Joker: Folie a Deux has not hit theaters yet, but its first screening at Venice means that we now have some sense of at least what critics thought of the movie. We’re also learning more about what went into making it. In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Lady Gaga explained that they would often rewrite the movie on the fly, even while they were filming it.
“We’d very often meet in Joaquin’s trailer and sometimes we would just tear the script up and start all over,” she said. “It was a very liberating process.”
Director Todd Phillips confirmed the story, explaining that Joaquin Phoenix is always looking to diver deeper into specific scenes.
“My line about Joaquin is that he’s the tunnel at the end of the light,” Phillips said. “You think, ‘Okay, this scene works, let’s just go shoot it.’ And Joaquin’s like, ‘No, no, no, let’s just have a quick meeting about it,’ and it’s three hours later and you’re rewriting it on a napkin. What’s great about Lady Gaga is that she really holds her own both off camera when we’re in the trailer tearing things apart—which she probably spent the night before learning—but also on camera. It was not a small feat.”
Joker: Folie a Deux is set during Arthur Fleck’s murder trial following the events of the first film. While on trial, he meets Gaga’s Harley Quinn, and their burgeoning romance impacts the trial’s direction.
Phoenix is known for being intuitive and particular on set. Prior to the release of Napoleon, director Ridley Scott revealed that the entire plot of that film was rewritten to make the actor more comfortable.
