Joaquin Phoenix Is Sorry For Telling The Truth About His Experience With The Oscars

It’s taken a month for Joaquin Phoenix’s publicist to catch up on their backlog of Google Alerts about the completely accurate big boy words the actor used to describe the Academy Awards during a sit-down with Interview Magazine. To whom he said: ‘I think [the Oscars are] bulls**t. I think it’s total, utter bulls**t, and I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t believe in it. It’s a carrot, but it’s the worst-tasting carrot I’ve ever tasted in my whole life. I don’t want this carrot. It’s totally subjective. Pitting people against each other. It’s the stupidest thing in the whole world. It was one of the most uncomfortable periods of my life when Walk the Line was going through all the awards stuff and all that. I never want to have that experience again. I don’t know how to explain it, and it’s not like I’m in this place where I think I’m just above it, but I just don’t ever want to get comfortable with that part of things.’ To which his publicist replied ‘FW: FW: Re: Those Are INSIDE WORDS!’ So of course now he’s backpedaling to The Sydney Morning Herald. Asked whether his comments in Interview will cost him a nomination for The Master, he replied: ‘You know what it’s like… you sit and you bulls**t for a couple of hours. You just miss so much of what someone says when it’s written down. [But] I guess I sound like a d**k. I didn’t even know that I was in a position to do something that would cost me something. But I know that first of all, I wouldn’t have the career that I have if it weren’t for the Oscars. I haven’t been in a lot of movies that have made a lot of money… And getting nominated for a movie has probably helped my career tremendously. But in some ways it’s the antithesis of what you want to be as an actor. You’re always trying to free yourself of the artifice, which is really difficult. Especially when you suck, like me.’ Asked whether he thinks he’s being nominated, he says: ‘Come on, man. You know that it’s more complex than that. It’s not like I f**king hate the Oscars… It doesn’t occupy my time to where I can build up hate. What I was reacting to was sometimes the reverence that we have about these things. I don’t want to revere it.’

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