14 DAY TRIAL // “I’m Still Here,” the Casey Affleck-directed faux documentary of Joaquin Phoenix’s attempt at making a career as a rapper is now out and, while many are saying he would have needed counseling if all of it were true, Affleck says no one cared when they were still making it.
That Phoenix was only putting on a “performance act” emerged days ago, when the director admitted that the actor never really intended to quit the movie industry.
However, until he came out with the admission, doubt plagued even those closest to Joaquin, media representatives and actors who had once worked with him.
Even movie critics said of the film shortly after release that it was “disturbing” to see, which could make one believe many had voiced the same concern while they were still shooting for it.
Far from it, Casey says in a new interview cited by E! Online. While he and Joaquin were still working on the film, people were happy just to mock the actor – never bothering to worry about him.
“Ya know, I never did,” Affleck says when asked if he ever received calls from “concerned parties” about how Joaquin was tossing his life away by embarking on such an unfeasible new project.
“Afterward, the movie comes out, the critics liked to say, ‘This is crazy, this is disturbing, this is sick and we should be worried about him.’ But while it was happening, people were happy just to mock him,” the director explains.
As for the is-it-or-is-it-not-a-hoax controversy, Affleck says he never imagined “I’m Still Here” as a hoax, but admits that he did want people to believe it was all true, because that would have made the experience more real.
“I wanted them to think it was real while they were watching it. But I assumed, when it was over, they would understand that it wasn’t real,” the director explains.
In the end, what Affleck and Phoenix set out to accomplish with the film was what any other movie also aims for: pure escapism by suspending disbelief.
“We just wanted to make a movie that would help people kind of suspend their disbelief. They could go to the theater; they could experience it – sort of wonder whether it was real or not,” Affleck says.
“It’s not a documentary, because all the people in the movie are acting... A social experiment, if you want to call it that. I would call it a, uh, movie,” the director underlines.