Joaquin Phoenix and the Nature Of Truth in 2010

I saw “I’m Still Here” last weekend and came away convinced it was not a “hoax.” When I learned this morning that this film is total fabrication, I couldn’t believe it. I had gone into the theatre with an open mind and came away convinced that I had actually observed a human being having a mental breakdown. How stupid could I have been?

But here it is. Casey Affleck, director and documentarian (apparently mockumentarian) of Joaquin Phoenix’s breakdown told Roger Ebert the “real story.” It was all an acting job.

How is this possible? Does it matter? Who cares?

It is possible, it matters a great deal, and anybody in the “communication” biz had better care because this is what can happen – and maybe does far more than we imagine -- when the media, the consumers of media, and the creators of media gather.

I mean what IS real? If somebody like Joaquin Phoenix or Sacha Baron Cohen can “go into character” for long periods of time and fool everybody who’s not in on the joke – including self-promoter extraordinaire, Sean “Puff Daddy Diddy” Combs – what the heck does reality have to do with anything anymore?

If you’re in the marketing business – or if you live on Planet Earth – here are the troubling questions that Joaquin has thrown at us:

1. Is reality TV really real, or are these folks all “acting”?
2. Do people who star on reality TV become real (in other words, do they soon begin to believe their own nonsense?)
3. How are politicians of the day any different from method actors, drenched in their roles? Has Sarah Palin become who she wasn’t, but now is? What does that say about a leader “we can believe in”?
4. If the media, too, can be fooled, can we believe anything that we see or hear, or read in the media?
5. If the media has become the distributor of stories, games, and propaganda, what do we need it for? Do we care?
6. Does “success” merely lie in the ability to deceive for a purpose?
7. Do consumers any longer care whether or not an event is true or if any person is really what they are representing?

There’s a lot to think about here and if this story doesn’t get our communal brain into high gear, we are indeed fiddling.

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Business Video Grows, Improves, Advances, and Influences

Last week, Mashable featured some eye-popping numbers about video use. To wit: 84.4% of U.S. Internet users watched at least one online video in October and the average person watched 10.8 hours of video. Indeed, online video continues to grow and the end is nowhere in site. In fact, video is fast on its way to becoming the radical (for now, but not for long) human learning tool.

BVo supports that notion. Created in the spring of 2008 in association with IBM, BVo founder Anthony Gell says: ".. quite frankly, we got tired of scrolling through online video sites looking for business inspiration, only to find some very strange homemade movies. So we launched The Business Voice (BVo) - world leaders at your desk."

BVo interviews business leaders and vlogs the clips. American Express Open Forum does much the same thing. Both are excellent learning tools, well-funded, and exceptionally well produced. Efforts like these are raising the bar on online education. Expect more of the same.

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So They Call It Augmented Reality, Do They?

Americans went from TV shows in the 50s that framed our attitudes about family … to Friends in the 80s that effortlessly defined how a generation of twenty-somethings would view personal relationships … to this decade's “Housewives of Everywhere” that keeps us entertained by the rich and becoming-famous. So where are we going with our increasing personal involvement with MeTube?

No doubt we’re heading to a situation where all of us can virtually “get into and onto” any TV show we want: sports, home decorating, cooking, travel, Flav o Flav, dog rescue, or food orgy – you name it. Participation in reality TV is the next logical step, as couch potatoes clamor to become the entertainment they seek.

There's a name for this techno fantasy: It’s called augmented reality, and a survey by Infegy.com says people in general are very psyched about it. If my 10-year old friend can play Wii simultaneously with her pal down the street, Marketing Brillo can't be too far from joining the gals in Atlanta for a smack-down ... right?

Want to see what augmented reality looks like in its infancy? Check out this provocative -- though still extraordinarily primitive -- YouTube demonstration. Or watch how the World Wildlife fund is already using the technology in its marketing/fundraising efforts.

See you soon on Flipping Out.

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Twitter’s Trash-or-Trust Treatment Goes to the Movies

Buzz has always driven film success and Twitter has put buzz on steroids. Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno, for example “tanked” from the “Twitter Effect,” becoming what Time magazine called “a One-Day Wonder.” [see opinion commentary below]

Word-of-mouth now flies at warp speed and the worst thing film studios can do is oversell a movie in hopes to rake in first-weekend money. It just doesn't work. Todd Phillips, director of Hangover (the top-grossing R-rated comedy of all time, according to Warner Bros.) told The Canadian Press that, “In the old days, it used to be the water cooler effect… Now people get on their thing Friday night when they leave [the theater] and talk to 8,000 people.”

Films may be particularly susceptible to the Twitter Effect because they release widely and simultaneously, but any new product release can falter from Twitter’s trash-or-trust treatment. Keeping expectations in line with reality is key. Jeff Otto, blogging about Hangover at MovieSet notes that, “For all the great bits they gave away in the endless WB marketing campaign leading up to this week’s release, there’s still loads of great material they managed to hide from audiences. See this one before your idiot coworkers ruin it for you at the water cooler..”

Too late for that, Jeff. They already tweeted.. and the tweet was good.

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IMHO, Sacha Baron Cohen's work is an intellectual tour de force. Above all others, Cohen takes a thorough, courageous, unflinching look at our lowest human preconceptions, preoccupations, and misconceptions. Borat was for the xenophobic and Bruno is for the homophobic. And -- even when it's distasteful and hideous to watch, which it often is -- Cohen's work is art, definitely art.