Casey Affleck has admitted buddy Joaquin Phoenix’s erratic behavior — the beard, the retirement from acting, the promised hip-hop career — was a put-on for his now-released mockumentary I’m Still Here. And now an interview with Late Show with David Letterman writer Bill Scheft, published in Indianapolis’ indie paper Nuvo last year, reveals that Dave was in on the joke when he did the notorious crash-and-burn interview with Phoenix last year, during which the actor stuck his gum under the desk, mumbled answers amid awkward silences, and generally lacked any sense of consciousness or humor. “Think Andy Kaufman without shaving,” Scheft said. “That’s what he was doing. And Dave knew about it and Dave loved it because he could play along. He could do whatever he wanted with it. And he did, and it was great television. But I will take credit for the line, ‘I think I owe Farrah Fawcett an apology.’ That line was mine. I gave that to him during the break.”
Watching it back again, you can sorta tell Dave’s got a few too many zinger lines like that at the ready: READ FULL STORY »
Videogames don’t really need a strong story. Tetris doesn’t have any complex characters (except for the L-block). But a good story can add a sense of addictive urgency to the gameplay, which is why I’ve been pounding through the Halo: Reach campaign mode until sunrise. Reach has some of the narrative blah-ness of other Halo games — your protagonist is a non-entity personality vacuum, and half the missions are about shutting down shield generators or turning on receiver signals or sci-fi blah blah– but there’s a chilling sense of fatalism pervading everything, since Reach (as a prequel) is destined to end badly. I’m glad I’m playing through the campaign with my roommate, because we typically have to talk each other out of just playing through breakfast.
