I’m Still Here

Posted 25 October 2010 | Movies

Part 1:

Part 2:

True or false? It almost doesn’t matter since I’m Still Here is a sad-amusing portrait of an actor between gigs. It certainly contains many vignettes worthy of a tell-all showbiz biopic. Watch Joaquin play the imperious movie star, when he shouts, to someone less powerful than he, “I got a million-dollar bank account and you’re makin’ fun of me?” Or when his rapper gig at Miami’s LIV disco ends in disaster and Joaquin stands vomiting over a toilet while his manager thoughtfully holds Joaquin’s tie away from the spew. Even if he’s not in pictures anymore, he still needs to be pampered like a star.

The “truth” is that back in 2008, when Phoenix said he was turning to hip-hop, his acting career was not exactly blooming. After his acclaimed turn as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, he starred in two minor films directed by James Gray and in the 2007 drama Reservation Road (in which his daughter was played by Elle Fanning, who also plays a lead actor’s daughter in Somewhere). In I’m Still Here, he can be heard railing that Reservation Road went nowhere, while the similar Revolutionary Road earned raves and a glut of Oscar nominations. He might have renounced acting, but he still had actor envy.

He didn’t realize that writing and performing hip-hop required craft and showmanship beyond his skills. A neophyte in the genre, he has a musical vision, as he tells actual rapper Mos Def, of “a hip-hop ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ kind of thing.” Securing an audience with Sean “Diddy” Combs, he agonizes over the proper mode of address for the rap mogul (Sean? Puff? Diddy? P? Mr. C.?). All business, when Phoenix asks him what he’d like to hear, Combs snaps back, “Play me a hit.” He tells Phoenix that if — big if — he agrees to a session, a producer’s fee will be involved. Phoenix: “How much you need?” Combs: “How much you got?”

I’m Still Here

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