Joaquin Phoenix probably still faking it

The consensus is that when Joaquin Phoenix went crazy, grew a scraggly beard and started a career as a rapper, it was for a mockumentary he and Casey Affleck were filming.

But after a private screening of the film, the LA Times isn’t sure exactly what the film is. Neither am I. I’m leaning towards gay porn though.

It’s far from the Joaquin Phoenix you’re used to seeing onscreen: snorting cocaine, ordering call girls, having oral sex with a publicist, treating his assistants abusively and rapping badly. And not, apparently, playing a role — or was he?

Several buyers said the film overflowed with Hollywood debauchery, including more male frontal nudity than you’d find in some gay porn films and a stomach-turning sequence in which someone feuding with Phoenix defecates on the actor while he’s asleep.

The buyers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Phoenix comes off unsympathetically and shows very little talent for music in the movie, directed by his brother-in-law (Affleck is married to Summer Phoenix). Sales agent WME declined to comment.

In some scenes in the film, the 35-year-old Phoenix is trying to get Sean “Diddy” Combs to produce Phoenix’s rap album, but the hip-hop impresario is not terribly interested. Another sequence shows Ben Stiller approaching Phoenix about starring in writer-director Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg,” but Phoenix is barely interested.

So… this is pretty much Borat: Hollywood. Except, despite Joaquin being even more talentless at his chosen profession, he still gets laid. Or taken a dump on. Maybe this is one big metaphor for something. The struggle for acceptance?