THE DAILY GRIND I: Joat's up joaith Joaquin Phoenix

Joaquin Phoenix is the kind of actor who hangs up on journalists. Then again, some journalists think having a 10-minute phone interview with Joaquin Phoenix gives them the right to ask about his dead brother, so you can't blame the guy for hanging up when they do. Maybe that sort of thing is why the Oscar-nominated star announced he was retiring from acting to focus on a Hip-Hop music career; as documented by his much-laughed-at debut at Las Vegas club. Then again, maybe the whole things is a hoax. That's was the impression we got from his bizarre appearance on Letterman last night. In a thick beard, big sunglasses and a dark fedora pulled low. He shook hands, then simply refused to engage. On anything. He answered questions in monosyllables, barely acknowledging the audience, even when they clapped for him. Mostly, he just sat.

This was the kind of incredibly awkward, compelling interview Letterman had all the time back at NBC. Watching Phoenix stammer and brood, the crowd's nervous laughter rising, it was like the Letterman glory days, when Andy Kaufmann, Harvey Pekar and Crispin Glover used appearances as a combination of performance art and public psychotherapy. You never knew if they were playing a role and there was always a sense that something unplanned and possibly ugly was about to happen. It was fantastic.

You know how when you see a good spoof, like a well-done commercial parody, there is one instant when you don't know if what you are watching is real? This whole interview was like that.

For a few minutes, you figured Phoenix was pulling a prank. No 34-year-old white guy with two Oscar nominations is going to quit acting for Hip-Hop, and nobody, no matter how sullen, can possibly be that obtuse on national TV. Then, a second later, you thought that he wasn't kidding, that he was drunk, high, tripping or had stopped taking some sort of vital medication. Then you figured he was just acting like a doofus (he is an actor) to get revenge against the film studio for some slight, or maybe as a general "fuck you" to the starmaker machinery, of which Letterman is a part. Even watching the video two or three times, it's hard to tell if Phoenix is insane, acting insane or just pulling some kind of elaborate joke/publicity stunt. There's a real possibility that he doesn't know. Wait… We just it watched again. It's a joke. For sure. He almost cracks up a few times at the end. It's got to be a joke. We're sure of it. Almost.