Rocking the mockumentary

Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck take a ride down the white-water rapids of the mockumentary and drag the audience along for fun.

I'm not sure if I'M STILL HERE is more THIS IS SPINAL TAP or THE BLAIRE WITCH PROJECT because it feels like the latter, which is good. Phoenix has said they were inspired by the seriously terrifying rise of reality TV shows and that industry's insistence they were not scripted. As entertainment insiders, Affleck and Phoenix want you to know all those Survivor obstacle courses and Wife Swap marriage meltdowns have their poker game tells.



Phoenix is absolutely mesmerizing from start to finish. He's a mumbling, smoldering wad of celebrity persona drowning in his own stew of self absorption. His bizarrely meek assistants are arrayed around him in a ratty Hollywood villa -- the kind of unkempt real estate you'd expect to see lurid shots of on Entertainment Tonight detailing another celebrity meltdown.

The assistants arrange plane tickets for him, make desperate calls to music producers and struggle to find "JP" drugs in the middle of the night while traveling. One (Antony Langdon) strikes back at Phoenix in a particularly raunchy fratboy revenge scene -- and all I can think of is: David Spade and his supposed fist-a-cuffs with a former assistant. (Affleck has insisted ALL of the film was fabricated even the faux feces which was made up of hummus and coffee grounds).

Everyone visits the celebrity "JP" -- Ben Stiller and Edward James Olmos among them. And it's Olmos who manages to steal one scene from Phoenix's over-the-top character by giving a speech that is part inspirational and part utter bullshit.

The L.A. Times reviewer sniggered there was 'more male frontal nudity than you’d find in some gay porn'. Bitch, please. It's good to know the MPAA aren't the only homophobic twits deciding the fate of film but, if movie critics are that intimidated by a 2-second shot of a guy's wilted turtle, they should stick to reviewing Michael Bay's crap.

The most provocative sequences in the film are when Phoenix is in character and interacting with people who were not in on the joke. Their slack-jawed stares and stammering conversations create the kind of cinéma vérité French filmmakers dream about.

It's a shame the Hollywood machine was too stupid to see the genius in this film. The joke's on Tinseltown, the industry too busy self congratulating to truly laugh at itself.

Cry for the rapist?

When I was in elementary school, the Manson Family was always in the news in California.

A few years after Sharon Tate was murdered, insult was added to injury of the collective California psyche when Roman Polanski was charged with rape.

In true southern California style, Polanski was viewed as this flamboyant, big shot Hollywood director and the judge who tried his case was seen as a 'square' (Conservative) who clearly had an ax to grind with the decadent Hollywood scene.

Polanski's lawyers, and apparently the man himself, had no qualms about playing the Jew card. Polanski, like many European immigrants of his generation, is a survivor of the Holocaust. Apparently a year in hell absolves one of later devilish behavior. Too bad nobody explained this to Khmer Rouge survivor and Oscar winner, Haing Ngor, so he could run out and rob some banks or liquor stores before his murder in 1996.

Of course, everything surrounding the Polanski case -- including the (now deceased) judge's very unprofessional bias -- is yesterday's news. Even the rape victim, Samantha Geimer, now a woman my age, wants the whole thing to go away. (She's been paid shut-up money and was given a 'formal' apology by Polanski years ago).

There's been a lot of talk about preferential treatment of celebrities like Polanski. But what about preferential treatment because of race and the class status incurred by fame, not just celebrity?

Imagine if Polanski were an African immigrant from Rwanda, a Tutsi man who survived the genocide of 1994. Now imagine this African rising to some prominence for his inventive, yet mainstream films in Hollywood. Now imagine this black filmmaker one night lounging in the hot tub of his mansion overlooking Sunset Blvd. Imagine this black filmmaker drugging and sodomizing a 13-year-old child. Now imagine the child is a boy.

Still want to dismiss Polanski's criminal charges?