hoax Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Cinematical Seven: Famous Hollywood Hoaxes
Filed under: RumorMonger », Fandom », Cinematical Seven »
If you are the type of person who believes what you are told, then the release of James Gray's Two Lovers is probably your last chance to see Joaquin Phoenix 'the actor' before he takes the hip-hop world by storm -- but that's only if you believe what you've been told. For every person who is convinced that Mr. Phoenix has gone around the bend (and you can't blame them with footage like this floating around), you will find another person who thinks that the whole thing is a big hoax...and it wouldn't be the first time we've been taken for a ride by a celebrity. But until Casey Affleck releases that 'documentary' of his, we won't know for sure, and I decided it might be worthwhile to look at other Tinseltown hoaxes to remind us that you can't always believe what you read -- especially in Hollywood.
1. Stanley Kubrick Fakes the Moon Landing
It's been a popular conspiracy theory that the director provided most of the footage for the Apollo 11 and 12 Moon landings; and as the story goes, Kubrick was right in the middle of post-production on 2001: A Space Odyssey, when he was approached by NASA to create footage of a moon landing since his was so realistic. Over the years, most of these theories have been debunked, but defenders of the 'Kubrick connection' love to remind us that Kubrick later used lenses for Barry Lyndon that were developed by NASA -- which they say is the proof of payment for faking the lunar adventure.
After the jump: the birth of 'Bigfoot' and hoaxes that ended with hard time...
Have We Been Punk'd by Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck?
Filed under: Documentary », RumorMonger », Celebrities and Controversy »
I'm all for people looking to expand their creative horizons, but I know -- like most of you -- that when news first hit that Joaquin Phoenix was retiring from acting to focus on a hip-hop career, my first reaction was: Are you kidding me? Well, it looks like there's a very good possibility that's exactly what the celebrated actor is trying to do. Over at EW, a source is reporting that Casey Affleck and Phoenix are the orchestrators of a massive hoax. According to EW, Phoenix told the unnamed source, "It's a put-on. I'm going to pretend to have a meltdown and change careers, and Casey is going to film it."EW wasn't the first to cry 'bull' at Phoenix's antics; Defamer had gotten in early on the act, and when video footage surfaced of Phoenix falling off stage and slurring his way through a rap tune in Vegas, it convinced a lot of people that his new "career change" was nothing but a big joke or gimmick ... or next year's most talked-about secret Sundance film. To be fair, it's not like this was the first time Phoenix had behaved a little strangely, so once The Hollywood Reporter announced that Affleck would be making a documentary chronicling his brother in law's music career, it gave the news a bit more weight. Meanwhile, reps for both Phoenix and Sean 'Diddy' Combs (who was apparently going to produce Phoenix's album) have declined to comment on EW's story.
Is Unknown White Male another Million Little Pieces?
Filed under: Documentary », Independent », Celebrities and Controversy », Oscar Watch », Cinematical Indie »
Ever since the Oscar-nominated Unknown White Male (review here) premiere at last year's Sundance Film
Festival, there have been rumblings that the story it tells about Doug
Bruce's memory loss and subsequent new life is too strange to be real. Additionally, everyone in the movie is
good-looking and smart, which is a little suspicious in a film that's supposed to be about real life. Some at Sundance
went so far as to suggest that the film was an elaborate joke, much like Peter
Jackson's cheeky Forgotten Silver, which fooled all of
New Zealand before it was revealed to be a mockumentary. In a recent GQ article, Michel Gondry - who semi-seriously wonders if the inspiration for
UWM came from his own Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - admits that he doesn't believe Bruce, but has never been willing to confront
him about his doubts.Needless to say, Bruce, the filmmaker, and everyone else behind the film deny there's anything fictional about it. Interestingly, the distributing team - Court TV and Wellspring - has refused to use the simmering controversy as a tool to promote the film. Given the marketing potential in a "Is it or isn't it?" campaign, it would be a move of incredible stupidity not to use that angle to promote a film that you know is faked and, presumably, plan to eventually come clean about. That, combined with the fact that not a single shred of concrete evidence has surfaced to disprove the reality of the film, seems to suggest that UWM is telling the truth. After all, as JT Leroy and James Frey can tell us, it's almost impossible to keep a secret this big in the modern world - you've got to believe that something would have leaked out by now.
That said, if it's a hoax, it's a fantastic one, and I'm just one of the many suckers.
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