“Joker“It’s a hard act to follow. Todd Phillips dark, learning Scorsese-inspired characters about the villain Batman made over a billion dollars at the box office, won Joaquin Phoenix’s first Oscar, dominated the cultural discourse for months and made a new film. landmark.
Knowing that it was a fool’s errand to try to do it again, Phillips and Phoenix pivoted, or rather, pirouetted into what would become “Joker: Folie a Deux”.
A dark and fantastical musical journey goes deeper into the mind of Arthur Fleck as he waits to try to kill and fall in love with a friend. Arkham the convict, Lee, played by Lady Gaga. There is singing, dancing and mayhem.
If Phillips and Phoenix have learned anything over the years, it’s that the scarier, the better. So once again they rebelled against expectations and broke something that had clearly divided critics.
As with the first one, audiences will decide for themselves when it opens in theaters on October 4.
“How did you get JOAQUIN PHOENIX to do the sequel?”
Any comic book movie that makes billions of dollars is going to be a sequel conversation. But with “Joker” it was never given that it would go anywhere: Joaquin Phoenix did not do a sequel. But as it turns out, Phoenix isn’t done with Arthur Fleck.
During the first time, the actor wondered what this character would look like in different situations. He and the photographer on the plane mocked up classic movie posters, like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Yentl” with the Joker and showed them to Phillips.
“Sometimes you’re done with something and other times you have an ongoing interest,” Phoenix said. “There’s just more to explore… I just felt like we weren’t done yet.”
So Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver had to work on a new script, which encouraged the music in Arthur Fleck’s head. Then his dreary Arkham life turns Technicolor when he meets and falls for Lee, a Joker superfan.
“Joaquin Phoenix is not going to do a line drive. He will not do something that is fan service,” Phillips. “He wanted to be as scary as he was with the first movie. So we tried to make something as audacious and get it out there and hopefully people get it.”
LADY GAGA SAW LEE’S VOICE, AND LOST HERSELF
One of the decisions that has sparked debate is to cast someone with a voice like Lady Gaga and not use the instrument to its full potential. Phillips, who is a producer on “A Star is Born,” wants someone who “brings the music with him.” But Lee is not a singer.
“Singing is second nature to me, and making music and performing on stage is in me. Especially this music,” Gaga said. “I worked extensively on untraining myself for this film and threw away as much as I could all the time to make sure that I never locked into what I did. I really kind of removed everything.”
Phoenix, unsure of what it would be like to work with someone with a larger-than-life superstar persona, found Gaga to be unassuming and available. And as an actor, he admires his commitment to the character.
“His strength is singing and singing in a certain way,” he said. “For him to sacrifice that through the character, to do something that people will call music, but not performing in a way that will sound best as a singer but for the approach of the character is a very difficult process. I am really impressed with his willingness to do that.”
In addition to writing a “falling waltz” for the film, Gaga released a companion album, “Harlequin” on Friday with titles including “Oh, When the Saints”, “World on a String”, “If My Friends”. Can You See Me Now” and “This Is Life”.
SORRY PUDDIN’, THIS IS NOT HARLEY QUINN MARGOT ROBBIE
Just like Joker Phoenix is not Heath Ledger or Jack Nicholson, Lee Gaga is not Harley Quinn from “Birds of Prey.”
“We’re not going to beat what Margot Robbie did,” Phillips said. “You have to do something 180 degrees in the other direction.”
Of course, Lee will still set things on fire in order to burn the Joker, but the turmoil is more internal. And Gaga threw herself into making Lee something new: A real person, based on the reality that came before him.
“I spent a lot of time developing his inner life (which) for me had a lot to do with the storm and whatever made him explode,” Gaga said. “There’s a certain danger that he carries with him, but it’s inside and it’s like an explosion.”
CREATE IT FOR
Anyone who has worked with Phoenix knows that he likes to keep things fresh. This could mean something as small as changing the location of a prop or as big as throwing out a choreography you’ve rehearsed for months at the last minute.
“I think I love violence and not just in movies but on set,” Phillips said. “You have to feel like anything can happen.”
With the crew 95 percent the same as the first one, everyone is ready to be flexible. Gaga also jumped right in, suggesting they sing live on camera.
“It changed everything about filmmaking,” Phillips said. “We don’t just sing live, we sing differently every time we take it.”
IS THAT ENTERTAINMENT?
Since Arthur killed Robert De Niro’s talk show host Murray Franklin on live television in the first movie, he became a kind of icon and curiosity thanks in no small part to the frequent references, but never seen, the television movie that was made about him. Now, the trial will be televised as well.
“Underneath it all, there’s the idea of corruption and how everything is corrupt in the system, from the prison system to the justice system to the idea of entertainment, to be honest,” Phillips said. “This idea, at least in the United States, is all entertainment. Court trials can be entertainment, and presidential elections can be entertainment. So, if that’s true, what is entertainment?”
