family flashbacks
One of the very first things you'll see in I'm Still Here is old, grainy footage of Joaquin Phoenix and his siblings singing on a street corner for money, with River leading the brood on guitar. Also present? His sister Summer, who married Affleck in 2006.
Uncomfortable celebrity cameos
The only thing that keeps I'm Still Here from feeling like a mumblecore movie on coke is the constant wave of celebrity cameos, some of whom must have been in on the joke (like Ben Stiller, who allegedly tries to recruit Phoenix for the role in Greenberg that would eventually go to Rhys Ifans), and some of whom are merely lurched into by Phoenix, his arms stiffly outstretched like a maniacally hugging zombie. The celeb who comes off best is Diddy, who almost seems to be treating the film as a trial run for his self-parodying turn in Get Him to the Greek. Consistently, he zings both Phoenix and Affleck without even breaking a sweat (my favorite moment: when he dismisses Affleck's underseen gem The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford as "kinda wack").
Back hair removal
Admit it: You have always wanted to see Joaquin Phoenix order members of his entourage to cut off unsightly strands of hair that dot his shoulders. Well, you're in luck!
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.