New 'Joker 2' BTS and Interview with Todd Phillips

August 20

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“Todd took a very big swing with this whole concept and with the script, giving the sequel to ‘Joker’ this audacity and complexity,” says Gaga. “There’s music, there’s dance, it’s a drama, it’s also a courtroom drama, it’s a comedy, it’s happy, it’s sad. It’s a testament to [Todd] as a director, that he would rather be creative than just tell a traditional story of love.”

“Joker: Folie à Deux” may be his most go-for-broke gamble yet. It’s a movie that kicks off with a Looney Tunes-inspired cartoon starring the Joker (courtesy of “The Triplets of Belleville” animator Sylvain Chomet) before hurtling through prison riots, courtroom faceoffs and a variety-show sequence that finds Phoenix and Gaga portraying a homicidal Sonny & Cher.

Beyond the whole notion of reimagining Joker as a singing and hoofing antihero, there was another Phoenix-led inspiration that helped shape “Joker: Folie à Deux.” In their early talks, the actor had also raised the prospect of pairing Arthur with a female Joker, who could serve as a dance partner in a kind of psychotic tango. That led Phillips and Silver to Harley Quinn, a supervillain first introduced in a 1990s animated “Batman” series and later brought to life by Margot Robbie in films like “Suicide Squad” and “Birds of Prey.” But as played by Gaga, this Harley may be manipulative and amoral, but she’s also more grounded.

“The high voice, that accent, the gum-chewing and all that sort of sassy stuff that’s in the comics, we stripped that away,” Phillips says. “We wanted her to fit into this world of Gotham that we created from the first movie.”

Gaga has proven that she can belt out any style of music (see her jazz albums with Tony Bennett), and Phoenix, who once channeled Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line,” is similarly gifted at carrying a tune. But Phillips and his “Joker: Folie à Deux” stars wanted to create a rawer, more unstable sound, fluctuating between euphoria and despair, even if that occasionally required singing off-key.

“We asked ourselves what would need to be true for two people to just break into song in the middle of a conversation?” Gaga says. “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.”

Full article from Variety: https://variety.com/2024/film/features/todd-phillips-joker-2-movie-interview-1236111122/