In what must be the biggest news ever broken by a sound recordist in history, Oscar winner Resul Pookutty has revealed that Joaquin Phoenix is set to return to the world of acting.
Speaking to the Mumbai Mirror about his next project Pookutty reveals, ““I couldn’t be happier because I am doing a period film. It is a very special challenge because I have to recreate the sound textures of New York in 1854. It’s an adaptation of “The Beautiful Cigar Girl” by Daniel Stashower and based on an eerie real-life experience of author Edgar Allen Poe which happened just months before his death. Joaquin plays Edgar Allen Poe.”
Not to be confused with the forthcoming James McTeigue film “The Raven” starring Jeremy Renner, this film is actually based on a true story about Poe’s investigation in solving the mystery behind the brutal death of a beautiful society girl. This definitely seems like new territory for Phoenix who we don’t need to remind you quit acting, grew a beard and became a crazy person. Here’s the Publisher’s Weekly synopsis of the book:
The author of Edgar winner Teller of Tales now recounts the story of Manhattan tobacco store clerk Mary Rogers, a mysterious beauty whose posse of admirers made her a minor celebrity in 1841 in various newspapers’ society pages. The discovery that year of her mutilated corpse fueled a public outcry and a newspaper circulation war, as well as a fictional magazine serial by Edgar Allan Poe featuring his famous detective Dupin speculating on the murder of working-class Parisian “Marie Rogêt.” Poe rightly deduced that Mary wasn’t a victim of the gang violence that plagued New York City in the absence of an effective police presence. But he came late to the accepted theory that Mary had died of a botched abortion and had to tweak his final installment to maintain his and Dupin’s reputations. Although Stashower’s account bogs down in comparisons of Poe’s revisions of the Rogêt manuscript, it’s a generally absorbing account of the birth of the modern detective story. The sordid details of Mary Rogers’s stunted life pale in comparison with Poe’s own love-starved childhood, self-destructive tidal wave of alcoholism, poverty and rants against publishers and rivals; Poe’s genius and literary legacy are hauntingly drawn here.
There is no word yet on a director, writer or other cast members for this project, and it doesn’t appear on IMDB, but we would imagine if the tech crew is being assembled this one is actually pretty far along in development stages. But for those same reasons, we’re keeping our expectations in check on this report.
Despite his meltdown/celebrity hoax Phoenix is a great talent who delivered probably his career best performance in “Two Lovers.” We hope this news is true as it would be great to see him back on screen again. There’s still no word on the status of Casey Affleck’s mock-doc on the actor that was supposedly nearing completion last summer. But yeah, we want to see that too.
