Joker: Folie à Deux sounds like it was as insane behind the scenes as its stars will be on screen, with director Todd Phillips giving an insight into the extremely unorthodox methods at play on the production.
Phillips revealed that during shooting, it wasn’t uncommon for parts of the script to be ripped to shreds and entirely restarted.
Lady Gaga, who has joined Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix for the sequel, said: “We’d very often meet in Joaquin’s trailer and sometimes we would just tear the script up and start all over. It was a really cool, liberating process.”
Phillips agreed, and didn’t seem frustrated. He said: “My line about Joaquin is that he’s the tunnel at the end of the light. 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.”
As manic as that sounds, at least they weren’t ripping things up mid-take. Here’s hoping all that hard work and creative freedom pays off when the film releases to the public in October (thanks, IGN).