Depending on your views, April 1 is either a fun-filled day of mayhem and pranks, or the day when everyone's a self-entitled jerk. April Fool's Day is the equivalent of movie spoilers as a holiday, where every calculated move is somehow ruined by the fact that it's a day dedicated to fooling your friends. However, is there a quintessential film that reflects the ideals of April Fool's Day? After all, Groundhog Day has Groundhog Day, and Leap Day has both Leap Day and Leap Year (though neither are good). It is in this moment that I suggest to you a radical theory that will hopefully catch on and become a permanent staple to your viewing habits. That's right. The 2010 film I'm Still Here is the quintessential April Fool's Day movie, and there are absolutely no exceptions.
Think back to your childhood, or even two years ago. There has to be at least one moment in your life where you turned red in the face to a laughing crowd as they screamed "April Fools!" There's a certain embarrassment that filled the moment as you tried to rebuild your pride and admit that there was some deception behind this move. In some cases, maybe even you were the one who put the prank in motion. It may be difficult to remember a mere six years later, but director Casey Affleck pretty much did one of the most elaborate pranks in cinema history by having Joaquin Phoenix fake his retirement to become a rapper.
There are those who remember the film after the fact. It's in that time that the film bombed and received notorious backlash for faking out audiences (nobody will be surprised to learn that Phoenix returned to acting and has since garnered an Oscar nomination and two Golden Globe nominations). It is likely that the film has faded into further obscurity with each passing year. However, there's something to being in the moment when the prank was actually in play. Unlike most mockumentaries, specifically in the vein of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat or Bruno, I'm Still Here was frequently in publications. The fact that a prestigious actor would grow a beard and beat up fans was apocryphal, not to mention nonsensical when you add in a rap career. Even the infamous The Late Show moment with David Letterman could suffice as "leaked footage" for the film over a year before the film was even announced.
Unlike most people's pranks, I'm Still Here was one that happened over time with a commendable commitment. People believed that Phoenix's career was actually spiraling down. It isn't even as if he's an anomaly. Every year there's dozens of celebrities suffering from paparazzi overexposure and bad participating in bad behavior. It may generally be why Phoenix's decline was eventually shrugged off when it was revealed to be "art." Even then, Affleck's work refused to draw the line between fact and fiction, suggesting that Phoenix was either a mastermind and faked a breakdown (thus making it a mockumentary), or he really did suffer an identity crisis (thus making it a legitimate documentary). Until Affleck broke the news on the late night circuit, nobody was sure.
Even the reviews on the box for the DVD would suggest that nobody could agree. It featured reviews ranging from recognition of its work as a documentary to one critic calling Phoenix the Marlon Brando of his generation. Speaking as this was a guerrilla style film making, neither feels appropriate, especially for a film that features a ridiculous amount of self-loathing and needless art direction. Phoenix loses all of vanity, and it pays off nicely in the role with a swift mix of clueless humor that makes Phoenix seem like an idiot, down to his choice to delightfully bash the press circuit for his previous film Reservation Road.
Yet the best part of every prank is the revelation that it is in fact meant to fool the audience. Beyond the format of the film, the subtext was also cleverly disguised as a dumb Phoenix mental breakdown picture. In reality, it is a film rich with details of Phoenix exploring the concept of celebrity culture while hanging out with fans, doing "drugs," and getting critiqued by Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. Most people likely trashed the movie for feeling fooled, believing that Phoenix deceived them. However, it was by gaining their trust that he was able to reflect how the media grasps onto the sick fascination with downward spirals. He was so committed to the bit that his collaboration with P. Diddy even resulted in a beat he made being used in the Pusha T song "King Push."
Of course, how are you going to trust a movie that opens with the production company called "They're Going to F--king Kill Us." Even Affleck's direction plays into celebrity narcissism. At one point, Edward James Olmos gives a falsely gratifying and deep metaphor about water drops. Later, Phoenix reads a children's book as militaristic imagery plays over the cutesy words. Still, it was the closing that is the most dedicated to the prank. In the sequence, Phoenix walks shirtless through a shallow river until he is immersed in it. This doesn't take a minute, but many to complete; and Affleck never cares to speed up. It is the ultimate in celebrity self-indulgence, and which embodies the underlying humor of I'm Still Here. If you are obsessed with celebrities' failures, you are an idiot.
Of course, the film is a lot more brash and juvenile than its richly complicated meanings would have you believe. It is necessary for the joke to work on its audience, and in doing so manages to take the viewer into an exploitative journey of what idol worship does to the psyche. It's shallow and dumb, and Phoenix's bold approach manages to commit to it better than most April Fool's Day pranks not done by the core cast of Jackass. It's for this reason that the film should be cherished as one of the cinematic equivalents of a prank, choosing to go where not even Andy Kaufman before Affleck and Phoenix could go. It may seem inessential to see the prank in motion once you know what it is, but Affleck's work is so layered and balanced that the joke isn't entirely straightforward, and that's what the best type of pranks are.
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