FILM 2075: JOKER (2019)

TRIVIA: Joaquin Phoenix called perfecting the Joker's laugh the toughest part of playing the character.

Joaquin Phoenix based his laugh on "videos of people suffering from pathological laughter." He also sought to portray a character with which audiences could not identify.

The joke "When I was a little boy and told people I was going to be comedian, everyone laughed at me. Well no one's laughing now" is inspired by the late British comedian Bob Monkhouse's "People used to laugh at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well they're not laughing now."

The Joker's make-up is very similar to John Wayne Gacy's, a serial killer who would often entertain children while dressed as Pogo the Clown. This make-up style was shunned by working clowns at the time, as they strictly prohibit "sharp" ends in their make-up, as it scares children.

Joaquin Phoenix lost a lot of weight for his role as the Joker. It was so serious that filming could only be done once, with no opportunity for reshoots. Todd Phillips had to write the script during production.

Joaquin Phoenix said about the 52-pound weight loss: "Once you reach the target weight, everything changes. Like so much of what's difficult is waking up every day and being obsessed over like 0.3 pounds. Right? And you really develop like a disorder. I mean, it's wild. But I think the interesting thing for me is what I had expected and anticipated with the weight loss was these feelings of dissatisfaction, hunger, a certain kind of vulnerability and a weakness. But what I didn't anticipate was this feeling of kind of fluidity that I felt physically. I felt like I could move my body in ways that I hadn't been able to before. And I think that really lent itself to some of the physical movement that started to emerge as an important part of the character."

The filmmakers cite Alan Moore's comic "The Killing Joke", which tells the Joker's origin and descent into insanity, and the Martin Scorsese films Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull(1980) and The King of Comedy (1982) as an influence on the film.

The premiere of the film at the Venice Film Festival drew an eight-minute standing ovation.

Three of the previous actors who have played the Joker - Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Jared Leto - are Oscar winners (with Ledger winning for playing The Joker). Joaquin Phoenix has been nominated for an Oscar three times.

In August 2018, Hildur Guðnadóttir was hired to compose the film's score. Guðnadóttir began writing music after reading the script and met with Phillips, who "had a lot of strong ideas" about how he thought the score should sound. She worked on the Joker score alongside the score for the drama miniseries Chernobyl; Guðnadóttir said switching between the two was challenging because the scores were so different.

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