I'm Still Here

Some thoughts on Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix' documentary. I haven't seen it yet, but I am utterly fascinated by it.

-I've never been a big fan of Joaquin Phoenix, more so of Casey Affleck. I think what they've done shows that they are very intelligent people and some of the most interesting people working in the movies today. It takes a lot of guts to do something like this and even if it turns out that the emperor has no clothes, the work Affleck and Phoenix put into this, is at least something to be respected. And it just is a very original way to make a movie

- Two years ago, Joaquin Phoenix announced the end of his acting career, to pursue a career as a rapper. He also appeared to have a complete meltdown. His good friend and brother-in-law Casey Affleck said he would make a documentary about this stage in Phoenix' life. Now the documentary has come out they admitted it was all a hoax and that it was all performance art, while simultaneously satirizing a bit the media's obsession with stars. I have not seen this documentary and I do believe that it's probably quite boring what is on the screen. I don't believe that that's the point. This is probably a rare movie where the reaction of the society on it and what point that makes about the society is more important then the movie itself. The movie is hardly important for the discussion, but without the there probably wouldn't be any discussion.

- To me it's slightly weird that so many people really believed that this was real, especially after Affleck announced he was going to make a documentary about it. If only because of common sense. Casey Affleck is married to Joaquin Phoenix' sister. The Phoenixes have already lost one sibling in River Phoenix due to a meltdown. Surely Summer Phoenix wouldn't agree with her husband exploiting her brother's meltdown. This fact, that the media were so eager to accept the fact that Phoenix really lost it is reason enough for this movie to exist. It really shows that the media is sometimes more interested in conflict then in the truth. This performance took two years. It was filmed in public places, a lot of people took part in it, some knowingly, some not and not a single media outlet in the whole world reporting about this was willing to dig really deep to find the truth. Or they tried, but failed which may even be worse.

- While most media and people really believed that Phoenix had a meltdown, almost everybody was making fun of or with Phoenix. When at the Oscars Natalie Portman and Ben Stiller (who were in on the joke) imitated Phoenix everybody was talking about what a great job they did. There was no one who mentioned that it is not really nice, to put it mildly, to make fun of a person's rough time. Especially not in front of his peers. Now it turns out that it was a hoax, some of this same journalists direct their anger at Phoenix for making them worried about him.

America! Part 2

I have know idea whether the famous philosopher Jean Baudrillard ever visited Las Vegas, but if he did, he would leave Vegas being very satisfied with his theories. To summarize (very) shortly Baudrillard states that we are losing sense of what is real and are creating a simulation of reality, mostly trough the media. This is one of the core ideas of post-modernism and the whole city of Las Vegas is like a theme park on postmodernism. Quite simply everything in Las Vegas is a simulation of reality. To feel like you are in Paris, they built a fake Eiffel Tower, to feel like you are in Venice they built a fake San Marco square, etc. This is another reason why this is almost a confirmation of Baudrillard's theories. This simulated reality is represented through symbols, so in this case the Eiffel Tower is the symbol for Paris. Now this is all pretty bad, but it actually gets worse according to Baudrillard. After a while these signs and symbols will stop reflecting reality and start only reflecting other signs and symbols. This is called hyperreality. Las Vegas came dangerously close to hyperreality when we saw people dressed on the street like Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp's character from Pirates of the Carribean and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson's character from Pulp Fiction) waiting to be photographed with. Anyway, enough science for now, even though I'll come back at Baudrillard soon when I write about Inglourious Basterds and The Matrix, two movies I saw at this road trip. Even if you don't think about Baudrillard, Las Vegas is absolutely fun to see. It's a city in which you really believe anything can happen. I really mean this and I actually don't think that a movie set in Las Vegas can be criticized for being unrealistic. Nicolas Cage drinking himself to death? Nicolas Cage jumping out of an airplane in an Elvis costume? A bunch of guys losing their friend who is about to get married? It can all happen in Vegas.



Our next destination was The Grand Canyon. Up until then everywhere we went, it was incredibly hot. So the prospect of seeing The Grand Canyon was, despite and because of it's reputation, not very pleasing. Our believe that it would be incredibly hot at the Grand Canyon became even stronger after a short stop at the spectacular Hoover Dam where it was incredibly hot. But as we drove closer and closer to the canyon the weather got colder and cloudier. When we arrived at the Grand Canyon the canyon was in deep mist. One literally couldn't see anything. Luckily we waited for an hour or so and the weather got better and once we saw the canyon we realized that it was absolutely worth coming here. The Grand Canyon is truly on of the most beautiful natural wonders. In fact we liked it so much there that we came back the next day. And again the weather was perfect. Not cloudy and not smoking hot. The weather was actually nowhere on this road trip better then on the Grand Canyon.



You can't go to America without visiting LA. Ha! That's what you'd think. In fact there is no single reason why anyone should go to LA, unless you work there. It's more like a village then a city. Granted, a very big and rich village, but a village nonetheless. Luckily I went on a tour around Warner Brothers studios or else it would have been a big waste of time. These studios are very interesting and I plan to write about them in a separate post some day. For now it's worth saying that the studio seems to be most proud of the Batman movies and of Friends and, slightly ironically, due to vacation no tv-show was at work except for Charlie Sheen's Two and A Half Men.



After LA we went to Yosemite National park which is very beautiful but have no idea to write anything interesting about it. There are beautiful paths through the woods and up on the mountains and it was really great to walk on them and see the woods and the mountains, but there just is not anything interesting to write about.

Next up was San Francisco. San Francisco is a very interesting town. It has a lot of beautiful places and at times it has a great atmosphere. The uphill and downhill streets are also very spectacular.


But the city center is one of the unsafest centers of a city I've ever seen. There are a lot of tramps and peasants. And most of them seem and act like they belong in a madhouse. When we were in LA my cousin mentioned that you can't go to LA and not go the cinema. Which we did. We went to Salt. In San Francisco one gets the feeling that you can't be there without being witness to a shooting. Which my cousin unfortunately was. Perhaps this is only fitting in the city of Alcatraz.
Despite all this San Francisco is a great city. It seemed like there was music everywhere, there was a very relaxed atmosphere and even the pier was pretty interesting. San Francisco was also the third town on this road trip with a connection to Forrest Gump. It's where he started Bubba Gump. In 'honor' of this there even is a real Forrest Gump store.

In San Francisco our adventure on the west coast ended and we flew back to Chicago. Here we celebrated my other cousin's birthday, and saw the interesting parts of Chicago. The city is beautiful, but it doesn't have the electrifying atmosphere of New York or San Francisco. I saw the city, liked it a lot but I didn't get any special feeling out of it. Which may be a bit of a shame. Chicago after all is the city of Michael Jordan and Roger Ebert, the best basketball player ever and one of the best film critics ever. We actually saw the Chicago Bulls' hall and it is one of the most boringly made sports stadiums I've ever seen. Fittingly it has one of the most bland names one can imagine for a sports hall: United Center.
In short what Chicago needed was a bit more Razzle Dazzle!



After Chicago we went to our last destination: Knoxville, where some old friends of us live. Knoxville is a place which has absolutely nothing interesting and we had fun there with our friends, but there is nothing else I can write about the city. Our last night there we watched we watched Inglourious Basterds. That was a fun experience. Not only is the movie great, as I've already mentioned a couple of times, but Knoxville is Quentin Tarantino's birth place.
In fact the whole route Chicago-Knoxville is of some significance for popular culture. Along the way you pass Gary, Indiana and Lexington, Kentucky, which are the birthplaces of respectively Michael Jackson and George Clooney. Both cities are pretty awful. On our first visit to Chicago we went on a short trip to Lake Michigan, we got a bit lost in Gary, the second most criminal city in America after Miami. You got to Beat It! from there as soon as possible. In Lexington we ate in a KFC (duh!) where every single person was over 200 kilograms. At least.



Well after Knoxville we left for Tampa and so the road trip ended. It was a great experience and I left America with a very positive feeling about the country.

Sure there are probably more rednecks and religious nuts then in any other country, but there are probably also more open-minded people and big scientists then in any other country.
There probably are more pathetic cities, but probably also more spectacular cities then in any other country.
Hollywood probably makes more crappy movies, but it also probably makes more great movies then any other film center.
The Americans probably are the worst drivers in the world, but... well, I can't give a positive spin on this.