Aside from the obvious "well, Land of the Lost looked terrible" factor, The Hangover's success may hint at something more expansive, a change sweeping the old comedy flick rubric. Hasn't there been something of a paradigm shift away from the days when broadly funny, nice-ish actors made those broadly funny nice-ish movies?

Sure we still do have some star-vehicle garbage like the milquetoast Yes Man quietly banking a hundred million dollars here and there, but those sorts of movies don't really have much in the way of cultural currency these days, do they? Really, does anyone remember a single quote from the last few (still successful) Jim Carrey movies? What about Adam Sandler's Click or Bedtime Stories? If the old, chumily caustic breed is dying out, and a new comedy—small, viral, angry, left-of-center—is blossoming, The Hangover might represent the first time that the new kid really did best the old-timer, head to head.

The more underground or "risque" comedy has been beating mainstream stuff in the funny department for a while now, but until recently it's been mainly relegated to cult status at the box office. Little sleepers, pleasant surprises, that sort of thing. But $45 million's worth of people happily showing up to be exposed (wittingly or unwittingly) to the bizarro antics of someone like Zach Galifianakis? That represents a real change.

Perhaps what we once thought of as too weird, subversive, or cerebral is beginning to become just plain old American-style profitable. Could it actually be that all of our college cynicism and snotty in-jokes and internet circle-jerking has actually pupated into something undeniably, universally both funny and appealing? Looks to be.

The 90s and early 00s were so boring and fatty and toothless, so we got the big comedies we deserved—dumb manic fare like Liar, Liar and Happy Gilmore. Even the absurdism of something like Anchorman (which came pretty late in the curve) was fairly light and airy. But now! Now the good stuff is dark and mean and lean and strange. While those kinds of comedy sentiments seemed mostly niche and cultish once not long ago, they now seem almost de rigueur.

So with this new type of funnee stuff beginning its ascendancy, those big glossy laff-man pictures are starting to fade. Now, it's not necessarily time to play blame the actor—Ferrell's Land of the Lost fizzled, sure, but last summer his giddily profane Step Brothers scored—but producers may want to rethink how their movies are shaped and packaged. Go for the sharper angle, and some unexpected people just might bite. (And, yes, we know that Hangover isn't exactly Dr. Strangelove and are aware that the soot-black Observe and Report didn't fare so well, but, you know... baby steps. In the case of O&R, we're not quite ready to laugh at maybe-date-rape yet. Well, most of us aren't anyway.)

Whatever the reason, it does seem, increasingly, like old Nelson Mandela was right. It really is our light that most frightens us. Leaving our darkness to make us laugh.

James Gray, who directed Two Lovers and is also close to Phoenix personally, told ABC News Radio, "if it's an act, it's the most committed act I've ever seen in my life."

"I mean, he built this studio [in his house]. The lengths to which he's taken it are quite extreme."

"Toward the end of the shoot, he kept saying 'Oh I'm so tired, I'm so tired.' You hear that kind of thing and you think it's a joke," he said. "I just ignored it."

Gray said Phoenix got into rap after Gray played the actor some unspecified recording relating to his own teenaged freestyling. "He said, 'I want to do that, I want to steal from that."

Now Gray feels guilty, because Phoenix quit acting. "I feel like I've ruined Joaquin Phoenix for the world."

More worrisome than Phoenix's career switch is the possibility that he's gone off the deep end. Maybe he did so intending it to be part of a hoax, maybe not. But if he's drowning does it really matter?

(Counter theory: It's just a hoax and Gray, who by his own admission is Phoenix's buddy, is in on the whole thing.)

TMZ and our sister from another, Quaadlude-riddled mother Defamer are heavy on the hoax beat. 'Cause, you know, Casey Affleck is filming a documentary of Phoenix's transition from good if not very well liked actor to his new rapper persona: Old Sergeant MacGruffin', a Civil War soldier who got lost in the Great Smoky Mountains for 140 years. So it must be some sort of mockumentary thing and there will be a big "ha ha" and then Phoenix will go back to being an actor, still as good, probably, and definitely still not very well liked. And I believe that!

But I also believe that there's a current of sincerity in the whole debacle, not really born out of an actual desire to become a rapper, but stemming from a great desire for more and more precious drugs. Phoenix's cataclysm on Letterman last night came freighted with the usual "nervous tics" of people currently on or desperately awaiting their next dance with heroin. And like the junkies on The Wire were always cooking up harebrained schemes to go rob junkyards or drug stashes, a rich smackhead with a lot of time on his hands might decide that it makes complete sense to make some gonzo comedy/art project about being a rapper. And then maybe said golden triangulist might start to buy into the whole act a bit too much, because they're crazy and on drugs all the time. That would explain his highly-focused commitment to the act, even while he's being eviscerated by David Letterman. (Or maybe Letterman was in on it!)

The only thing tough to reconcile is Casey Affleck's involvement. If Phoenix really is on drugs, Affleck is kind of a shitty friend for indulging the whole Rip van Tinkle experience. Hopefully, in defense of a world I like to imagine where Casey Affleck is still a nice boy from Cambridge, Phoenix really is a nut, but sober as can be, who is just now finally showing the effects of growing up in the supremely bizarre way that he did. If that's the case, then godspeed. Just don't do anymore national television. It makes me uncomfortable.

It was a good run while it lasted! For years Tara Reid, an actress whose only talent was to remind you of that one babysitter you had that used to sneak menthol cigarettes in the back yard, made a whole career out of dousing herself in Blue Curacao and setting herself ablaze. Lindsay Lohan, a slightly more chaste version of that same babysitter, became famous not really for her roles in movies like Mean Girls and A Prairie Home Companion, but for her hard partying, her various automobile accidents, her splendiferous fire crotch. Sure she eventually banked steeply, the left side of her fuselage ripping off, and exploded over the Andes, but it was a glorious journey for a while. And these ladies, along with Paris Hilton and every dim bulb heir to something or other boy who creaked after them, helped create a new industry of Perez Hilton bloggasm and InTouch magazine shriekery. Everyone was dancing and dancing as fast as they could, spinning themselves into Butter and then suddenly! Poof! It feels kinda over, right?

For one, the economy is in the pile of shit that's buried under the shitter. And to mirror that, Poor Tara is doing sad, "mistakes were made" magazine interviews. Lindsay Lohan is comfortably dating a deejay named Samantha Ronson (yes, dear readers, that's a woman! Maybe they'll get "married!" Keep reading Page Six to find out more!) and she's partying like a lot, lot less than she was before. And Britney is making a quiet little comeback and caring for her kids as best she can (one of them almost exploded last night, but whatevs). Doesn't it seem kind of passe now, all of that crazed going out and drunken slurring for the wobbly cameras of TMZ? It does to us! All the celebrities these days are about causes and whatnot, and so what if it's just bandwagon trendiness. If it means less reality shows about dumb idiots getting their hair dyed and chewing gum and more about people with jobs, then we're OK with it. These are very troubled days, and (finally!) the jewel encrusted partying doesn't just seem silly, it seems irresponsible and unforgivably tacky. Which means, maybe, that the terrible Perez and TMZ monsters will be slain by this economic Bellerophon once and for all and we Gawker people will just start offering tips on, like, urban gardening or something (I know a guy). They've been the ones fueling this whole wickedness. They should go first.

For further proof, just look at the mega success of the most recent High School Musical movie, which opened in actual movie theaters this time and has raked in $75 million in just three weeks. It's a rolling-up-the-sleeves tale of good kids being good and putting on a show. There's nary a swear, swill, or sex moan to be seen or heard in the squeaky/freaky clean enterprise. And for once that kinda feels OK! At its frizzy, tired, Cheez Whizzy heart, that party culture felt awfully cynical and lazy. Though there's plenty to be cynical about these days, there is also, um, Hope! and Change! and the chance—for the first time, I'd argue—for the younger generations to begin the work of making their mark, of rubbing Tom Brokaw's nose in it and saying "there's no Greatest, Tom. They're all Great in their own way."

So—maybe a little early, there's probably some defrib still to be done—we're calling it: the greasy rococo party culture of the early aughts is dead and gone. Replaced by a new can-do, a spirit of hope, change, lesbian relationships, shuddering babies, and reality shows about people doing things. Not quite a Brave New World, sure, but it's something.