Oh look, there's video! Always seems to be, huh? The Sun, chronicler of the ages, tells us that Casey Affleck, Joaquin's brother-in-law and potential partner in hoaxery, was also in the crowd, filming away for this alleged documentary. The whole thing looks pretty staged—from Phoenix bragging about his millions of dollars in the bank, to the completely unsurprised and calm look on his face as he sets his mic down on the stage and heads into the audience for a bout of fisticuffs.

The audience was eating it up, chanting "Beat him up! Beat him up!", so that must have felt nice for Phoenix. No matter how out-to-lunch on various handfuls of drugs he may be, which Phoenix undoubtedly is, a performer still enjoys, nay requires!, the love of a sweaty, heaving audience. So even if it's a tiresome, indulgent meta joke, we're all at fault for perpetuating what has become an all too real and sad personal history.

Frank Coraci had done the same bit just the night before at the Independent Spirit Awards, Page Six reminds us. Stiller was at the ceremony only via recorded video, since he was in his ill-fated Oscar rehearsals at the time, but would have had time to hear buzz about Coraci's stunt in the intervening day. Stiller kept his impersonation plans secret until he arrived at the theater Sunday, according to Page Six.

Coraci's impersonation (above, NSFW) wasn't as good, but then again he's a director, not an actor. And he was first! Plus the idea of pairing Phoenix with a ranting Christian Bale is inspired. It's not, in the end, surprising that a mainstream actor like Stiller would appropriate and reprocess the idea for a broader audience (video below): That's how his business works, and how the Oscar audience was able to enjoy some biting humor along with all the cheery musicals.

And having invested so much time in being a good guest himself on shows like Saturday Night Live, Baldwin no doubt disdains your disastrous performance on the Late Show the other night.

On the bright side, this is but the first of many times you'll serve as the punch-line for a joke about drugs or TV interviews. Should keep your name out there.

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]

Phoenix ostensibly visited New York on Wednesday to promote his new film Two Lovers, but the movie proved secondary to the faux-enigmatic persona that left the actor muttering nothing in particular between long, awkward silences abetted by David Letterman himself. The results speak for themselves, as did Casey Affleck's camera-wielding appearance at the day's earlier press rounds in New York, which we hear wound up having even less to do with Lovers than Phoenix's hirsute, gum-depositing late-night escapades. So enjoy what promises to be the last of the star's half-assed film interests, at least until Darren Aronofsky digs him out of hiding 20 years from now for a moving, Oscar-ready comeback. We'll be waiting. [CBS]

TMZ and our sister from another, Quaadlude-riddled mother Defamer are heavy on the hoax beat. 'Cause, you know, Casey Affleck is filming a documentary of Phoenix's transition from good if not very well liked actor to his new rapper persona: Old Sergeant MacGruffin', a Civil War soldier who got lost in the Great Smoky Mountains for 140 years. So it must be some sort of mockumentary thing and there will be a big "ha ha" and then Phoenix will go back to being an actor, still as good, probably, and definitely still not very well liked. And I believe that!

But I also believe that there's a current of sincerity in the whole debacle, not really born out of an actual desire to become a rapper, but stemming from a great desire for more and more precious drugs. Phoenix's cataclysm on Letterman last night came freighted with the usual "nervous tics" of people currently on or desperately awaiting their next dance with heroin. And like the junkies on The Wire were always cooking up harebrained schemes to go rob junkyards or drug stashes, a rich smackhead with a lot of time on his hands might decide that it makes complete sense to make some gonzo comedy/art project about being a rapper. And then maybe said golden triangulist might start to buy into the whole act a bit too much, because they're crazy and on drugs all the time. That would explain his highly-focused commitment to the act, even while he's being eviscerated by David Letterman. (Or maybe Letterman was in on it!)

The only thing tough to reconcile is Casey Affleck's involvement. If Phoenix really is on drugs, Affleck is kind of a shitty friend for indulging the whole Rip van Tinkle experience. Hopefully, in defense of a world I like to imagine where Casey Affleck is still a nice boy from Cambridge, Phoenix really is a nut, but sober as can be, who is just now finally showing the effects of growing up in the supremely bizarre way that he did. If that's the case, then godspeed. Just don't do anymore national television. It makes me uncomfortable.

Again, celebrities: Dave doesn't want to rip you to shreds on national television, but if you're not going to help him fill the 10 minutes or whatever, he has no choice.

This particular trainwreck was predictable. The movie star has been generating embarrassing tabloid headlines for weeks with his slurry rap performances, to the point where some of his associates started insisting the whole thing was a joke. Phoenix then had to assure everyone he was serious.

Phoenix also announced that Two Lovers, the film he was sent on Letterman to promote, would be his last, since acting now bores him. So even if he hadn't been behaving erratically, Phoenix was not likely to have brought much enthusiasm to Late Show tonight.

Phoenix certainly knows how to turn on the late-night charm when he wants to; here he is on Letterman on 2005, sounding coherent and humorous (and wearing the same suit!) while promoting Walk the Line:

This time around, Phoenix has either come unhinged again, or wants the world to think he has. It's possible he's engaging in some performance art for the documentary his brother-in-law is making about him. But on Letterman, at least, where Phoenix grew increasingly hostile toward the host and crowd, the celebrity doesn't appear to be doing that sort of cool-headed calculation and planning.

At the end of the interview, Letterman says he owes an apology to Farrah Fawcett. Fawcett was considered his all time most disastrous guest — until now at least. Here's her 1997 appearance:

Best moments from tonight's show are above; the full CBS highlights reel is below:

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]

The Playlist managed to uncover this clip of Phoenix's nascent on-screen rapping from the upcoming Two Lovers (which has already seen its publicity tour devolve into a bullshit-calling festival). In it, Phoenix attempts to woo Jersey girl Gwyneth Paltrow and her friend with a little bit of freestyling that, like its real-life counterpart, ends horribly. Yes, Gwyneth—we, too, began by laughing with Phoenix, but that stinky "WTF" face you make at :07 is the best summation of his new career that we could possibly give. Brava.

• Was 'Two Lovers' Joaquin Phoenix's Hip-Hop Training Wheels? [The Playlist via Vulture]

Phoenix's poor, poor publicist reminded him that he still has one more completed movie to go out there and sell (James Gray's Two Lovers), and so Phoenix has embarked on a press tour that, like his clearly fake rap career, is being filmed by Casey Affleck. Naturally, reporters have about zero interest in Two Lovers and are peppering Phoenix with questions about another cinematic achievement: the video of his terrible, faaaake rap debut in Vegas that was met with rolled eyes from an ahead-of-the-joke internet populace.

"I don't know where that [criticism] comes from," Phoenix said. "If it comes from people that I've had a falling out with, that are (ticked) off at me?" [...]

"There's not a hoax," Phoenix said. "Might I be ridiculous? Might my career in music be laughable? Yeah, that's possible, but that's certainly not my intention." [...]

"It sucks that, yeah, the footage is out there as like this incredibly bad sound, and you literally can't hear what's happening," said Phoenix, who still has his bushy beard. "It was much better in the club, and I don't know who said that people were booing ... because that was not happening.

"Unless, of course, it's a pretty big place, and maybe it was happening," Phoenix added, laughing. "But it was not my experience. My experience afterward was I had a lot of dudes come up and say, `We really respect you for doing it, putting yourself out there, and going with it.' Because I think true hip-hop heads know that it's hard, it's going to be a hard transition, and people are going to be lining up just to make fun of me."

At this point, we're becoming perversely curious to see Affleck's finished film—now that even Phoenix can't make it through an interview without laughing (and yet insists on perpetuating this hoax), his cinematic attempt to lampoon self-involved "pompous actors" takes on new, unintended meaning.

• Joaquin Phoenix Defends Rap Career, Denies Hoax [HuffPo]

In a statement released to MTV News on Wednesday afternoon (January 28), Phoenix rep Susan Patricola said the actor's hip-hop turn is very real and that he's not letting a few naysayers stand in the way of his rap-star dreams.

"The transition from one career to another is never seamless. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Joaquin came from a musical family, in addition to winning a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Johnny Cash," Patricola wrote in an e-mail. "He intends on exploring his musical interests despite speculative, negative or positive reactions."

So, basically: "Yes, this is a hoax, I couldn't talk him out of it, does anyone know if Zac Efron needs a new publicist? I have a lot of ins with Puma and could get him some primo swag, LOL!"

• Joaquin Phoenix Rep Insists Actor's Hip-Hop Career Is Serious [MTV]

Following his widely panned three-song debut as a rapper at a Las Vegas nightclub on Jan. 16 — a shambling performance that concluded with the actor falling off the stage — two competing theories emerged: Either Phoenix is perpetrating an elaborate Andy Kaufman-style hoax (with an assist from his friend and brother-in-law Casey Affleck, who's ostensibly shooting a documentary about his career transition), or he's truly lost his marbles. The truth, it seems, is closer to the former. "He said, 'It's a put-on. I'm going to pretend to have a meltdown and change careers, and Casey is going to film it,'" says one source who recently worked with Phoenix.

Though Phoenix's interest in music is sincere (he earned Oscar and Grammy nominations for his turn as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line and has directed several music videos), with this supposed career reboot he is evidently trying to both lampoon pompous actors and punk the media that covers them. Whatever his motivation or ultimate endgame, don't expect him to break character anytime soon. "It's an art project for him," says a source. "He's going full out. He probably has told his reps that he's quit acting. Joaquin is very smart. This is very conscious. He has a huge degree of control."

Here's the thing, though: can the media that covers Phoenix really be lampooned when they're already calling bullshit on him? And wouldn't the real "pompous actors" be the ones who, like Phoenix, think this vanity project/mockumentary is worth doing anyway? In that sense, then, by lampooning him on a regular basis, perhaps we've come the closest to Phoenix's actual intent. Joaquin, we will accept a "story by" credit under our pen name, D. Famer. As for compensation, please just stop.

• Joaquin Phoenix's rap career: An elaborate hoax? [EW]

Not only do we have video footage of Phoenix's victorious post-rap aftermath (bouncing up and down and falling off the stage in what may have been a Pogo Ball accident gone wrong), but Gatecrasher brings word that concertgoers were treated to far more of Phoenix's nether regions than they'd anticipated thanks to an eye-level wardrobe malfunction. Page Six has its own backstage account, which details a feud that erupted when the faux shenanigans were in danger of delay:

"He was waiting for Casey Affleck" - who's directing a documentary about Phoenix's venture - "and when the film crew arrived late, Joaquin flipped out," said our insider. The spy said Phoenix yelled at the crew, "Thanks for being late and [bleep]ing everything up." He then threw a CD on the floor and stormed out. "He came back five minutes later and did the sound check," said the source, who added, "Nobody can tell if he is for real or if this is all a big joke."

Oh really?

• PHOENIX FLIP-OUT [Page Six]

• At hubby's 'Spread,' Demi Moore plays Ashton Kutcher-Kutcher-koo [Gatecrasher]

First of all, some background: as we know all too well at this point, Joaquin Phoenix has grown out a beard and is pursuing a stunty fake career as a rap singer for what is clearly, clearly a mockumentary directed by Casey Affleck.

Also, your associate editor was inebriated at the party where he snapped this picture.

Anyway, let's try to figure this thing out.

REASONS WHY IT COULD BE JOAQUIN PHOENIX:

· Phoenix had a high-profile rap performance in Vegas on Friday (pictured at left). That's close enough to Park City!

· The beard growth is about the same on both d-bags. The blond wig on the Sundance d-bag (which threw us off) is clearly fake.

· Seriously, the Sundance idiot was so douchey that he approached self-parody (which is apparently Joaquin's new vocation). He was dancing like a loon and had oven mitts on his hands, for God's sake.

· The build (including the slightly bulging tummy) is about the same.

REASONS WHY IT MAY NOT BE JOAQUIN PHOENIX:

· It was at the Queer Lounge kickoff party? Which is not to say that New, Awful Joaquin is gay-unfriendly (though he is a rapper now), or that he's unaware of the fact that gays throw the best parties. But still, something to note.

· The Queer Lounge people we've talked to don't know a thing about it. Casey Affleck wasn't there and neither were any cameras (as far as we could tell).

· Though we're currently well-insulated in a Sundance bubble, we haven't heard any other news reports that place Joaquin at the festival.

· Actual Joaquin appears to have a more sizable soul patch and different nose (though the angle and iPhone camera could account for the differences).

THE VERDICT:

Hollywood is filled with douchebags.

Casey Affleck will track the musical career of Joaquin Phoenix behind the lens of a camera.

Affleck is directing a documentary feature on Phoenix, his friend and fellow actor who last spring decided to swap the thespian business for a musical one.

Phoenix is embarking on a new path as a rapper, with an album to be produced by Sean Combs. He is scheduled to make his first public performance Friday at a Las Vegas club, which will officially kick off Affleck's shoot.

Ok, first of all, we know that's inaccurate: Phoenix debuted his new career at the Funkmosphere in Culver City almost two months ago, and Affleck was taping him at the time (we've got pictures!). Second of all, Diddy? No. This is a ruse, Hollywood! Even worse: it's a mockumentary! The only thing more played out than that genre is...well, actors releasing albums.

• Casey Affleck helming Joaquin Phoenix doc [THR]

Joaquin Phoenix showed up at Dam-Funk's Culver City hot spot Funkmosphere on Monday night to debut his rap career, along with your boy Casey Affleck who was filming the chaos.

Dam-Funk's Funkmosphere at Carbon was titled L.A.s “Best Boogie Funk” recently by LA Weekly.

"Rap career"? Uh, sure. And how convenient that Casey Affleck would just happen to be present again, after witnessing Phoenix's red carpet breakdown. Check out his knowing smile while taping this mockumentary:

Joaquin Phoenix, j'accuse! Sure, films like Ladder 49 and The Village were egregious. But, faking the funk (and faking out the Funkmosphere)? This, we simply cannot support.

• Joaquin Phoenix (dressed like The Dude) debuts rap career at Dam-Funk's Funkmosphere [Stones Throw]

Clint Eastwood
Not sure he really needs replacing (or can be replaced at all), as he's sort of a singular cultural institution unto himself. But if we're in the mood for a gruff, crime fightin', six gun shootin', conservative with a puddly sentimental heart, then I think we need look no further than Keanu Reeves. Don't go crazy! Yes, I understand that there was a grumbly gravitas that Eastwood brought to his silly actioners that Keanu decidedly does not bring to his, but they're kind of the same. Both, frankly, can't act for beans but it doesn't matter! There's something criminally appealing about them. They're dazzling us with their flat line delivery while pickpocketing our souls! Plus, Keanu's 44 now (can you believe that??) so he'll soon be ambling into safely Grizzled territory. Then he can start directing pictures about weary men in the weary world who wearily do weary things, like kill their molested childhood best friends or kill their ladyboxer protege, just like Clint! Just think, in thirty years time "Whoa." will be the new "Make my day."

Joaquin Phoenix
Well, this is a little difficult because he wasn't really that much of a movie star to begin with. But the Oscar-nominated star of Gladiator and the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line was getting big. He's got that brooding strangeness, a willful devotion to his craft resembling an angry Johnny Depp. So who could fill these curious little worn-out shoes? How about similarly-faced Gossip Girl fop Ed "Chuckles Bass" Westwick? He plays in a band, just like Joaquin! And he's shown some prissy talent and a penchant for looking gloweringly stupid while offering terse, wannabe cryptic answers to inane interview questions. Whether he's got the weird talent that Phoenix has (had?) remains to be seem. But right now he's shaping up to be a fine candidate.

Nicole Kidman
OK, she's not "officially" retiring, but she did mention it off-handedly in an interview recently! An icy internationalist with a taste for the artsy out-there movies and the big commercial films? Kidman is sort of a dream come true for Hollywood (or, at least, she was until she had a long string of bombs—The Invasion anyone?—and her face became strangely plasticine). Does any young actress have her strange, sad alien grace, those same purring smarts? Harry Potter sidekick/burgeoning sex symbol Emma Watson might in a few years. As might a couple other young actresses. But really Sienna Miller seems best poised to take the mantle. She's not American either! And she became famous for dating a famous guy (Jude Law) before she became a famous actress (is she a famous actress yet?), just like Nicole did with a now-forgotten character actor named Tom Cruise. She's cold and probably talented and already inured to the tabloid frenzy.

Angelina Jolie
Luckily, gloriously be-lipped charitably minded multi-culti talented actresses just grow on trees. We kid, we kid! Angelina Jolies are pretty rare! There are like only two of them per billion people. Which means 11 others exist, and we must find them. Who else can shoot guns and throw knives convincingly one minute, then sob and moan and act a little nuts effectively the next? Maybe this young Kristen Stewart from Twinklight could do it. She seems weird and grumpy and above-it-all. Someone put an Uzi in her hand and she how she does. Though she doesn't have the natural beauty of Jolie. Oh fuck it. You know what? She said it would probably be thirty years before she retired anyway. The new Angelina Jolie is Angelina Jolie. She's only 33 after all. (Can you believe it?)

Really the problem is that the whole talent pool has become so diluted. We're not saying that there aren't talented, beautiful people anymore, just the opposite. There are way too many out there. Meg Ryan was in every romantic comedy for a few years. That was it. No one else. Now we've got Elizabeth Banks and Kate Hudson and Sandra Bullock (sort of?) and Anne Hathaway and etc. etc. Too many. We blame the internet. We're not sure why, but this is probably its fault.

"I think it's just moving on. It's rediscovering something else," said the budding musician.

"It's like greener pastures, you know what I mean?" he told The Associated Press. "And so, I'm just going to try and like, I'll just be doing the other thing. ... Hopefully, I will emotionally impact you with that, as well."

Though Phoenix has emotionally impacted us before in far-afield gigs like "frog hallucinator," "activist mute," and "Yawanawa tribal inductee," we're a little more skeptical about his new career path, "Spaceland opening act." We're going to cling to our hope that this all an elaborate joke until we see Melissa Leo leap out from behind the Extra cameraman, yelling, ""You got Indie'd!"

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Joaquin Phoenix: Yes, I've Really Quit Acting [Us]

Phoenix is certainly no stranger to red carpet shenanigans (as his best buddy, Follicle Frog, will affirm) but the incident seems less like a joke (despite a nearby, hilariously deadpan Casey Affleck) and more like a Ray-Bans-clad cry for help. "Nommmf deadserious," Phoenix insists in the video, and his rep's awkward "That is what he told me" confirmation leads us to believe that Phoenix really is going through with his plans to ditch acting for a career in music. We didn't like Reservation Road much either, Joaquin, but we can't say we're looking forward to the alternative.

• Joaquin Phoenix Calls It a Career? [E!]