Im Still Here (2010 film)

Plot

In 2008, while rehearsing for a charity event, actor Joaquin Phoenix, with Casey Affleck's camera watching, tells people he's quitting to pursue a career in rap music. Over the next year, we watch the actor write, rehearse, and perform to an audience. He importunes Sean Combs in hopes he'll produce the record. We see the actor in his home: he parties, smokes, bawls out his two-man entourage, talks philosophy with Affleck, and comments on celebrity.

Cast

Release

The film premiered at the 67th Venice International Film Festival on September 6, 2010. It had a limited release in the United States on September 10, 2010 before being expanded to a wide release a week later on September 17. Although widely suspected to be a "mockumentary", the fact that the events of the film had been deliberately staged was not disclosed until after the film had been released.

Production

According to Phoenix, the film arose from his amazement that people believed reality television shows' claims of being unscripted. By claiming to retire from acting, he and his friend and brother-in-law Casey Affleck planned to make a film that "explored celebrity, and explored the relationship between the media and the consumers and the celebrities themselves" through their film.

After surprising Hollywood by abruptly announcing his retirement in late 2008, allegedly in order to focus on his music, Phoenix and Affleck began filming the documentary, which followed Phoenix as he began a career making hip-hop music while allegedly managed by rap icon Sean "Diddy" Combs.

Reception

In May 2010, the film was shown to potential buyers. The Los Angeles Times reported that the film featured "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". Also, the film is said to depict Phoenix "snorting cocaine, ordering call girls, having oral sex with a publicist, treating his assistants abusively and rapping badly." Reportedly film buyers, after seeing it, were still uncertain whether it was a serious documentary or a mockumentary.

Upon its release I'm Still Here had a 54% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics were divided on whether to interpret the film as documentary or performance art. Box Office Mojo reported a worldwide gross of $568,963 as of June 2011.

Spoof

An article in the Relevant Magazine suggested that the title is a reference to Todd Haynes's I'm Not There.