VENICE, Italy (AP) â â â is a hard act to follow. Todd Phillipsâ dark, Scorsese-inspired character study about the Batman villain made over a billion dollars at the box office, , dominated the cultural discourse for months and created a new movie landmark.
It wasnât for everyone, but it got under peopleâs skin.
Knowing that it was a foolâs errand to try to do it again, Phillips and Phoenix pivoted, or rather, pirouetted into what would become â .â The dark and fantastical musical journey goes deeper into the mind of Arthur Fleck as he awaits trial for murder and falls in love with a fellow Arkham inmate, Lee, played by Lady Gaga. There is singing, dancing and mayhem.
If Phillips and Phoenix have learned anything over the years, itâs that the scarier something is, the better. So once again they rebelled against expectations and went for broke with something thatâs already sharply divided critics.
As with the first, audiences will get to decide for themselves when it opens in theaters on Oct. 4.
âHOW ARE YOU GOING TO GET JOAQUIN PHOENIX TO DO A SEQUEL?â
Any comic book movie that makes a billion dollars is going to have the sequel talk. But with âJokerâ it was never a given that it would go anywhere: Joaquin Phoenix doesnât do sequels. Yet it turned out, Phoenix wasnât quite done with Arthur Fleck yet either.
During the first, the actor wondered what this character would look like in different situations. He and the on-set photographer mocked up classic movie posters, like âOne Flew Over the Cuckooâs Nestâ and âYentlâ with the Joker in them and showed them to Phillips.
âSometimes youâre just done with something and other times you have an ongoing interest,â Phoenix said. âThere was just more to explore. ⊠I just felt like we werenât done.â
So Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver got to work on a new script, one that leaned into the music in Arthur Fleckâs head. Then his dreary Arkham life turns to Technicolor when he meets and falls for Lee, a Joker superfan.
âJoaquin Phoenix is not going to do a line drive. Heâs not going to do something thatâs fan service,â Phillips said. âHe wanted to be as scared as he was with the first movie. So, we tried to make something that is as audacious and out there and hopefully people get it.â
LADY GAGA FINDS LEEâS VOICE, AND LOSES HER OWN
One decision thatâs already sparking debate is casting someone with a voice like Lady Gagaâs and not using that instrument to its full power. Phillips, who was a producer on âA Star is Born,â wanted someone who âbrought music with them.â But Lee isnât a singer.
âSinging is so second nature to me, and making music and performing on stage is so inside of me. Especially this music,â Gaga said. âI worked extensively on untraining myself for this movie and throwing away as much as I could all the time to make sure I was never locking into what I do. I had to really kind of erase it all.â
Phoenix, who wasn't quite sure what it would be like working with someone who has such a larger-than-life superstar persona, found Gaga to be refreshingly unpretentious and available. And as an actor, he admired her commitment to the character.
âHer power is in singing and singing a particular way,â he said. âFor her to sacrifice that through character, to do something that people would call a musical, but to not be performing it in the way that would sound best as a singer but to approach it from the character was a very difficult process. I was really impressed with her willingness to do that.â
In addition to writing a âwaltz that falls apartâ for the film, Gaga is releasing a companion album, âHarlequinâ on Friday with song titles including âOh, When the Saints,â âWorld on a String,â âIf My Friends Could See Me Nowâ and âThatâs Life."
SORRY PUDDINâ, THIS AINâT MARGOT ROBBIEâS HARLEY QUINN
Much like Phoenixâs Joker isnât Heath Ledgerâs or Jack Nicholsonâs, Gagaâs Lee is not the
âWeâre never going to outdo what Margot Robbie did,â Phillips said. âYou have to do something 180 degrees in the other direction.â
Sure, Lee will still casually light something on fire to get some time alone with Joker, but the tumult is more internal. And Gaga threw herself into making Lee something new: A real person, grounded in a reality that came before her.
âI spent a lot of my time on developing her inner life (which) for me had a lot to do with her storm and what thing was always making her about to explode,â Gaga said. âThereâs a particular kind of danger that she carries with her, but itâs inside and itâs kind of explosive.â
âDO YOU JUST WANT A BRUTE?â
Brendan Gleeson didnât have much hesitation about joining the ensemble. Heâd worked with Phoenix before on âThe Villageâ and was in awe of what heâd done on the first movie.
âHe has an absolute relentless integrity and curiosity and drive,â Gleeson said. âHe wonât just plough the same furrow for its own sake.â
But he also didnât want to play the simple version of an Arkham prison guard.
âI said, look, do you just want a brute? Because Iâm not sure I just want to do a brute,â Gleeson said. âHe wanted something more. We tried to find layers in this guy.â
CREATING MAYHEM
Anyone who has worked with Phoenix knows that he likes to keep things fresh. That may mean something as small as changing the location of a prop or as big as throwing out choreography that youâve been rehearsing for months at the last minute.
âI think we both love mayhem and not just in movies but on the set,â Phillips said. âIt had to feel like anything can happen.â
With the crew 95% the same as the first, everyone was ready to be flexible. Gaga, too, dove right in, suggesting that they sing live on camera.
âIt changed the whole making of the film,â Phillips said. âWe were not only singing live, we were singing live differently every take.â
THATâS ENTERTAINMENT?
Since Arthur killed Robert De Niroâs talk show host Murray Franklin on live television in the first film, heâs become a kind of icon and curiosity thanks in no small part to an oft referenced, but never seen, television movie that was made about him. Now, the trial is going to be televised as well.
âUnderneath it all, thereâs this idea of corruption and how everything is corrupt in the system, from the prison system to the judicial system to the idea of entertainment, quite frankly,â Phillips said. âThis idea that in the States at least, everything is entertainment. A court trial could be entertainment, and a presidential election can be entertainment. So, if thatâs true, what is entertainment?â
NO LONGER A COMPLETE WILD CARD
Itâs easier to be to the insurgent, not the incumbent, Phillips said. Although a Joker film is never going to fly completely under the radar, the spotlight is undoubtedly more intense this time around.
âYou do feel like you have a larger target on your back,â Phillips said.
While much of the film was made on Warner Bros. soundstages in Los Angeles, the production did go back to New York to film again on the Bronx staircase (which now come up on Google Maps as the Joker Stairs) and outside a Manhattan courthouse. The production staged a massive protest scene, with Gaga, almost concurrently with the as if there werenât enough eyes on them already.
Some are also handwringing about the sequelâs bigger budget and whether it can match the success of the first. But Phillips has learned to take it in stride.
âThereâs a different amount of pressure, but that just comes with making movies,â he said. âYou canât please everybody and you just kind of go for it.â
Gleeson has an even sunnier outlook.
âIt has kind of arthouse movie integrity on a blockbuster scale. Itâs great news for cinema, is the way I look on it,â Gleeson said. âIf these event movies can continue to have depth and can be so conflicting like this one, is we neednât worry about the future of cinema.â
SO, IS IT A MUSICAL?
One thing Phillips didnât mean to do was ignite a discourse about what is and isnât a musical. Heâs just trying to manage expectations.
âPeople go, âwhat do you mean itâs not a musical?â And it is a musical. It has all the elements of a musical. But I guess what I mean by it is all the musicals Iâve seen leave me happy at the end for the most part, âUmbrellas of Cherbourgâ not being one of them. This has so much sadness in it that I just didnât want to be misleading to people.â
Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press
