'Joker 2' star Joaquin Phoenix was nervous about singing with Lady Gaga, director says

Towards the end of 2019 jokerHelmer Todd Phillips' cinematic whirlwind of brutality, chaos and trauma, the filmmaker instructed star Joaquin Phoenix to stand on the twisted wreckage of a car crash, palming a bloody smile on his face as Gotham City burned around him. In those final moments the audience shared with Arthur Fleck, Phillips realized he couldn't shake his lingering, hazy affection for the same character who had put a bullet in a talk show host's head at the beginning of the film – and that in a strange way Phillips also shot an arrow through the heart.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Phillips says Weekly entertainment with a laugh as he grapples with his longing for more time with the complicated, violent anti-protagonist jokerwhose story he and Phoenix wanted to expand on together in the upcoming musical sequel Joker: Folie à Deux (in cinemas from October 4th).

“After the first one jokerJoaquin and I were really sad. How, Really sad. “We didn't want it to end,” says Phillips when asked why he felt compelled to make a second film inspired by the DC Comics supervillain's origin story (but ultimately going against tradition). ). “Not only because we like working together, but also because we didn't want to leave Arthur. We loved Arthur and were attracted to him. Simply put, it was about spending more time with Arthur.

The way Phillips talks about the future Batman The evildoer is brimming with paternal grace and a willingness to understand and make room for the character's plight. Many viewers couldn't see past the heinous crimes he committed in the first film, in which Arthur rebelled against a social system that excluded him, inadvertently sparked a class war, and murdered his own mother after coming to terms with childhood abuse had resigned himself to adult life.

“He had problems. Clearly. But there is a light and a beauty and a romance in it,” Phillips continues. “It was something Joaquin and I talked about early on; Yes, he is not in harmony with the world. However, there is romance in it and there is music in it.”

And no, Phillips doesn't just mean this metaphorically.

In Slide for two – a far more fantastic and, above all, more tender film than the first – Phillips, Phoenix and series newcomer Lady Gaga send Arthur on a musical journey after he finds romance with Lee Quinzel, a fellow patient at Arkham State Hospital who, under Arthur's wing, embraces her own nefarious spirit as she evolves into the villain better known as Harley Quinn. But near the start of the film, before the bombast begins, Arthur's hardened facade melts when he meets Gaga's Lee for the first time, as she faints at the thought of Arthur blowing a man's brains out.

Yes, romance can be “kind of violent” emotionally, Phillips says, but equating romance with violence or brutality wasn't the film's thesis. A music therapist from Arkham explains the central idea of ​​the film at the beginning, telling Lee and Arthur that “music heals the fractures within us.” Since nothing else seemed to calm Arthur, Phillips says he wanted to try unconventional methods to bring out the warmth he first saw in the character.

“What happens when a man who hears music in his head finds love for the first time in his life? Maybe the music he hears in his head is starting to come out. Why wouldn't this music come out when he meets someone who gives him time? “His biggest problem in the first film, aside from childhood trauma, was a severe lack of love,” Phillips explains, pointing to Arthur's musicality (see: dancing on the stairs or backstage). Murray Franklin Show), which comes to life in semi-glaring scenes of sonic psychosis. Arthur and Lee perform everything from a gospel version of Sammy Davis Jr.'s “Gonna Build a Mountain” to a deliriously jubilant, disturbing rendition of Judy Garland's “Get Happy,” mostly all in Arthur's head.

There is a method to this madness, for both Arthur and Phillips. The director chose the songs for Phoenix and Gaga to sing (which the pair performed live on set) with emotional intent – and he believes Arthur's mother had “played around the apartment” playing pop standards as a child .

“It's not surprising that he knows the lyrics to something like 'For Once in My Life,'” Phillips says of the classic hit popularized by versions by Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Gaga's late collaborator Tony Bennett and even Frank Sinatra was made. “I don't know if I think this is the first time Frank Sinatra has found someone who needs him. But when Arthur sings it, that's it. It has a different meaning – and in some ways it’s more emotional.”

Phoenix felt these emotions on set with Gaga, Phillips recalls, particularly while filming extremely intimidating song-and-dance sequences (choreographed by Michael Arnold) with elaborate sets, tap dancing, and the aforementioned live singing – all of it with the added pressure of the presence of Oscar and 13-time Grammy winner Gaga at his side.

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Phillips says that Gaga gave Phoenix pointers on set “100 percent” and that he was “sick every day” because of those parts of the production. The director says Phoenix had to sing with Gaga just nine days into the long shoot, but the place where the duo arrived was magical to see.

“The truth is that they gave each other clues. He would give her tips on acting; She has appeared in films, but he has Joaquin Phoenix. She gave him tips about music because she is Lady Gaga. That's how movies should be: a huge collaboration,” Phillips says, adding that Phoenix's notes to Gaga were far less obvious, sometimes expressed only by being “really generous” with his vulnerability in a scene, whereas “hers Notes were a little.” More specifically, because it looks like you’re missing the point. It's different. There is less room for interpretation,” he concludes.

However, Phillips had a hint of his own to follow while dealing with fans' obsession with classifying the genre of his latest work. Is it a full-fledged musical or not? The answer doesn't really matter when you consider that the film's world is averse to happy endings of all kinds, a notion that makes the colorful and tense nature of its angry, contradictory and often confrontational musical sequences an inherently captivating experience in the first place .

But that's just life – and love – for someone like Arthur.

“It upset me a little bit to say it wasn't really a musical. I didn’t say that because I’m afraid of the term “musical.” I love musicals and the film definitely has music in it. It could even be a musical,” says Phillips. “To be clear, most of the time when I've seen a musical, I leave feeling better than I did entering. With this film, I'm not sure it's the same. I don't want to mislead and say that you'll be whistling the songs from this movie on the way to your car after watching it.