Seriously, why do actors need to speak? I’m not being entirely serious, since I certainly appreciate an actor who speaks his mind to a degree. I mean, it shows that they aren’t mechanical beings in pursuit of fame and fortune. Yet, when an actor as prickly as Joaquin Phoenix gets ahold of a journalist you can expect him to open his mouth and shove both of his feet in there. The man is eternally bizarre and has done the same quite a few times. He often awkward and experiences word vomit a lot. I mean, I still remember cringing when he accepted his Globe award back in ’05. The fact that his acceptance speech started with a near diss (“Comedy?”) was kind of off-putting.
Coming off of his bizarre stunt with brother-in-law Casey Affleck, you’d think that Phoenix would be attempting to gain some goodwill and mend some bridges. I expected his agent to duct tape his mouth shut, but apparently they are just letting him loose.
Bad idea.
So, Phoenix is calling the Oscars “utter bullshit” and basically running his campaign into the ground. He isn’t going to campaign at all. Now, there is a classy way of going about this and then there is a trashy way, and Phoenix, always the awkward realist, went trashy. Look at Mo’Nique back in ’09. She didn’t campaign, but she classily expressed her desire to win and the reasons why she wasn’t going to self-promote. Instead of simply saying that ’05 was stressful for him and he really doesn’t like to put himself out there that much, he basically ripped the Oscars a new one.
Some are debating his Oscar chances now. Some are even saying a nomination is out of the question, when just like a week ago he was the only real lock. What do you think? Maybe prickly actors have received Oscar attention despite being vocal about not really caring about the awards. Viggo Mortensen even refused to accept membership with the Academy back in ’05 and was still nominated in ’07, so I really don’t think this is going to hurt him TOO much, but his word vomit isn’t doing anything for his reputation, and I have a feeling that a win is going to be a really hard sell now. I honestly didn’t see him winning without unanimous support from critics and the televised precursors, but I’m even more confident in him losing at this point.
Oscar likes to be respected, not mocked.
