Titans will clash once again. Arguably the most notorious and certainly most well-known moment of Joaquin Phoenix’s lost years often painfully chronicled in the new Casey Affleck-directed documentary, “I’m Still Here” is the actor’s mumbly and incoherent appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman” in February of 2009 (read our review of the film here).
Letterman basically handed Phoenix his ass for not being mentally present (“Sorry, you couldn’t be here Joaquin”), but there will be a take two. Phoenix is set to appear on Letterman again on September 22 and we imagine that’s going to be a highly watched show and perhaps Phoenix will reveal whether the doc and his hip-hop career was a big media art prank or not. Our guess is the doc is part fact and fiction. Phoenix went through some kind of meltdown, Affleck documented it, occasionally egged him on and in some instances Phoenix was coherent enough to say, “wouldn’t it be funny if we did this?”, but all of it steeped in some kind of very real kind of career crisis. Maybe we’ll find out soon enough. Original Letterman appearance below.