After the enormous success of his film JokerOscar winner in 2019the director Todd Phillips decided to lengthen the story of the character Joaquin Phoenixwho played the lead role in the original version and repeats in the sequel. The film centers on Arthur Fleck, a lonely man with a history of mental health problems, who eventually becomes Batman’s archenemy. “Often, as much as we enjoy making a movie, at the end of the day you’re counting down the days until it’s done. But in the filming of the first Joker“Neither Joaquín nor I wanted it to end,” said Philips in conversation with Article14.
For the annals of cinema history remains that iconic scene of Phoenix as the Joker dancing on the stairs and moving as if he had music in his head. That moment was the seed for the second part because Phillips considered turning the sequel into a musical.
‘Joker: Folie à Deux’, starring Joaquim Phoenix and Lady Gaga, is a favorite at the Venice Film Festival
Joker: Folie à deux begins two years after the first part ends, with Phoenix’s character in prison awaiting trial for murder. Lady Gaga steps into the shoes of Lee Quinzel, the Joker’s accomplice who will end up transforming into Harley Quinn. The film addresses issues related to mental health disorders, defense against insanity and how the media can turn murderers into celebrities.
“The best actor of the moment”
“I feel so blessed to have spent the last five years looking at Joaquin Phoenix’s face, talking to Joaquin Phoenix, working with Joaquin Phoenix… I think he is the best actor of the moment. I think he’s on the Mount Rushmore of his generation of actors,” adds Todd Phillips. For the director, the character and corruption are the guiding threads of the narrative. “Films tend to be a mirror of society. We can see that our judicial system is corrupt, that the media is corrupt and I do not forget that There is also corruption in entertainment.”
Todd Phillips made his name in Hollywood directing blockbuster comedies like the saga The Hangover, Road Trip y Old School. After going through the darkness of the two Joker films, he confesses his desire to return to humor. “The end of this year will probably be wild”he says, alluding to the United States elections. “And it seems like everyone needs to calm down and laugh again. “I’m ready to make another comedy because I think that’s what the world needs,” reveals the filmmaker.
Director and producer Todd Phillips, Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix at the premiere of ‘Joker: folie a deux’ in Los Angeles
Regarding Lady Gaga’s talent for shedding her pop star persona and stepping into the shoes of Harley Quinn, Philips confessed her surprise at the singer’s talent. “He was able to be vulnerable. Obviously, I knew she could sing, she brought us music, but she’s also a great performer. I was one of the producers of a star is bornso I knew her ability to transform as an actress. Being a singer is different from being an actor. Hollywood’s biggest actor probably couldn’t sell 50,000 tickets in a stadium. But a singer can. They are famous on a different level and she blew us all away with her ability to abandon her reality and be vulnerable in the role.’
Joker: Folie À Deux tells the love story between comic book characters Fleck and Quinn at Arkham State Hospital, but the duo actually embark on a romantic adventure after their release. Joaquin Phoenix revealed that it was Lady Gaga who insisted he sing with her live in the film. “Stefani (that’s what Joaquin called her) said from the beginning that we would sing live and I said no, we weren’t going to do it. But he convinced me and Not only did we sing live, but every song on the recording was live. Every take was a different version of the song and that was really exciting, because that’s what appears in the movie.”
Phoenix talked about the diet he adopted to film Joker: Folie À Deuxafter having lost 20 kilos to play Fleck in the first film. “It was harder for me to lose weight this time. I guess it gets more complicated with age… I’m 49 years old and I don’t think I should subject my body to these changes. I didn’t want to obsess over weight while filming this film because I ended up sick of talking about it and angry with myself for giving so much importance to that detail during the original film. “As an actor you do what you’re supposed to do.” To help you in your explanation, the actress and singer Lady Gaga spoke on the same topic. “I think that we actors transform into our characters over a period of time and continue to perfect every type of detail”said the singer.
‘Joker: Folie à Deux’, starring Joaquim Phoenix and Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga revealed that she and Phoenix sought to show unpolished voices to give their characters more authenticity. “I am a trained singer, but I changed even my breathing when singing like Lee. When I breathe to sing on stage, I have a very controlled way of making sure I’m in a key I can stay with for a while. But with Lee I didn’t do any of that,” Gaga explained at the press conference.
Furthermore, the singer of Rain on Mewho announced a companion album for the film, Harlequinsaid that Folie à Deux was not necessarily a musical, despite featuring multiple elaborate song and dance numbers. “Most times I’ve seen a musical, I come out feeling better than when I went in. With this movie, I’m not sure that’s the case. “I wouldn’t want to deceive the public and tell them that they are going to come out whistling about the issues.” Philips explained that the singing scenes were filmed live during filming: “Often in musicals, actors want to sing live on set with a background music track. But how Joaquin wanted it to feel really live, we had a pianist playing on stage in a small soundproof boothso that the actors could follow the music. It was difficult because then, during editing, we had to reverse engineer the arrangements.”
On being flexible in his filmmaking style, even in dramatic films, the director shared his admiration for auteur cinema. “I started being a filmmaker through documentaries. And that’s all documentaries are, I mean, you set out to make a movie and then the movie you end up with is very different from what you set out to do because, Ultimately, the movie tells you what it wants to be. And then I went to the comedy where you were trying to write a joke eight months before filming it, and suddenly you have Will Ferrell on the set telling that joke to Vince Vaughn and it doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would, but Will Ferrell, who is a comedic genius, suddenly puts a twist on it and makes it better. I always say that filmmaking is not mathematics. “It’s jazz, which means it’s a living, breathing, shape-changing organism.”
