James Gray, who directed Two Lovers and is also close to Phoenix personally, told ABC News Radio, "if it's an act, it's the most committed act I've ever seen in my life."

"I mean, he built this studio [in his house]. The lengths to which he's taken it are quite extreme."

"Toward the end of the shoot, he kept saying 'Oh I'm so tired, I'm so tired.' You hear that kind of thing and you think it's a joke," he said. "I just ignored it."

Gray said Phoenix got into rap after Gray played the actor some unspecified recording relating to his own teenaged freestyling. "He said, 'I want to do that, I want to steal from that."

Now Gray feels guilty, because Phoenix quit acting. "I feel like I've ruined Joaquin Phoenix for the world."

More worrisome than Phoenix's career switch is the possibility that he's gone off the deep end. Maybe he did so intending it to be part of a hoax, maybe not. But if he's drowning does it really matter?

(Counter theory: It's just a hoax and Gray, who by his own admission is Phoenix's buddy, is in on the whole thing.)

The man in question is Phoenix's Two Lovers director, James Gray, who we once sympathized with—after all, the film's publicity tour has become a circus of late adopters who just watched Letterman and don't realize that this rapping enterprise is so hoaxy, it could have been brainstormed in a committee made of Rosie Ruiz, the Nigerian email scammers, and the Backwards "B" Girl.

Now, though, Gray is telling ABC about fears that he set off Phoenix's "rap career" by asking him to freestyle poorly in Two Lovers:

"That rap thing ... in the movie actually comes from something I played for him," Gray said. "I had an obsession with doing that sort of thing as a teenager. ... It turns out that Joaquin is imitating me in a lot of the movie. He said, 'I want to do that, I want to steal from that, I want to do the rap that you used to do.' I said, 'OK.'

"And now I'm seeing him do this thing, and I feel like I've ruined Joaquin Phoenix for the world," Gray added. "I don't want to be the guy that destroyed Joaquin Phoenix's acting career." [...]

Gray saw Phoenix Wednesday night, after the star taped his appearance on "The Late Show," but before it aired. Gray asked how the interview went.

"He said 'Oh it was good, it was really good," Gray said. "I watched it this morning ... I don't know what to say."

How about: made up, made up, it was made up, it was made up. But at least he'll get an US Weekly cover sidebar out of it!

• Director: I Feel I Ruined Joaquin Phoenix [ABC]

James Gray has collaborated with Phoenix on three films, and his latest, Two Lovers, is purported to be Phoenix's last EXCEPT FOR THIS HOAX MOVIE HE IS FILMING WITH CASEY AFFLECK IN WHICH HE IS CLEARLY ACTING AND WE'RE ALL CLEAR ON THAT, RIGHT? In a Huffington Post essay published today, Gray charitably describes the actor as "mercurial" (of their first film together, he notes, "I seem to remember a whole lot of torment and angst and yelling and screaming"), then recounts Phoenix's gonzo performing on the set of We Own the Night:

We worked night and day, rehearsing and discussing. Sometimes it would lead to horrible arguments — often my fault! I'm no diplomat — but in my (weak) defense, there were times I couldn't distinguish with whom I was speaking. Was it character or actor? This time, he went in, and he went in deep. Okay, you want me to see my father dead, in the street? Well then, I might vomit for real (he did); you want me to be terrified of that man? Go 'head, have him belt me, right in the face (he got walloped, but good); you want me to swallow that charcoal? Force it down my throat, man (he inhaled, with relish).

Now, Phoenix has kindly returned the favor, asking America to open its mouth while he shoves a hard, unwanted vanity project down our gullets. Expect a middling aftertaste, for it is half-baked.

• Joaquin Phoenix Retires [HuffPo]