Joaquin Phoenix the Madman: Big Online Hit

UPDATE: This appearance has finally been confirmed as a hoax.

Joaquin Phoenix has morphed into a unabomber-like, madman of a hip-hop artist – and online audiences are eating it up.

So was it an act? Or has Joaquin Phoenix really become a disheveled hermit who is giving up acting career to pursue a “hip-hop career”?

The interview was one of the strangest things I’ve seen since Andy Kaufman took a surreal detour into professional wresting many years ago.

In case you missed the bizarre exchange between Joaquin Phoenix and David Letterman on the Late Show with David Letterman earlier this week, have a look…

Joaquin was sitting in the chair, but was he really present for the interview? David Letterman didn’t seem to think so.

Either way the interview was a smash hit.

The fiasco drew the most online streams of the Late Show since last October when John McCain was featured. The Phoenix interview drew over 2.5 million views on CBS’ sites in just the first 36 hours after it aired, according to CBS. That doesn’t even include YouTube numbers.

Hundreds of people uploaded the video onto YouTube after it aired, but most of those were removed at CBS’ request. You can still find the slightly edited version above on CBS’ official YouTube page, where the video already has over 1.4 million views.

It doesn’t matter whether it was real or not. It was darned good T.V.

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