Big Surprise: 'I'm Still Here' Staged... At Least Partially

Casey Affleck has let slip that at least parts of the documentary he's been working on, I'm Still Here, detailing the career change of his brother-in-law Joaquin Phoenix, may have been "an act." Phoenix announced early last year that he was giving up acting in favor of becoming a full-time rapper, and the younger Affleck was somehow able to take time off from his own acting career in order to direct a documentary on the transition.

CinemaBlend is reporting that Affleck has stated, “The role that [Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs] played in Joaquin's life was to be the bearer of bad news. He was the hammer that crushed the dream. All of that is a little bit of an act.”

It seems pretty telling to me that he refers to a real-life person appearing in a purported documentary as a "role." Casey also says, though, "I can tell you there is no hoax. It makes me think of Candid Camera or something...” So apparently it's not a hoax, it's just a contrived scenario that was staged in order to trick people into thinking that it's real, while Affleck's cameras capture it all for an audience's amusement. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's getting awfully close to the definition of "hoax."

I'm personally of the opinion that at this point, the less we know about this movie, the better. Everybody has been pretty universally assuming that the whole thing was a ruse on Phoenix's part from the start, but he's done an amazing job of not breaking character thus far, so I say let's let him run with it. Learning that at least some parts of the documentary were staged doesn't shock me, to say the least, but from what I've seen of the trailer, it seems to me this movie can only be all the more enjoyable if you allow yourself to accept it as real.

I'm Still Here: The Lost Year of Joaquin Phoenix is set to open in the US in limited release this Friday, September 10.