Walk The Line, he’s done consistently incredible
work in much smaller character studies. He was
in talks to star inDoctor Strange, but those talks
fizzled — indeed, it’s hard to imagine Phoenix
signing up for endless Marvel movies. Phillips,
though, was determined. “I think he’s the
greatest actor,” he says. “We had a photo of him
above our computer while we were writing. We
constantly thought, ‘God, imagine if Joaquin
actually does this.’”
By the pool in Los Angeles, Phoenix, behind
his sunglasses, throwsEmpiresome crumbs.
“I did read comics growing up, I collected them
when I was 13,” he says, mentioning Grant
Morrison and Dave McKean’sArkham Asylum
graphic novel as one that particularly grabbed
him. Coincidentally, a few years ago he’d had
a similar idea to Phillips regarding superhero
territory. “I called my agent and said, ‘Hey,
wouldn’t it be cool to do a movie like that but
low-budget, kind of a character study? But
I didn’t get very far.” That might explain,
though, why he was receptive when Phillips
sent him theJokerscript.
Phillips was hopeful that Phoenix would
react positively, as the director callsJoker“the
most un-studio studio movie that’s been made
in a really long time. But a huge problem for
him is that it was called fuckin’Joker. And it
was a DC thing. Just getting it to him was a
thing, and convincing him to read it was a thing.”
But he liked the script. “I just get a feeling,”
says Phoenix of why he took it on, why he
takes anything on. “It’s that it has inspired
something in me, and I wanna know more,
I wanna get in it more.”
He signed up, and at Phillips’ request lost
quite a bit of weight — the director thought
Arthur should look hungry, sickly. And for eight
weeks before shooting, the pair hung out at
Phoenix’s apartment, talking through the script,
exploring tone. Finally, says Phoenix, after much
time re-reading the script, listening to music,
making notes, everything clicked: “At some
point, it just becomes part of your life, you’re
no longer studying. And that’s the best stuff.
When you just let go, and come from more of
an instinctive place.”
New York stood in for Phillips’ Gotham. “In
the most reductive way it’s the New York of 1981
that I remember,” says the director, who grew up
there. “It’s a broken-down city, and the people
in it are broken down.” He was always going to
shoot on the streets. “The energy you get from
an actor is different on 179th Street and Jerome
Avenue in the Bronx than if we did that
green-screen, which, by the way, I don’t even
know how to do shit like that,” he laughs.
“There’s not one green-screen in this movie.”
Phillips knew that through filming he’d want
to devote his time to Phoenix. “I needed to be
there with Joaquin,” he says, and he was able to
do so thanks to powerhouse producer Emma
Tillinger Koskoff, who has worked on every
Martin Scorsese feature film since 2006’s
The Departed. Phillips had sent the script to
Above:Fleck finds
inspiration at the
world’s worst fair.
Right:Full clown on
the streets of
Gotham.Below:
Phillips directs
Robert De Niro,
another heavyweight
additon as talk show
host Murray Franklin.
Below right:Murray
and Fleck are bound
in twisted ways.