^I agree. I tuned in to
The Late Show With David Letterman a few weeks back because he was a guest, but I just couldn't sit through the whole segment, it was so painful 8/. The little bit of it I saw, he hardly said anything, and when he
did, he talked really quietly and barely put an understandable sentence together :/. His new look is kind of scary, too. Being bearded and having rather long hair is one thing (case in point, Jack Davenport's look until the end of last year, which, though it took some getting used to, was very nice), but
he's just taken it to extremes
. The only way I can think of to explain what's going on with him is whatever demons he's trying to excise through doing music (though I think rap is a rather strange choice of genre; I was expecting something like what he did when he played Johnny Cash in
Walk The Line) are very much at the forefront of his mind, hence his unusual behavior. I hope whatever's causing it will be somewhat resolved in the near future, and we'll get back the Joaquin Phoenix we first became fans of (and not necessarily by way of him returning to doing movies, either)
.