Phoenix, who starred in 2000’s “Gladiator” and played Johnny Cash in 2005’s “Walk the Line,” announced in late October 2008 that he was leaving acting to pursue a music career.

In January 2009, sporting dark glasses and a scruffy mountain man beard, Phoenix fell off the stage after a three-song rap performance in Las Vegas.

Phoenix’s brother-in-law/actor Casey Affleck was in the audience filming the performance for a documentary about the self-proclaimed former actor’s career change.

“There’s not a hoax,” Phoenix told the Associated Press. “Might I be ridiculous? Might my career in music be laughable? Yeah, that’s possible, but that’s certainly not my intention.”

The next month Phoenix and his scruffy beard promote the last film of his acting career (2008’s “Two Lovers”) with an incoherent, awkward appearance on “Late Show with David Letterman.”

Hoax or not, Phoenix and Affleck’s film is being released through Magnolia Pictures and screened at select theatres Sept. 10.

The teaser trailer for “I’m Still Here” begins with Phoenix and his beard sitting with a gray-haired guy at a black table with a pitcher of water.

“That’s you. Drops of water,” the gray-haired mystery guy says as he points to a few drops of water on the table.

“And you’re on top of the mountain of success. But one day you start sliding down the mountain and you think, wait a minute – I’m a mountain top water drop. I don’t belong in this valley, in this river, this little dark ocean with all these drops of water.

“One day it gets hot and you slowly evaporate into air, way up, higher than any mountaintop, all the way to the heavens.

“Then you understand that it was at your lowest that you were closest to God. Life’s a journey that goes round and round and the end is closest to the beginning. So it’s change you need. So it’s change you need. Relish the journey.”

As the gray-haired guy shares his deep thoughts, Phoenix is seen in a limo, on stage rapping, walking through the flashing lights of paparazzi, at a press event for “Two Lovers,” hanging out in a dark room with his shirtless pot belly, hugging Sean “Diddy” Combs in the studio, and in a church.

Magnolia Pictures calls the film “a portrait of an artist at a crossroads,” explaining that it’s “sometimes funny, sometimes shocking and always riveting.”

So, what do you think? Is it all just a big joke? Will you see “I’m Still Here”?