Was Phoenix Doing a Comedic Bit . . . Or Something Else?

I've seen excerpts on cable news of the Joaquin Phoenix interview on David Letterman last night and thought that perhaps some of the interview was taken out of context. I didn't see it live. After watching Lost last night -- it was fantastic by the way -- I went directly to bed and promptly dreamt about Lost all night long.

Then I watched the whole interview on YouTube. The TV excerpts perfectly captured the weirdness of the Phoenix appearance. (Link to the video is here.)



The beard, the hair, the mumbling, the spaced-outness, it HAD to be an act, right? Phoenix certainly wasn't like this during the promo of Walk the Line.

After watching this, I was reminded of how Letterman deftly handled the tenseness of this awkward interview with a recalcitrant, potty-mouthed Madonna in the mid-1990s.

What do you think, was this a bit or something else?