Joker Director Todd Phillips Reveals New Behind-the-Scenes Photos
Joker director Todd Phillips revealed some brand new behind-the-scenes photos from the film. The [...]
Joker director Todd Phillips revealed some brand new behind-the-scenes photos from the film. The filmmaker posted the pictures from the finale on Instagram and talked about how much the fans keep demanding this kind of content. He wrote, "A couple more cool BTS shots. Mainly cause you guys keep asking for them. All taken by my man @nikotavernise. #joker" It is not a stretch to call Joker a clear piece of last year's zeitgeist. The film racked up trophies on the awards show circuit and piled up strong reviews for Joaquin Phoenix's haunting performance as Arthur Fleck. Phillips has previously mentioned what lengths Phoenix was willing to go to get the portrayal absolutely perfect. That included some very extreme eating habits that landed his star at 125 pounds.
"We talked a lot about, 'How skinny should Arthur be? How far do we want to go?'" Phillips said in the special features on Joker's DVD. "And I kept saying to him, 'When are you gonna start losing weight? At what point do you start this?' Because it was already like June, and he hadn't started, and we started shooting in September. And he's like 180 pounds. He wasn't fat, but we're talking getting to 125 pounds… And he goes, 'I got it, I got it.' I go, 'We can hire a guy, I've got this woman who's a nutritionist, you might want to [talk to her].' 'No no, that's not how I do it.' I go, 'How do you do it?' He goes, 'I just stop eating and I starve myself.' He just ate an apple a day for the whole summer."
Brett Cullen, who played Thomas Wayne in the film, commended both the director and the big star on their work. In a previous interview, he alluded to what he thought Phillips was trying to say with Joker.
"I think that's what Todd was trying to do with this movie, is to say to us there's value in recognizing mental illness, there's value in trying to help people — if you want to go with the veterans — people who have actually sacrificed a lot for our country, and just a normal human being who deserves the respect and the ability to be treated with whatever medicine they needed, and they didn't back then," Cullen explained. "So I think that's why Todd did this. I think it's a really apropos movie for what's going on in the world today."
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