Todd Phillips’ “Joker” was a commercial and (surprisingly) critical smash for Warner Bros. in 2019, a chaotic and disturbingly cathartic tale of a talentless misfit with delusions of homicidal grandeur. Supercharged by a bravura, Academy Award-winning star turn from Joaquin Phoenix, the film slaked die-hard Bat-fans’ bizarre desire for an R-rated Gotham City drama and, by dint of its $1.1 billion worldwide gross, necessitated a sequel (a welcome development for WB and DC Comics given the state of the then cratering DC Extended Universe).
Given Phoenix’s fierce commitment to the character of Arthur Fleck/The Joker, any follow-up was guaranteed to be an intense collaboration between the star, Phillips and co-screenwriter Scott Silver. Once the decision was made to incorporate Fleck’s equally livewire criminal cohort/lover Harleen “Lee” Quinzel aka Harley Quinn, these fellas took a big swing by offering the part to Lady Gaga. The bold pop diva leapt at the opportunity, which cleared the way for the creative brain trust to do something doubly outlandish: make a grand old movie musical two-hander featuring Fleck and Quinn as a twisted Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
“Joker: Folie à Deux” is just a few weeks away from its Venice International Film Festival debut (the first movie premiered there five years ago and shocked the film world by winning the coveted Golden Lion), so the studio is starting to crank up what’s sure to be an aggressive promotional campaign. (The film is rumored to have cost as much as $200 million, and you can bet the studio would love to match, if not surpass, the previous movie’s 11 Academy Award nominations.)
What can we expect? From the sound of it, something incredibly daring and likely controversial. The crafting of the film seems to have been a labor of love for all involved, but nailing the musical numbers was evidently a headache for Phillips.
Two actors deeply, dangerously in the moment
In an interview with Variety, Phillips and his stars discussed their inventive approach to conceiving and shooting the songs (which include covers of “Get Happy,” “For Once in My Life,” and “That’s Life”). One key decision was to not have Phoenix and Gaga belt the tunes with professional élan. “We asked ourselves what would need to be true for two people to just break into song in the middle of a conversation?” said Gaga. “Where does the music come from when no one can hear it but the characters? Neither Arthur nor Lee are professional singers, and they shouldn’t sound like they are.”
To achieve this dynamic, Phoenix and Gaga performed the songs live on set (with off-camera accompaniment from a lone pianist). This allowed Phoenix and Gaga to lose themselves in their characters, and, hopefully, establish a searingly rare intimacy that will equal the emotional recklessness of “Joker.” It’s a great idea (much better than Phoenix’s notion of doing the sequel as a stage musical), but when it came time to splice the actors’ wildly varying interpretations, Phillips found himself faced with a post-production “nightmare.”
Per the director:
“Particularly for Joaquin, so much of it is about feeling the moment as you do it. You can’t decide that in a sound studio three weeks before you show up to shoot it.”
Did they pull it off? We’ll hear what critics think when “Joker: Folie à Deux” screens in Venice on September 4, and then everyone will find out for themselves when it opens theatrically on October 4, 2024.
