The big news today is that Joaquin Phoenix went on Letterman last night, this time not in character.  You can hear all about it from boyish wonder Matt Ufford over on WarmingGlow, but probably the best exchange was Dave demanding money for his appearance in I’m Still Here, now that they’ve publicly admitted it wasn’t a strict “documentary.”

Joaquin: “Can we talk about it privately?”

Dave: “Yeah, I’ll go to one of your screenings.”

ZING!  Seriously though, well played, Letterman.  Meanwhile, over on his blog, Roger Ebert published an email exchange with Casey Affleck about the documentary concept which is worth a read, if you’re into that sort of thing.  My sister was a reader.

The bottom line: Casey Affleck thinks of it as a performance and not as an act, and he thinks of “I’m Still Here” as a film, and not a hoax. In an interview where he revealed details behind the making of his controversial film with and about Joaquin Phoenix, he also said:

- David Letterman was not in on the performance, and what you saw on his show was really happening.

- Phoenix dropped out of character when he was not being filmed or in public.

- The drugs and the hookers were staged. The vomiting was real. [phew!]

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Jeez, rough week for Cleveland.  First they lose Lebron James, and now Harvey Pekar. It’s almost as if that fine city is on the decline. I’m sad to admit that I’ve never read the comics that made him famous, but the movie about him, American Splendor, is a classic that never gets talked about enough.  It’s so good it almost makes me forgive Judah Friedlander for his stupid godd*mned hats.

Pekar, 70, was found dead shortly before 1 a.m. today by his wife, Joyce Brabner, in their Cleveland Heights home, said Powell Caesar, spokesman for Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller. An autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death. Pekar and his wife, Joyce Brabner, wrote “Our Cancer Year,” a book-length comic, after Pekar was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1990 and underwent a grueling treatment.
Pekar chronicled his life and times in the acclaimed autobiographical comic-book series, “American Splendor,” portraying himself as a rumpled, depressed, obsessive-compulsive “flunky file clerk” engaged in a constant battle with loneliness and anxiety.
“American Splendor” carried the subtitle, “From Off the Streets of Cleveland,” and just like Superman, the other comic book hero born in Cleveland, Pekar wore something of a disguise. He never stepped into a phone booth to change, but underneath his persona of aggravated, disaffected file clerk, he was an erudite book and jazz critic, and a writer of short stories that many observers compared to Chekhov, despite their comic-book form.
“American Splendor” had its roots in Pekar’s friendship with R. Crumb, the seminal underground comic-book artist, whom he met in 1962 when Crumb was working for American Greetings in Cleveland. At the time, Crumb was just beginning to explore the possibilities of comics, which would later lead to such groundbreaking work as “Mr. Natural” and “Fritz the Cat.”
When Pekar, inspired by Crumb’s work, wrote his nascent strip in 1972, Crumb illustrated it. Crumb also contributed to Pekar’s first full-fledged books, which Pekar started publishing annually in 1976. [Cleveland Plain-Dealer]

If you haven’t noticed, death is kind of an assh*le lately.  You steal Harvey Pekar and Dennis Hopper, yet Seltzer and Friedberg walk around healthy as horses? You can be a real d*ck sometimes. A few classic Pekar videos after the jump.

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Joaquin Phoenix was a guest on Dave Letterman last night (watch the video after the jump), ostensibly to promote Two Lovers, but really to stay in the actor-turned-rapper character he claims not to have invented for Casey Affleck’s documentary.  You have to give him credit, his schtick is really consistent – earnest but confused, sensitive, always wondering why everyone’s laughing at him.  Early on, Dave (who doesn’t seem to be in on the joke) asks him about his beard.

DAVE: You look different than I remember. (laughter)  You’ve got, uh, a nice beard going.
JOAQUIN: Yeah.  Thank you.
DAVE: How is that, the beard?
JOAQUIN: (looking around) …In what way?
DAVE: Well, is it comfortable? Is it itchy? Are you pleased with it?
JOAQUIN: …I’m okay with it.  …But now you’re making me feel weird about it.

And it goes on like that, with Dave trying to make jokes, Joaquin giving one-word answers and pretending to be offended, and the crowd laughing uncomfortably until it sort of comes to a head when Dave asks him to introduce a clip from the movie (4:35 of the video).  Joaquin says he doesn’t know what the clip is, Dave implies he’s unprofessional, Joaquin gets offended, and Dave makes a crack, “No, that’s fine.  I’ll come to your house and chew gum.”  At which point Joaquin says, “That’s fine, I don’t have to chew gum,” and sticks it to the bottom of the desk (pictured).

Like the tag on his shirt, the gum-under-the-desk moment is one where I think you can tell it’s a joke because he took it one step too far.  Nikki Finke even goes so far as to call it a “career-ending appearance.” But honestly, if you’d rather watch him promote a Gwyneth Paltrow movie than this, I don’t think we can be friends.
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^{“So anyway, Brassky’s bow-hunting for wild boar in the jungles of Indonesia…”}

As Russell Crowe told Letterman last night, he wanted to show how funny he could be on the set of Body of Lies. So he ad-libbed “my favorite line I ever delivered in a movie.”

“I swear to God, I didn’t know where this came from,” Crowe told Letterman, “but I’m standing there, and Leonardo says, ‘How was your flight?’ and I said, ‘I watched that Poseidon.’ And he said ‘How was it?’ And I said, ‘It was like watching a Greek girl get a bikini wax. I had no idea when it was going to end.’ ” [...]
“But that didn’t make the taste level of Warner Bros movies,” Crowe complained. [via DHD]

Russell Crowe’s favorite line ever, cinematic history, ruined by some shrivs at WB.  It’s we the moviegoers who suffer. Why, just imagine if we’d been denied Humphrey Bogart’s line about tossing a Puerto Rican’s salad, or Rock Hudson’s zinger about teabagging an Armenian.

The upside of Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro doing a really crappy movie like Righteous Kill (sample review quote: “Righteous Kill is so average that the standard bell curve can’t calculate just how general it is.” -Popmatters) is that they have to work their asses off to promote it.  Here they are presenting the top ten list on Letterman, “The Top Ten Reasons I Like Being An Actor”.  I won’t ruin it, but a couple highlights:

9.  Every time I go to work, I get to ask myself, “I wonder if I’ll see Harvey Keitel naked?”
7.  If you do a scene where you eat pudding, they often let you keep the pudding.

See?  Every turd has a silver lining.  (leaning over to whisper in your ear) I eat nickles.

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