How did Joker shoot?

We talk about painful laughter, dancing on the stairs and references to Scorsese. And about the weight loss of Phoenix too!

Joker for the second week remains the leader in the rolling fees. "Medusa" has already listed the main fan theories explaining the plot; collected the main memes related to the film; talked about other roles of Joaquin Phoenix ; I recalled the fate of movie Joker . This time we are talking about how the director Todd Phillips and actor Joaquin Phoenix worked on their villainous history: they discussed the plan for six months, listened to music on the set, refused (but not everywhere), and argued whether the Joker needed to be so thin.

In the first stage - a rehearsed dance and special boots

To begin with, look at the detailed analysis of the first scene of the film, which the director of Todd Phillips was made for Vanity Fair.

The Ha-ha clown agency, in which the hero of Phoenix Arthur Fleck works, was filmed in a real building in Harlem in the west of Manhattan. The windows of the room overlook the vehicle of the West Side-Hayway or, more precisely, are under it. At the very beginning, Arthur Flex sits at the mirror and stretches his own smile with his fingers, at some point a tear rolled down his cheek. According to Phillips, this was not in the script. During the shooting of this scene, the music of the composer Hildur Goodnadottir played on the site, which she painted specifically for the picture. Thanks to music, Phoenix tuned in to a tragic wave - and tears came to the eye of themselves.

The episode on the street (in the script-Gotham Square), where Arthur Fleck in a clown’s suit is dancing with a yellow sign, was shot in Newarca, New Jersey. Part of the species was supplemented with computer graphics - they painted all the houses in the background and the buildings between real buildings, “so that there are no free places”, since the city should “put pressure on the hero”. Real buildings were carried by advertising and tablets in the style of the 1970s; An ordinary cinema was turned into a porn theater.

Phoenix rehearsed a dance with a yellow plate of three to four days. “This is much more complicated than it seems,” says Phillips. There were difficulties with the pursuit, since the costumer of the picture came up with special huge clown boots inspired by the image of Charlie Chaplin - in them the Phoenix was riding after the teenagers. During the pursuit of the car, the Phoenix understudy rushed, he slipped in front of the entrance to the lane, where Arthur was beaten by robbers.

“One of my favorite personnel in this film, which shows him [Arthur Flex] Loneliness and Pain. First, he tries to reach the plate in the hope that he will be able to fix it. And then he presses a small button, and water flows from a flower [on his chest], because he is still a joker, he still wants to amuse people and be a comedian even at this terrible moment, ”the director explains.

Phoenix and Phillips discussed the film for six months

Hoacin Phoenix himself says that he decided for two months whether to act in the film Phillips or not. Before the Joker, he was not familiar with the director, but they immediately made friends. “I realized that he has a special approach to this character and his world. I was confident in this [approach], but I was not confident in myself [therefore I decided to role for a long time], ”says the actor.

From this moment, about six months have passed before the start of the filming itself, all this time Phoenix and Phillips discussed the script, future shootings, the tonality of the story, the character of the protagonist. Sometimes Phoenix could call the director in the middle of the night to discuss the approach to a particular scene. “It was the closest cooperation in my life,” says Phillips. “I never shot films only about one person, but here I was deeply plunged into work with only one actor, it was a transformation for me.” Phillips also admits that, together with the co -author of the script by Scott Silver, he immediately suggested that the Phoenix should play Joker. “We never worked with him, but I knew that he was one of the greatest actors of his generation,” says the director.

Phillips says that the Phoenix did not want to depend on the motion of the camera in the film, so they were built around him so that he could calmly move, he did not have spelled mise -en -scenes (you go, sit down, take a glass - nothing like that). “I think only a bad director, having received Joaquin Phoenix into his film, will tell him how to play, where to sit and what to do. So do not work with actors such as Joaquin. It is much more interesting to bring it to the site and watch how it will behave, ”says Phillips.

At the same time, the scenes, as always in film production, were not shot in order. One of the first to remove the episode in which the Joker kills the TV presenter performed by Robert de Niro. And the very next day, Phoenix again played the clogged Arthur, who did not yet know about his evil essence.

For filming, Phoenix lost 23 kilograms

Initially, the actor was in no hurry to lose weight, although the script said that Arthur Fleck is thin. He even offered the director, on the contrary, to make the Joker big and heavy. “He came and asked: what if, on the contrary, the Joker will be big? But it was important for me that Arthur looked like a wolf, as if it were incomprehensible, hungry. We discussed this a lot, in the end mine took and he lost 52 pounds ( 23.5 kilograms - approx. Medusa ). ” Phillips says that he did not set a clear goal before the Phoenix, how much he should drop, but to his surprise, it turned out a lot.

Phoenix says that such a sharp weight loss did not affect his well -being, during the filming he consulted with the same doctor who worked with him on the set of the film “Master” (there his hero is also quite thin, but not like Arthur Fleck). The doctor gave him the necessary vitamins and minerals so that the Phoenix felt normally and remain healthy.

One of the brightest frames in the film is Arthur Fleck without a shirt, shovels are unnaturally bulging from the back. Phillips denies that these are makeup or special effects; According to him, the back of Phoenix really looked that after he lost weight. “He really had a very strange body, apparently in his youth there was some kind of injury, his shoulder was shifted,” he says in an interview.

After the filming was completed, Phoenix again scored 25 kilograms. According to him, it was quite easy, he just ate everything that was nearby .

Laughter Flacks is a man's laughter with PTSR

According to Phoenix, the nervous laughter of Arthur Flex is a painful laughter of a person suffering from post -traumatic stress disorder. When he worked on the role, he explained the disease of Flex injury from the past - in childhood they mocked him. “Before I read the script, Todd showed me a video with people who laugh uncontrolled. One of them had a very painful face, he choked and held on his throat. I tried to copy it. In the script it was written that Arthur was painful with laughter. But at first I thought it was a manic laughter, I never thought that it could be a disease. Todd found a way to look at this laughter through the prism of reality , ”recalls the actor.

Joker hears music all the time (and the Phoenix is ​​dancing under it)

Phillips says that, explaining to the Phoenix, the essence of the character of the Joker, he said that this is a person whose head is playing all the time - therefore he dances so often in the film. Some scenes with dancing were planned and rehearsed, for example, a scene on the stairs or a dance with a yellow sign. However, some episodes are an almost complete improvisation of Phoenix , for example, a scene in a restroom, where Joker slowly dances immediately after the murder of three people in the subway.

According to Phillips, initially in the script it was like this: the Joker, running away from the scene of the crime, ran into the toilet, hid a weapon there, washed off the clown makeup and looked in the mirror - at his present face. However, before shooting this scene, Phoenix proposed a dance option, and in the film they decided to leave it.

For staged scenes, Phoenix worked with a choreographer. According to him, the dance on the stairs is partly inspired by the number of Ray Bolger The Old Soft Shoe (although this is not for sure; in this interview, the actor only confused the journalist, changing the story about the production every second).

The staircase on which the Joker was dancing has already become a landmark

The scene with the dance on the stairs was shot in the bronks, recently spectators calculated the exact place- 1165 Shakespeare Avenue (for several days they even renamed the point of the Joker Stairs, but then they removed the name from the card).

Phoenix says that he could not rehearse scenes directly on the stairs. According to the plot, Arthur Fleck not only dances on it, going down, but also rises heavily after the next difficult day. To feel the monotony of this lesson - climbing the endless Gotham staircase - Phoenix wrote in his notebook the phrase: “Step behind the step, step behind the step, step behind the step” (the number of phrases corresponded to the number of steps on the real ladder), through three pages the “staircase” ended and the actor was close to the fact to feel the fatigue of flex.

The actor admits that his favorite part of the dance on the stairs is a change in personnel frequency. In fragments shot with a familiar frequency of 24 frames, we see that the Joker does not fall into the beat and moves clumsily. However, in a slow shoot, the Joker moves confidently and elegantly - so, apparently, he perceives himself, although in reality he looks rather funny at that moment. During the filming of this scene, the song played the Phoenix in the headphone.

The authors were inspired by Scorsese films, but not superhero cinema

Phillips admits that in the work on the Joker a lot was inspired by the “king of comedy” and “taxi driver” by Martin Scorsese-and other films of the 1970-80s. He even sent Scorsese a ready -made script. “He read it, and then we said sweetly on the phone,” Phillips recalls . However, by the end of September, when the interview with Todd Phillips was published by Fandango, who had not yet seen the Joker, Skorsze, as he was very busy filming the Irishman.

The Phoenix was asked what he took from other jokers, and he unequivocally replied: "Nothing." He built the character again, for example, instilled in him a child’s look at some things (in the metro scene he watches how three guys offend the girl and does not interfere; not because he is cowardly, but because he studies how men behave with women, he perceives everything in his life, he perceives everything as a child, says Phoenix).

“When I read the script, I kept changing my opinion about the hero, I did not understand what kind of motivation he had. And I needed to understand as much as possible. It was a difficult time for Gotham, people were divided, they did not trust each other, and I think Arthur is a product of all this.

One thing in which I am sure, which was definitely - he survived the children's injury. He was the one who sees threats everywhere. And the main content of this character is what he experienced in childhood. And this reflects the whole world around him, ”says the performer of the main role.

Natalia Gredina