29 Aug - Although the upcoming "Joker: Folie à Deux" has been described as a musical, director Todd Phillips wants you to know it will not be anything like a normal musical film. In a recent interview with Variety, the filmmaker described the music in the movie as "just dialogues" that his titular character Arthur Fleck doesn't know how to express in a normal way. "I just don't want people to think that it's like 'In the Heights,' where the lady in the bodega starts to sing and they take it out onto the street, and the police are dancing. No disrespect, because I loved 'In the Heights'... It's just Arthur not having the words to say what he wants to say, so he sings them instead," he said. Phillips said that the goal of the movie is to make it feel like it was made by crazy people, that the inmates are "running the asylum".
He also revealed that the idea of a musical also came from lead actor Joaquin Phoenix, who fell asleep one night and had a vision of his character performing onstage, telling jokes and singing in his clown makeup. "Why do something if it doesn't scare the shit out of you? I'm addicted to risk. I mean, it keeps you up at night. It makes your hair fall out. But it's the sweat that keeps you going," he added.
"Joker: Folie à Deux" is set two years after the first film, with Arthur now locked up in a psych ward facing death penalty after shooting a talk show host dead on live television in the first film. However, after meeting the love of his life Harleen Quinzel (Lady Gaga) who is obsessed with his alter ego, he decides to ditch his medication to embrace his fantasy world.