Joaquin Phoenix quits acting 8O [EDIT: Osnap, the m*thaf*cka's back XD ]

[JFC]

Whoa, totally did NOT see this one coming. Shame really, I rather liked his work.

http://cinemablend.com/new/Joaquin-Phoenix-Just-Says-No-10703.html

[iacus]

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=50098

[mackey]

Music career?  I've actually never heard him sing, youtube gives the movie Walk The Line, but that's not exactly my style of music to listen to.  I'll give him a benefit of a doubt and see what he makes of this music venture.  Wasn't too bad of an actor, I liked him enough, but will I miss him/his movies... probably not.

[StreakInTheSky]

huh what? I still don't know if I want to believe him or not.

[Guchi_Jnr]

Wonder if the timing has anything to do with it being 15years (almost to the day) since River died..

[shadowstar]

Wow...

A real shame indeed, he's a fantastic actor

[junkie_with_a_monkey]

wow that's pretty surprising =/ Yeah he's a pretty good actor, and quite respected.

[iacus]

http://stonesthrow.com/news/2008/11/joaquin-phoenix-dressed-like-the-dude-debuts-rap-career-at-dam-funks-funkmosphere

[StreakInTheSky]

This is an act, right? I still can't take this seriously

[Masa]

Joaquin Phoenix Interview - He talks about Quitting Acting to Focus on Music

Today was an interesting day. Not only did I get to participate in a roundtable interview with Joaquin Phoenix about his new movie “Two Lovers”, but I got to be apart of the documentary that’s being made about his transition to music. The reason….the entire interview was filmed by Casey Affleck – the director of the documentary.

In case you didn’t know, Joaquin Phoenix has apparently quit acting and is trying to become a rapper. While the entire venture is still coming together and Joaquin is still writing and producing his first album, he seemed very serious about making this music thing work. And even though he says he’s finished with acting, after speaking with him today, I’m still unsure if this new career is real, or if it’s just another part in a long line of movies.

But I do think he’s really trying to make an album. The big question is…will it be any good.

Anyway, since the interview went on for over thirty minutes, I’ve decided to post the first half tonight and the second half tomorrow night. That way you don’t have to read eight pages of transcript at once. Some of the highlights are Joaquin telling us that Diddy might be producing the album (or part of it), he tells us some of the song titles, and he says he’d like the album to be his version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

As always, you can either read the transcript below or listen to the interview by clicking here. This is one of those I suggest listening to….

Question: So is this the last time we're gonna see you like this? In this setting? How does it feel?

Joaquin Phoenix: Great, yeah, it ain't nothing personal. No, but honestly today I was getting dressed for hours, prepping, and I was just really satisfied that I wasn't gonna have to do this again.

But James was saying that you actually were talking to him a little bit towards the end of making this film about kind of being a little bit burned out on that and you weren't sure of what you wanted to do next.  And so I mean did it kind of start while you were making this film or had you thought about changing?

Joaquin: Well, I think that you know, I threatened myself with quitting after every movie. But I think everybody does that, right? And I mean it's something that I've thought about for a long time and I've been working on my music and doing all sorts of different kinds of music and stuff and I don't know…In some ways I kind of felt like I needed to make a statement really for myself in terms of like quitting, in some ways I kind of regret, I didn't realize it was going to be such a big deal. I thought nobody would give a fuck to be to be frank. And I was pretty surprised. I guess no one does except for maybe like a couple people that are blogging or whatever. But but I felt that I had to do it, I had to do like something extreme to get out of it because it's like really hard for me to go into music 'cause the first thing anyone like says is "Johnny Cash", so I really had to do something extreme to get away from that.

You've done a few shows now, how do you feel the hip hop career is going so far?

Joaquin: Uh, terrible.  No, it's kind of weird.  I haven't done a bunch of shows, I did like a lot of free styling around the studio I've gone to, like little small places and I guess some people there filmed it and shit and put it out there,which was really nerve wracking 'cause there's literally people there like heckling you and saying "Johnny Cash" and saying this stuff, so it was really difficult. I got really nervous. But the show in Vegas—I just don't think you could tell on the on the video that's out there—but I think it was a lot better than people than people think or what's been said because of how it appears in the video in that quality and stuff. But it's still quite a process like mic control and stuff, and I have to say I'm not really, I'm not really there yet. I realized that stuff 'cause I've watched footage that we shot and I realized all the times when I had the mic away from my mouth, that I didn't realize, and that was probably from "Walk the Line" where I was doing the play back and shit so you could get away from the mic; it didn't matter. But I just figure: put yourself out there and crash, and then you rebuild yourself and you find your way into it. I didn't really want to with—I found out like all these dudes, all these hip-hop dudes work with like vocal coaches, they do training, they do the whole thing, and I never knew that.  And I didn't want to do that; I didn't want to just start out and hire a producer and get someone to write stuff for me and do all that. I really wanted to do it myself and feel what it was like and if I didn't have I guess some celebrity (or whatever that it is that I have) I think that, it wouldn't matter and then people wouldn't really be aware of me but just the first thing I do gets thrust into the spotlight, and I knew that, but I just said fuck it.

You talk about wanting to do something different than the Johnny Cash-thing.  Was hip-hop something you grew up with? I think you did some break dancing in the movie.

Joaquin: Break dancing—that's actually James [Gray, director] (Not). Actually the thing is I don't think there's many people my age that didn't grow up listening to hip-hop.  It kind of was like, when I was fifteen, sixteen—that was it for me. I loved hip-hop. The first stuff I heard was Public Enemy, and I couldn't believe it. It was amazing, and I've always loved hip-hop.

So for you is it the old school stuff or do you like stuff now like Kanye?

Joaquin: I'm not that familiar with some new stuff. I couldn't believe some of the difference. You know what's amazing also is the mastering that they do know, I was listening to  B.I.G's "Juicy" and I remember when it chewed up and it seemed like that was the most crisp pop sound when it came out. Part of that like Black Moon and cats like that—it was a real kind of like underground-New York-gritty-Wu-Tang-kind of sound, and then there came like this really pop sound, and then I put on like TI and Young Jeezy and shit, and then I went back to "Juicy".  I couldn't believe the difference.  It's unbelievable the production now. It's overproduced absolutely.

You talk about crashing into this hip-hop career.  In one of these YouTube videos we see you take quite a spill off the stage.  What happened there?

Joaquin: I didn't fucking—what happened is first of all, it's not a stage, it's about this wide, you're up on this little platform, there's fucking lights everywhere right, in your eyes, flashing at you like that, and everything is dark, and I literally just went to step off the thing and misjudged and slipped down, I wasn't fucked up and fell down, I jumped down and I literally jumped back up without harm and said I'm fine. But, it was honestly, I was so nervous that it's all kind of a blur.  I don't feel like I really was aware of what was happening until it was like half-way through the second song.

You are a very private person but you're being followed by a camera crew. Why did you agree to let this happen and be so public with everything?

Joaquin: Well, we don't necessarily know it's gonna be public. I mean, I'm just doing something for myself, I mean, that's my friend for fuck sake, so it's not like I hired this professional doc crew to do what I'm doing—a documentary of myself as you point out.

What would you say to the people that are saying this is bogus?

Joaquin: I would say to the people, whoever said that it's a hoax, is clearly somebody who is an old friend, or somebody that I worked with on music.  I've worked with a lot of people on music and often times those things don't work out.  Sometimes you have some bad blood between people and that's all that I imagine where it comes from, and that's all that I know it is, but part of me, I realize that part of it might seem ridiculous to other people, but I can't concern myself with that. I'm not gonna be worried about what people think that my life is and what people think has never affected my decisions in anything I've done and I'm not gonna let that start now.

Why have you decided acting is not for you?  Doesn't rapping make you more vulnerable because you are by yourself?

Joaquin: I don't care but my dissatisfaction with acting has nothing to do with being uncomfortable or vulnerable or feeling like people are gonna criticize me. That's not that's not the problem.

What is the problem?

Joaquin: I don't think this is a problem. I just I don't feel challenged by acting anymore. I don't enjoy the process anymore. I've enjoyed it very much at times, I'm very thankful for the people that I've had the opportunity to work with.  I've had a good life, its been amazing, I'm not complaining, its not like acting just ruined me so I just have to leave—it's not that. I'm just done with it.

"Two Lovers" is quite a good performance to end on, are you able to see that about yourself?

Joaquin: I don't know. I won't see it. But it certainly, it certainly wasn't a plan, it certainly wasn't like "Oh well, let's go out on this one." Though when I was doing the plans in San Francisco, I saw Danny DeVito's stand-in and I told the dude I was retiring, and he was like "This is your last thing?" and I said "Yeah," and he said "Don't go out on this," It was the first time I thought about that. It hadn't even occurred to me. And then Terry George called me and said "You couldn't retire after Reservation Road?  We might have been able to sell more tickets!"

There is a rumor that Diddy is producing your album, any truth to that?

Joaquin: I don't know how much I can say. I'll just say that we are going to work together shortly. As to whether that will be a complete album or not, I don't know, but I'm doing a lot of the music and production. I love doing the music, I love programming beats and kind of working on the music, as much if not more, than the actual rapping. I mean, I hate fucking saying "rapping," It just sounds ridiculous. I wish there was another fucking word for it, for what I do, because I don't think of myself as a rapper, but I do enjoy the writing process, like I enjoy writing rhymes and sitting alone listening to beats doing it, its pretty amazing.  I guess you enjoy doing it as well.

Can you give us a sneak into any of your rhymes?

Joaquin: You know, I've thought about that coming in—no no no and then they are gonna write it down and split it into pieces.

How would you describe your sound?

Joaquin: Um, under construction? Um, it's a sound. I don't know.  Ultimately the record is not going to be a rap record.  I mean its hip-hop, there's like rap in it, but there's singing.  What I wanna do, (Ugh, I sound like such a fucking dick), but what I wanna do is make The Wall, you know?

You want to do the hip-hop Floyd.

No, it's hard, because I'm an actor so I'm theatrical so I want things to be great.  I'm not "What am I gonna do? I'm gonna do a hardcore song!" No, it's gonna be something big. I have one track right now that's five minutes that I'm trying to make seven. It might just be seven minutes of pure misery but hopefully it's seven minutes.

What is the message behind your album?

Joaquin: I don't have a message.

When will your album be released to the public?

Joaquin: I don't know. I have ten songs now and three of them I think are really good and the others I think are pretty crap but I'll work on them and I don't know. I don't really feel this pressure to get it out and I think that also things are different now, like you don't have to necessarily release a record.  You have a website, you sell, you do a couple singles, you do an EP, then let it grow. So I'm not really sure.  I've gone back and forth between going "I want to make a double record", "I'm just gonna do an EP to start with." So I'm just amassing songs and I think you just kind of boil it down to the best, what you think is the best.

Could you tell us the names of the three songs you like?

Joaquin: One is called "Can I Get a Refund?," one is called "If You're Going to San Francisco," and one is called "Daddy Dum Dum?"

Are there people you want to collaborate with?

Joaquin: I want, you know that actor…um, he is an amazing cellist, I've know him for years, and he's played uh a couple things on some older stuff—I'd like to work with him some more. I'd love to get Flea. Flea did the bass for Young MC just way back in the day  so that would be kind of genius to get Flea. I saw Meth recently at House of Blues perform with Redman, so he said he wanted to come in and do a verse and we'll see. Also Diddy knows a lot of great people and stuff, so we'll see. I mean who I would really, who I'd really love to fuckin' produce a track is, my dream, my dream would be to have DJ Premiere produce a track, and have Chuck D do it, but Chuck D never would do it.

Question: You think maybe with your acting you might be able to bring in certain people that wouldn’t normally…

Joaquin Phoenix: It would be dope if I got Russell Crowe and Keanu Reeves and Jared Leto and we just did a thing. That would be pretty dope right?

Because they’ve all been in bands that have been kind of torn apart by people?

Joaquin: Oh really? Were they torn apart?

Is that what you see as a similarity or what?

Joaquin: No, I was just joking I was just trying to find all the actors who have done music.

That kind of brings up the question though of "30 Odd Foots of Grunts", "Dogstar"… they got a lot of shit for that. So do you have any fear of your own that you’re going to be lumped with those guys in the years to come?

Joaquin: I’m just accustomed to living in that place, so I’m not really worried.  It's not about success, it's not about being "good"; it doesn’t matter to me. It's about experience. I didn’t act because I wanted to be good or I wanted people to say that I was good, I enjoyed that process and now I enjoy this process. What can I say? It might suck, everyone might hate it and I’d be the only one that likes it but that’s alright because I’ve been having an amazing time writing the record.

Well for you I’m sort of curious, there’s two sides to music. There’s the record making, which is the artistic statement and the performing which is getting out in front of the crowd and connecting. Which is more important to you? Are you about the record or about the crowd?

Joaquin: The record is more important to me and that’s really what I’ve been working on. Diddy just said, "Look you got to get out there," so I’ve been going around to little clubs and freestyling. He said "You have to do a show because it's too easy to go—it's freestyling, and fuck up and forgetting, you walk out, and when you really set your mind to it and go, this is a show and set it up," and I was like "Okay," so I set up this show to really get the experience. I was certain it was going to be a disaster; I mean I was doing the mixes the night before, I had no idea what the system was right? So you’re sitting there going "Fuck, is the snare too loud? Do I need to pull it down? It seems like the base is too loud." So I was rushing doing these mixes and I’ve never done it before. And it was such a weird concept, like you have just given someone an iPod with a backing track, with a mic.  It was really strange to me because I want to have a show, I want to have musicians and little things so it was really just part of the training. But you know, unfortunately, it was public, and I was public so you’re seeing the training. What about this movie the "Two Lovers"?

Well you hip-hop in it. Was it freestyle or did you make it up?

Joaquin: No, I did not. James [Gray, director], you know, we were talking, sitting in the car prepping for that scene and rehearsing, saying something has to happen because we cut to the car and everyone is hanging out. So we talked about things, so what do these dudes do, they grow up in Brooklyn, this age, and they all loved hip-hop, so James told me that he had a hip-hop group, so I said "That’s just too genius, I cant fuckin' imagine," and so I said "Okay, let me try and do something," so I just have a few different ideas, so I drive down and say "Should I do this one or this one?" and then we just ended up doing like all of them and I don’t know which one he used for the movie.

We’re talking about "Two Lovers" the ending of the film has this ambiguity I just want to have your take on "Leonard"—Do you think there is a chance for him to find happiness or is he always going to be living in the shadow of "Michelle". What do you think might be coming next after the film ends for him?

Joaquin: I don’t think it’s a very good life for Leonard. I imagine, I think he is going to find happiness; he’s just never going to find this idealized romantic-love-happiness. He’s just going to find the reality; he’s going to have a few kids. Probably take over his dad’s business and the kids will have birthday parties and they’ll laugh and he’ll… what was the name of Vinessa Shaw’s character? "Sandra". Yeah you know. If he married "Sandra" he’ll be fine, I think he would just have a normal life.

When we follow the interviews, we can’t help but notice that the hip-hop Joaquin looks very different than the leading man, sex symbol Joaquin we’ve seen in the past. Can you tell us about this look you have going on today?

Joaquin: Look, it’s very much a effort. I don’t know what your excuse is. I have to do things extremely physical as well. That’s the thing people do—recognize me and they know me as this kind of thing, in some ways I don’t know that this is my look, you know? It's just been important for me to just do something that’s extreme. That really separates me from that public "Joaquin-persona", whatever the fuck that is.  Or I’m just lazy.

So the beard and the hair help you kind of lose yourself?

Joaquin: No, I just think that it stops people from saying "Johnny Cash". You know and now they just say "Grizzly Adams."

You and James have a good working relationship. You’ve done a few films together, you developed a shorthand, are you a little bit sad that it’s possible you might not be working together again?

Joaquin: I love James but I don’t love him that much. And I mean, I have to do what’s right for me, you know what I mean? Yeah, of course there’s a little part of me that will probably miss some of those moments. But I think that happens for everyone at some time.  You change your career or you work on something else. There’s a part of you that’s going to miss your old job in some ways, but maybe I’ll get to direct my video. Yeah I want to do "Thriller"-style. A whole big intro and shit.

You actually brought up an excellent point about the promotion process that begins for your music career and for everything else, so you already started about thinking about that?

Joaquin: Promotions what?

Well like making videos and promoting your music through that content, you already mentioned "Thriller" as an influence, is that something you definitely want to do? Make a big kind of style video?

Joaquin: I don’t know. I think you always have those lost ambitions…whatever I’m a fuckin’ moron, right? I just want to, like, imagine that I will do something great but it would probably be like one of the worst videos ever made. I’ll direct it, it’ll be the worst thing ever. But I think, you want to try, you strive for greatness, you know you’ll never probably reach there because you’re not good enough, but hopefully I’ll come up with some great concept and maybe I’ll get lucky and Spike Jonze will want to do the video.

Joaquin, I kind of have a random question, I work for MTV and we had somebody send us this letter, this guy is legit, his name is Dan Suh and he’s the manager for "Fall Out Boy" and he sent us a letter for you asking you to be your DJ. So I was going to give it to you if you want it…

Joaquin: Oh, thank you.

But this guy really is legit, he is legitimately the manager for "Fall Out Boy" and he says that every good rapper needs a DJ and he wants to be yours.

Joaquin: He wants to be the DJ?

He wants to be your Jam Master J he says in that letter. Are you hiring? Are you looking for a DJ? Or are you a one man band?

Joaquin: No I don’t have a DJ, because I like to, I’m not sure that, I’m working on the show, right? And I don’t want to talk, talk about everything right, because when you don’t achieve it everyone will know that you didn’t achieve it right? So, the show is not just going to be me with a mic and a backing track and so I might have a DJ, but its not going to be you typical hip-hop show I guess.

The thing about hip-hop is that there’s an obsession with keeping it real and speaking about real experiences, for your audience.  Your experiences in life have been sort of very different possibly than your whole audience’s experiences…

Joaquin: The whole thing is sort of like: I woke up and they said "Action!", and I was like "Oh shit! Where’s my mark? Oh shit!"

Well that’s the sort of thing, what is keeping it real for a guy who’s turned to rapping after acting for almost twenty years…

Joaquin: I know nothing about keeping it real, I know nothing about it. I don’t really know what that means. I don’t think anyone really knows what that means. But what are you asking? What is the content?

Well not what is the content but sort of, I mean… when I listen to track by some rapper randomly I experience parts of their lives and I experience an understanding. What is it that a famous, rich, white actor is going to be bringing to hip-hop that is going to resonate with people on a personal level?

Joaquin: Not that very much.

I just want to ask you about working with the girls on this, especially for Gwyneth [Paltrow] this was kind of a different role for her too, I’m just wondering when you were working with her did you guys bounce ideas off each other about her performance or yours or whatever, the relationship.

Joaquin: No, I don’t really do that I don’t like to know what other actors are thinking and I don’t want them to know what I’m thinking necessarily unless it’s like important for a scene. I think that there are certain scenes, moments, where it’s important that you understand what the other person is doing and you might talk about it, but typically for me, the director is the only person I talked to about the choices and my intention for a scene. And I don’t really want to know but it was great. I was genuinely surprised by how Gwyneth interpreted the character and what she did.  Her first day, I’d been working for like two weeks so I was comfortable by then, you get comfortable with the crew and everything and she came in and I thought she was going to be nervous and take all day, but she just smoked me, I mean right away. I couldn’t believe it. It was terrifying.  She was really amazing. She just arrived and she had the character down. Because you know, it seems at least in my experience, the first couple of days everyone is kind of moving around and they’re bumping into furniture and you’re trying to go like "How do I walk?  What do I do? What’s natural? How the fuck do I just say 'Good morning,' to somebody and it sounds normal?"  Because you look at it on a piece of paper and you start analyzing it and you’re like ‘Good morning’ because it’s a weird thing, with both her and Vinessa, either of them ever skipped a beat, they were just like "Bang!"—right into it.

James talked about the amount of takes you do when filming scenes, when you were making the film, are you kind of the person who gets it on the first take or are you the kind of person who likes to do it on multiple takes for the director to cut from?

Joaquin: I’m the type of person who has no idea, like I think that, for me, if I’m aware of something that I’m doing, then usually it’s bad. I think the only time that anything is good is when I’m not aware of it. So I don’t know.  I don’t know how many takes I do.  There’s not a conscious effort to try and give somebody more options. I think you’re trying to still find out what the truth is and get to that, sometimes it takes forty takes and sometimes it happens in a few.

http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp/aid/10776/tcid/1

Great interview! Dude's rapping might suck ass but he's definitely a real hiphop head

[jhluva]

I'm sad that he quit acting. It seems like a lot of really good actors and actresses are quitting or thinking about quitting, leaving us with "meh" people in movies.

[e_lo05]

i still think it's a joke.  i don't see him making it as a rapper.  did you see the video?  well...if it's what's in his heart, then "go for it!" haha.

[iacus]

[THUNDERDUCK]

^Terrific.

[Pharadox]

More than one source say it is a hoax, that the documentary is really supposed to be a parody. I have to agree. For one thing, David Letterman is SO in on the joke. There's no way he would be that openly humiliating and condescending to someone on his show if they were really just going off the deep end or seriously meant what they were saying. Another thing, Joaquin Phoenix is completely talented enough to pull this off and really convince people it is happening.

[ushi]

while i do agree it's a hoax, i'm assuming you haven't seen Paris Hilton's "interview" on Letterman last year? It makes make this interview look like a birthday party. 

[daigong]

No Hoax Fool. All part of the documentary by Casey Affleck: "I'm Still Here: The Lost Year of Joaquin Phoenix"



some action of him rapping:

[MisTicO]

I would totally go to one of his rap show. 

[MochaNutz]

the return of Joaquin Phoenix on Letterman =)

[JFC]

Sunnovabitch.


THREAD TITLE EDITED.