Respect Authority

The world of cinema shed a single heartfelt tear this week when actor Joaquin Phoenix said he would be leaving acting to focus on his music career.

Indeed, Phoenix, who hinted at the decision last week, made it official during a premiere Saturday in the only way there is to make anything official: by writing it on your knuckles in Sharpie. Decked out with “Bye! Good” for the cameras, Phoenix confirmed that he would be parting ways with his acting career to focus on singing, something he picked up, consequently, while ACTING the part of Johnny Cash in 2005’s Walk the Line.

“I think it’s just moving on. It’s rediscovering something else,” Phoenix told the Associated Press before Saturday’s American Film Institute festival, a statement that reassured fans he plans to leave things like “diction” and “making sense” behind as well. Phoenix, who learned to play guitar and did his own singing for Walk the Line, has apparently been filling the musical void in his life by directing music videos over the past few years. Considering this little hobby is completely unknown to the rest of the world, I have to imagine these are music videos produced by his nieces and nephews and feature Billboard chart-toppers like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Row Row Row Your Boat.” But not one to let the dream die, Phoenix called his music career “greener pastures.”

It would appear that while Phoenix was busy acting these past few years, no one took the time to give him a much-needed reality check. First, despite the actor’s success as the truly despicable villain in Gladiator, and his Academy Award-winning performance in Walk the Line, the man hasn’t really done all that much. Two of his larger roles in M. Night Shyamalan films suffered from the same confused direction of all Shyamalan creations, and playing a firefighter in universally-panned Ladder 49 hardly helped. At this point, with Gladiator nearly 10 years in the past, I suppose I can see why Phoenix saw his success in Walk the Line as a jumping-off point for bigger and better things. But someone — a friend, agent or therapist — would do well to remind him that his prowess in that role was based in ACTING like a famous musician, not being one.

The saddest part is Phoenix’s seeming perception of himself as a made musician, who’s simply dropping this silly “acting” hobby to pursue his lyrical career full-time. Unfortunately for him, one role as a musician does not a musician make, any more than Britney Spears could call herself an actress for her stellar performance in Crossroads.

Sometimes, Joaquin, that other pasture may seem greener, but when you get over there it’s actually just mold.

[CNN]