No Joke: NYC Moviegoers to Get a Message From Joaquin Phoenix Condemning Cruelty to Fish

For Immediate Release:
October 2, 2024

Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382

Joaquin Phoenix has teamed up with PETA for a video spot that will air in theaters before each showing of his new, highly anticipated film, Joker: Folie à Deux, whichopens on October 4. In the spot, the actor and vegan activist is seen underwater, terror-stricken and struggling for oxygen. Phoenix emphasizes that fish endure agonizing deaths when they’re dragged from their watery homes.

“In water, humans drown, just as fish suffocate on land. It’s slow and painful and frightening, and we do it to more than 1 trillion fish every year,” Phoenix says in the video. “Put yourself in their place. Try to relate.”

More fish are killed for food each year than all other animals combined. Fish feel pain as acutely as mammals do, have long-term memories, and sing underwater. Yet they’re impaled, crushed, suffocated, dropped into pots of boiling water, or cut open and gutted, often while they’re still conscious. Each person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals every year, dramatically shrinks their carbon footprint, and avoids ingesting the many toxic chemicals found in the flesh of fish, including mercury, lead, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help those looking to make the switch.

The spot will run at Cinema 123 by Angelika in the East Village and at Cobble Hill Cinemas and Williamsburg Cinemas in Brooklyn as well as at theaters in other cities, including Los Angeles; Portland, Maine; and Falmouth, Massachusetts. 

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.