Why 'Joker' Director Todd Phillips Came Back For A Sequel
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This message comes from the University of Kansas Cancer Center. How you receive cancer care is just as important as the care itself. Their experts know this and work to provide leading care with a compassionate human touch at every step. More at kucancercenter.org. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terri Gross. A new sequel to the film Joker opens next month, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker and Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel.

This film is a dark and unusual musical. The soundtrack hasn't been released yet, but we'll hear some of the songs a little later. My guest Todd Phillips directed and co-wrote both Joker films. Joker is an arch-villain of the Batman stories, and Lee Quinzel is a version of Harley Quinn, the Joker's partner in crime before going her own way. Phillips describes the films as an origin story, but not the origin story.

Both films are connected to the DC Comics universe, but they're more like arthouse films than superhero films. In Philip's first Joker film, Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a troubled man with a history of mental health problems. His dream is to become a stand-up comic. His actual job is dressing as a clown for an agency that rents out clowns for parties and occasions.

One day on the way home from work, still wearing his clown makeup, he's attacked on the subway by three young men. He shoots and kills them. Crime has gotten so bad in Gotham City, where the film is set, that he becomes a folk hero. His dream comes true when he's invited to be a guest on his favorite late-night show, hosted by Murray Franklin, played by Robert De Niro. But Arthur realizes Murray has been mocking him, so he shoots and kills Murray live on TV.

In the new sequel, Joker for Lee Adu, Arthur has spent the past two years in the criminally insane wing of a psychiatric institution where he's awaiting trial for his murders. At a music therapy class, he meets Lee, who is a fan of Arthur's alter ego, the Joker. Here's Lady Gaga as Lee. When I first saw Joker, when I saw you and Murray Franklin, the whole time I was watching, I kept thinking, I hope this guy...

blows his brains out. And then you did. And for once in my life, I didn't feel so alone anymore. Forget your troubles, come on, get happy. Better chase all your cares away. Sing hallelujah, come on. Ready for the judgment day.

The French expression folie a deux means a shared folly or shared delusion. And these two characters share the delusion of Arthur as Joker and the perspective that goes along with that. The film touches on issues relating to mental health disorders, treatment of the criminally insane, and how the media can turn killers into celebrities. While Arthur is in prison, his story is told in a popular TV documentary.

My guest Todd Phillips also directed the Hangover films Road Trip and Old School. Joker received Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, while Keen Phoenix won for Best Actor. The film grossed about a billion dollars at the box office.

Todd Phillips, welcome back to Fresh Air. We spoke when Joker was released, and I enjoyed the film and our conversation, and I really like this film as well very much, so it's a pleasure to have you back. Well, thank you for having me back. So the new Joker film taps into the shared delusions of Arthur as Joker and of Lee Quinzel, who is the Harley Quinn character in this movie.

I feel that the film is also tapping into shared delusions that we're living through right now in America. And I'd like to ask you what connections you see between this movie and shared delusions running wild today. Well, it's funny, you know, in some respect, you can think of Donald Trump. In some ways, I always think it's like the first time we've elected a president who's playing a character.

I don't always believe Donald Trump believes the things he says he does, but in some ways he's playing a part. And it's worked really well. He became president.

But for me, at least, sometimes I look at it and go, did we elect a character and not this actual person? And is he still playing that role? So there's a little bit of a correlation to just, you know, movies tend to hold a mirror in general. And the other thing I think that, you know, we kind of played with in this film that is definitely happens and has been happening for a long time is this idea of corruption, right?

And it's not just corruption. Okay, the judicial system is corrupt. The media is corrupt in this movie. It's also the corruption of entertainment. This idea that if everything becomes entertainment, in other words, if a trial becomes...

is put on TV and is sold as entertainment if... That would never happen. Exactly. And if a presidential debate is sold as basically a UFC match when you look at the graphics on CNN or Fox or whatever, and it's sold as entertainment, if all that is entertainment, then what is the entertainment that we all know and supposedly love, right? What is it done? So it's also about the corruption of entertainment in some ways.

So this new sequel to Joker is a musical, and I think it's really effective as a musical. And it's not the kind of musical where people just kind of break into song. It's the fantasies, what's going on in their minds. Because we often kind of live in songs. We all have our favorite songs that we sing in our mind and imagine ourselves in that world. And that's what the music is in this. Yeah.

It's like an inner monologue, but in song and dance. What was your original conception of how the music was going to fit into this? Well, it started a long time ago. It really started in our meetings on the first film, our meetings, meaning me and Joaquin. And when we would just sort of talk about Arthur, and I always kind of explained that Arthur had music inside of him. And I really think that affected Joaquin and affected his performance, clearly, significantly.

When you look at the first film, and if people remember when he was dancing in the bathroom or dancing on the stairs, that's all Joaquin basically moving to music in his head, in Arthur's head, of course. So we had this, even though Arthur was left footed and out of step with the world, we always found that there was a romance in him again, a music inside him. So we just kind of

Use that as a leaping off point from here and said, what if we take that one step further? And what if when he meets somebody that he believes loves him, that he believes sees him? Well, what does it look like when that music comes out of him?

Originally, I think you and Joaquin Phoenix were thinking of this as a possible Broadway musical and decided, well, maybe it could be scaled down to a cabaret act at the Cafe Carlisle. What would a Cafe Carlisle cabaret approach to this Joker sequel be? Well, Joaquin and I have really long and ridiculous conversations. And I think a lot of that was just, you know, during the pandemic and

us kind of continuing these conversations and realizing like, oh, maybe the Broadway thing feels a little bit sweaty and maybe that's too much and maybe we just do something cooler. So this idea was we would do like a very limited run at a yes kind of

Cafe Carlisle type of venue. And it would be, I don't know how many it holds. And we would only do, you know, Thursday, Friday, Saturday for a month and a half or whatever it is. And if you saw it, you saw it. We're not going to film it. We're going to do anything. It was just this thing because we were obsessed with continuing Arthur's story. However, and part of us, here's the easiest way to explain it because I know that all sounds crazy. But oftentimes when you make a movie,

At least my experience as a director and a lot of the actors I work with, as much as we enjoy making a movie, you're kind of at the end counting down the days for it to be done. Almost like school, you're kind of marking off your calendar like, oh my God, this has really been a bear. But on the first Joker, Joaquin and I didn't want it to end. And that wasn't just because we loved working together. That was also because we really loved Arthur.

And we really wanted to explore more with the character. So on the last day of the first Joker, while on most movies it's a really happy time and all the crews hugging each other, goodbye, laughter, Joaquin and I were really kind of sad. So all this stuff, the Broadway thing, the Cafe Carlisle, and ultimately the sequel to this movie was really about Joaquin and I just wanting to explore more and spend more time with Arthur.

So I want to play a song from the film. And this is the song associated with Stevie Wonder for once in my life. And Arthur is singing it, Joaquin Phoenix. And he's, you know, he's fallen in love with Lee, the Harley Quinn character. But he's also just found out that he's mentally fit to stand trial for the murders and he's facing the possibility of a death sentence.

And this should be a pretty, you know, for once in my life, I found someone who needs me. It's an upbeat song. But in this version, there's these like dark chords that keep swelling underneath him as the song goes on. Do you want to just talk about your conception of this before we hear it? Well, yeah, you mentioned Stevie Wonder, but we closely associate this song as a Frank Sinatra song. The Frank Sinatra version, when we were writing it, was really kind of the first thing we came upon that was beautiful.

For me, it's just such a beautiful and big and bold rendition. The magic with Joaquin is if so, if you were to YouTube, you know, Frank Sinatra singing this. And obviously, Joaquin is never going to sing like Frank Sinatra. But the magic to Joaquin and why he's so brilliant is he brings so much emotion to it. And...

It's hard to believe that when you hear Frank Sinatra sing it, that for once in my life he found someone who needs him. It's hard to believe that that's really the first time in Frank Sinatra's life he found somebody. Yes, so true. But with Joaquin, you just believe it, as Arthur, I should say. When Arthur sings it, you believe that he has finally found someone who needs him, and that has never happened to him before. So the point being, while Joaquin will never be Frank Sinatra, nobody would be,

When you sing with that kind of emotion, in some ways it affects, for me, it affects me more deeply than even the Sinatra version, which I always loved. And what about those chords behind him? So that's, you know, us basically rearranging the music, you know, and we do that with, of course, Hildur, who was our composer on the first film, actually won an Oscar on the first film.

She's brilliant. And so we'll do like a standard arrangement. And then I always kind of coined this term. Okay, now let's hilderize this and add some of the music again that Arthur would be hearing in his head to this version of the song. And it kind of becomes its own thing. Yeah, very dissonant. Okay, so here's For Once in My Life, sung by Joaquin Phoenix. Let's go, boys. It's showtime. Wakey, wakey.

Come on. For once in my life, I have someone who needs me. Someone I've needed so long. For once, unafraid, I can go where life leads me. Somehow, I know I'll be strong. For once, I can touch what my heart used to dream of.

Long before I knew Someone like you would make my dreams come true So once in my life I won't let sorrow hurt me Not like it's hurt me before For once I have someone I know will desert me And I'm not alone anymore

For once I can say this is mine, you can't take it. Long as I know I've got love, I can make it. For once in my life I've got someone who needs me. You know, I love how just as it really starts to like swing and get more upbeat, then the clouds come in. Yes, he's right. You feel the emotions swirling in Arthur. And I think, you know, we tried to do that with the arrangement as well.

You've said that you wanted with Joker and with this film, you know, you wanted to make a gritty movie, something that Scorsese might have made like Taxi Driver and King of Comedy.

Both of which you paid tribute to in the first Joker film. But you realized the way to get it funded was to make it seem like part of a superhero universe. Had you been an avid reader of Batman comics or viewer of the movies or involved with any of the versions of, you know, Marvel or DC or, you know, any kind of superhero universe?

Yeah, no, I never really said that in that way, by the way. What I always said is something I had always done before the first Joker was I made movies about groups of people, in fact, mostly groups of men. Right. And I and what I really wanted to do was was do a deep dive into a single person character study. But it did feel to me at that time in 2017, 18, 17.

That's a tough movie to get made in the studio system at that time. So in some ways it felt like, well, if you kind of couch it, it's one of these kind of superhero films, it might be easier to get it made. And that's really what the germ of the idea for Joker started as. But...

Believe it or not, as a young person, I did read comics. Mine was Daredevil, and I read anything Frank Miller did basically back then, which was he did a run of Daredevil comics, he did a run, of course, of The Dark Knight. And as far as the movies go, like anybody else, and certainly like every filmmaker, I try to see everything. And from Tim Burton's versions through Joel Schumacher and, of course, what Chris Nolan did, now I'm just talking about the Batman world, that stuff...

It absolutely affected me and, you know, I was in awe of what Chris Nolan was doing, of course. So, yeah, all that stuff played into the movie as much as the, you know, inspirations for the films of the 70s that inspired, you know, the first film.

When you were reading Batman comics or watching Batman movies, did the characters strike you as mentally ill? Like, you know, Joker and Harley Quinn? Well, certainly in Nolan's version and what him and Heath Ledger did, yeah. I would believe they probably spoke. I've never spoke to Chris about it. I would believe that it was informed a little bit by mental illness under that version of Joker. Yeah.

Um, that definitely resonated, you know, with me. So another question about working with Joaquin Phoenix, and I'm not sure you'll want to answer this because I'm sure you want, you feel very protective of him. Um, as I imagine you would with all your actors, but he's somebody who appears to be very eccentric and, uh, perhaps moody. And that's the kind of thing that can make it difficult for a director. Um,

So could you tell us a little bit more about what it's like to work with him and to be a partner with him and trying to, for instance, rethink scenes or, you know, create a character? Yeah, I mean, what you're saying is sort of, I guess, a reputation that Joaquin may have. But all I can speak to honest to God is my experience with Joaquin, which is none of that.

What I get is this very playful, very curious, and very brave actor who just wants to try stuff and wants to try 11 versions of walking through a door. And to me, it's literally music to my ears. Like we could do this all day because it's all an attempt to find the emotional truth to a scene, which is really all your job is as a director, right? So, um,

Again, my experience with him is just not that. Since the character Lee Quinzel develops a persona just like Arthur does in his persona as Joker, her persona as Harley Quinn, it's a really interesting choice to cast Lady Gaga because Lady Gaga is a persona. Yeah. So she knows what a persona is like. Yeah, that's an interesting point. Yeah.

You know, for us it was obvious because as we were kind of dancing around this idea of making a musical, making this sequel into a musical, I really wanted to find an actor that brought music with them. So it wasn't as much of a leap for people to look at it and go, what the hell? No, it's still a leap. It's still like we're asking a lot of the audience to understand what this is and where we're coming from. But I did think...

Stephanie, Lady Gaga, does some of that heavy lifting for us in that she brings music with her. So you keep saying Stephanie, Lady Gaga, acknowledging that Lady Gaga is a persona. Is Stephanie very different than Lady Gaga? No, I mean...

I say it because that's what I call her, like personally, but then I realized in life, most people use that term. So I just, I just, it was like a habit, but I would say, yeah, I mean, certainly Lady Gaga is a character that Stephanie created and embodies. I don't want to speak for her. So she probably has her own theories on it and we never really talked

spoke too deeply on it but I mean I think a lot of times you know there's there's Eminem and there's Slim Shady and he creates these and then there's Marshall Mathers he's actually has a few but but yeah I think that happens a lot in entertainment with singers uh in particular um what I was amazed at with I'm gonna call her Gaga now what I was amazed at with Gaga most was this idea of

could she be vulnerable? Could she really, obviously she could sing, obviously she brought music with her and all that stuff. And I've seen her be great in movies. And, you know, I was, I was one of the producers on A Star Is Born. So I knew her a little bit. I knew what she was capable of as an actor. But the big question was, can she be vulnerable in the way that Lee has to be vulnerable in this film? And, you know, she just brought that instantly into,

All right, let's take another break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Todd Phillips. He directed and co-wrote the film Joker and its new sequel, Joker Folie Adu, which opens next month. We'll be right back. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. This message comes from NPR sponsor Merrill. Whatever your financial goals are, you want a straightforward path there. But the real world doesn't usually work that way. Merrill understands that.

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So I want to play another song, and this is a song that Lady Gaga sings, and it's close to you, the Burt Bacharach, Hal David song, which was popularized by the Carpenters. But the way it's sung in this, it has a kind of

sinister edge to it or a very troubled edge to it. And I'd like to know what the original version, you know, with the hit version, the Carpenter's version song meant to you and why you wanted to include it in the movie as a song, as a song sung by, by Lee. For us, it was, well, it's a funny thing, this song, because actually in the script we had originally had her singing bewitched back to him and,

Arthur does an amazing version of Bewitched on a televised interview that he's doing for a kind of Geraldo Rivera-like TV personality. And he ends up singing Bewitched about her and to her. And her response in that scene was going to be singing Bewitched back. But then we realized, oh, why would we do that? And Stephanie and I, Stephanie's Lady Gaga and I, talked about other things to sing. And I had brought this song up to her because it was a song that...

that I always remember being played for me in my house, not for me, but my mother playing.

And a lot of the music in the movie, the Arthur music, let's call it, is based on these standards that I always thought, oh, Arthur's mom was probably playing around the house and he would always hear these songs. And now it's kind of they're coming out of him. And in some ways that was similar with this, but I was thinking about my own experiences with this song and this idea of exactly what you said. There's two ways to listen to this song, right?

You could listen to Karen and Richard Carpenter and it becomes this really beautiful thing. Or you could listen to Lady Gaga singing this to Arthur in a visitation booth at Arkham Asylum and think it sounds almost like, I don't want to say stalker, but a girl that you just, you might want to, there might be a red flag that she's singing this to him. Yeah, right. Right. Okay. So let's hear it. So this is Lady Gaga.

I do birds suddenly Every time you are near Just like me They long to be close to you I do stars from the sky Every time you walk by Just like me They long to be close to you

On the day that you were born, the angels got together and decided to make a dream come true. So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair, a golden star light in his view. That is why all the girls in town follow you.

Lady Gaga from the soundtrack of the new film Joker. And my guest is Todd Phillips, who co-wrote and directed the film.

So I'm assuming that the arrangement behind Lady Gaga was by Hildur Gunnardotter. It's a really difficult name to pronounce. Yeah, you say it. And I probably just said it wrong. That's why before I was like, I just said Hildur. I always mess it up. She's great. She wrote the music for both films and I imagine arranged...

She did. Gaga, of course, on this movie, had a lot to say and do with the musical arrangements as well. Well, because, you know, there's score and then there's song. So if Gaga is going to sing on a song, this is a perfect example close to you. It's very much dictated by Gaga's original arrangement, meaning what she wants to do with the song. And then, as I said earlier, we kind of hilderize it, certain ones, if we want to or not.

This was a really interesting approach because we were often in musicals, you know, the actors want to sing live on set and they do sing live on set, but they're usually singing to a background track of, you know, of the music. But because Joaquin,

Wants it to feel really alive and of the moment. He didn't really necessarily want to decide what that arrangement would be. So we actually had a pianist live on stage in like a soundproof little booth and

playing so the actors were able to lead the music, not the arrangement, if that makes sense. And maybe this is a little too inside baseball. So Gaga's pianist is in her ear, but he's following her melodies and her lead, if that makes sense, which really I don't know who's ever done that before. It was difficult because then we would backwards engineer the arrangement later in editing and put the music to it.

It's so interesting. Like Lady Gaga is a powerhouse, but in the film, she mostly sings in a very small voice as we heard. Yeah. Which I found really interesting. I like that small voice. Well, yeah, because it's not Lady Gaga singing, obviously it's, it's,

It's Lee, the character she's playing. So I think she had to unlearn a lot of things. And as gorgeous as the piece you just played is, because she will always have a beautiful voice, that's not Lady Gaga. She could do that, obviously, way bigger and way more professional. But that wasn't really what the character called for. So you picked up on it, obviously, that sort of smaller character.

voice she's using is we use that a lot in the movie and then one time we really let her go when it's this full fantasy moment right because the music in the movie is both diegetic and non-diegetic meaning sometimes it's in Arthur's head and sometimes he's actually really singing out loud or she's really singing out loud to each other and

So that one moment where it's really in Arthur's head, we really let her go. Not the moment you just played, but another song later in the movie. Well, let's take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Todd Phillips. He directed and co-wrote the film Joker and its new sequel, Folie a Deux, which opens next month. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.

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I want to play another scene from the film. And Arthur, whose alter ego is Joker, he's about to go to trial for the crimes that he committed. But his defense lawyer has arranged a high-profile TV interview before the trial. Arthur feels like he has a reason to live now because he's in love with Harley Quinzel. The host appears to be trying to make the interview as dramatic as possible by being really confrontational.

And I should also mention that the lawyer, his defense lawyer, is making the case that, you know, he kind of has a split personality. There's Arthur, who is traumatized by being abused as a child. And then there's Joker, who is an alter ego and a different personality. And it was Joker who committed the murders, not Arthur.

So with that context, here is the in-prison interview with Steve Coogan as the TV journalist and Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck. You still want to die? Well, at the time, it certainly seemed a lot easier to live in. But that's not me anymore. That's not me.

That's not who I am? That wasn't really you. No, that's not... Let me get this straight. So your defense is it was the Joker who did it. An insanity defense. I don't know about a defense. This alternate personality, this killer clown in you killed Murray. Who am I speaking to now? Which one of you is here? The poor, low IQ Arthur Fleck or the Joker who goaded a bunch of no good punks? Do you really care? You don't.

You're just like Murray. You're just like everyone. You just, you want sensationalism. You don't care about, you just want to talk about my mistakes. You want to talk about the things that I did in the past, not about who I am now. Not how I'm different now. That's what we should be talking about, Patty. - Okay, so tell us, what's changed, Arthur? - Well, I'll tell you what's changed, Patty. I'm not alone anymore. - Right, the girl who was singing the night you tried to escape.

I'm trying to escape. Miss Harley Quinzel, you two put on quite a performance that night. Oh, she's really something. That was Joaquin Phoenix and Steve Coogan in a scene from Joker Folie a Deux. There have been reports that Joaquin Phoenix wanted to rewrite a lot of scenes, and that ended up in last-minute meetings in a trailer, totally redoing the scene.

How did you feel about that? You're a co-writer of it. When your star wants to rewrite what you've written, do you think like... I think that's totally blown out of proportion. Is it? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, this happened all across the first film and same exact idea here. And it's not so much rewriting. It's, you know, Joaquin just, it has to all come from a truthful place for him to be able to do it.

And so, God, I mean, I can't think of a scene in this movie or the others that we didn't kind of re-approach every morning in the morning of shooting and go, okay, how do we make this better? How do we make it feel more truthful? Or, you know, but this happens with every actor. I mean, I remember making Due Date with Robert Downey and we did the same thing. It's like actors just want it to

feel authentic, feel fresh. Sometimes they've played it too many times in their head and now they want to say something different. But I don't know, to me, that's all part of the process. And I think it's what Joaquin

I don't, again, don't want to talk for Joaquin, but I think it's one of the things Joaquin really likes about working with me is that sort of flexibility that no, none of this stuff is written in stone. And yeah, of course we can relook at what the intention was when Scott and I wrote this eight months ago. And maybe it's changed by where we're at right now in the, in the filming of this thing, you know. What's it like for you to keep rediscovering things in your own work?

Well, I, I, again, I started this, I started being a filmmaker through documentaries and, um, that's all documentaries are is, you know, you set out to make a movie and then the movie that you've end with is very different than what you set out to make because the movie ultimately tells you what it wants to be.

And then I went to comedy, where you would try to write a joke eight months before you film it, and all of a sudden you have Will Ferrell on set and saying that joke to Vince Vaughn, and it doesn't land the way you thought it would land. But Will Ferrell, who's a comedic genius, suddenly goes, well, what if I do this? So it's this flexibility I've always had with story that I think is what made me transition to working with somebody like Joaquin so kind of seamlessly, honestly, because I

Oftentimes in a dramatic film, I would imagine that that flexibility isn't always there. So to me, it was just, it's part of filmmaking. It's, you know, I jokingly always say filmmaking is not math, it's jazz, meaning it's a living, breathing organism that is constantly changing shape, movies are. So you kind of have to take that same approach to making them. We should hear one more song from...

the new film. And this is a duet between Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. And the song is the Bee Gees' song, To Love Somebody. This is a fantasy sequence where Phoenix and Lady Gaga are

hosting a live show, kind of like the old Sonny and Cher variety show. And she's dressed, as I recall, in like an orange jumpsuit. Sort of a Bob Mackie-inspired look, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The famous costume designer. And so they're singing this song, and let's hear it. From NCB Studios in Gotham City, ladies and gentlemen, it's the Joker and Holly Show! ♪

Hey, I love you.

Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix from the soundtrack of the new film Joker. I mean, can we just like take a moment to really appreciate how absolutely brave Joaquin Phoenix is that he's singing a duet with Lady Gaga. And he's like attempting to hold his own. And he's singing it as Arthur and she's singing it as Lee. But you're entirely right. It's inspired by, of course, Sonny and Cher and that idea that they, if only things were different.

They would have this future together and maybe be an act on the road or on television. However, this scene does not end well. Right. Because Arthur is, even in his thoughts, wherever Arthur goes, Arthur is, if that makes sense. So, yeah, it always ends badly for Arthur, even his own fantasies.

So why did you choose this song as the showstopper on the Variety show? It felt very much like a song that they would have done on that show, you know, on Sonny and Cher. It felt very much, you know, we wanted it to be a duet, of course. There's something really beautiful about the lyrics. I think it was Barry and Robin Gibb wrote it.

These lyrics, I'm pretty sure. There's something just, and there's something, there's a warmth to this song. I don't know, that comes over me when it comes up in the movie. We just thought it was beautiful and fun and, you know, also on point, on story. Do you love musicals? I do enjoy musicals a lot. And it's funny because I've gotten a little bit in trouble in the past for...

I'm not a musician, I'm not a musician

When you walk out of them, you feel a lot better than you did when you walked into them. And oftentimes you find yourself whistling the music from the musical you just saw. And I guess I didn't want to mislead people because I don't know that you leave this movie feeling better than you did when you walked in. You don't. So I always think the term musical has a very positive slant to it. So in some respects, that was my kind of reticence of using the term musical.

If you're just joining us, my guest is Todd Phillips. He directed and co-wrote the film Joker and its new sequel, Joker Folie a Deux. It opens next month. This is Fresh Air.

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where you might not have thought an electric vehicle could go. To learn more about the all-electric Mustang Mach-E Rally, go to Ford.com. So who were you when you were a young man? I know you went to NYU and you made a couple of documentaries as student films. One was about fraternity hazings. That's right. And another was about a kind of very wild, controversial punk rocker. But who were you? Where did you fit in?

I was, I guess I was just fascinated by subculture in a way. And I think that's what the first film I made, which is just references was called hated. And it was about a punk rock singer, Gigi Allen, who ended up dying at the end of the movie for real. It's a documentary of a heroin overdose. But for me, it was really about the subculture, this thing that attracted me and, and,

They always, at least at NYU, I remember my phenomenal professor, Christine Choi, who I'm still friends with to this day, would always say, documentaries are 80%, maybe 90% subject matter. And I had stumbled on this musician, and it just felt like, oh yeah, this thing could really almost make itself in some ways. I look at that movie now, and it's so shoddily made. We made it for no money. It's shot on 16mm film, and it's so...

So bare bones, but it's still effective because of who and what it was about. But yeah, I guess for me, I had I had just a deep curiosity like any filmmaker, any young filmmaker at the time for for things that that kind of interested me. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that answers it at the time.

I'm thinking a lot of filmmakers and novelists start off writing stories about people who are like them. And you were kind of doing the opposite, I think. Yeah. Making stories about people who you were interested in but really weren't like you at all. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I always wanted to be a filmmaker. And I found like documentaries in a way, you know, if you're not a naturally born gifted writer, which I'm not, by the way...

You have to write from experience, but what experience do you have at 18 years old outside of, okay, my parents were divorced, I was raised with a single mom, but I don't know that I had the life experience that you then put into movies later on when you start writing movies. So I always saw documentaries as a...

way to kind of live life on fast forward and to get experiences and to, so to go on the road with Gigi Allen, the punk rock singer for a year and be surrounded by that mayhem. And, you know, he was a bipolar schizophrenic slash drug user alcoholic. Well, that'll come back one day in my material and to be, you know, so yeah, while that's not who I am, um, being around that definitely ends up, uh, in your work later on. I mean, I think people, uh,

You could erase every movie between Hated and Joker and see a very clear connection between those two films. Did people have misconceptions of you because of the movies you directed, expecting you to be a kind of wild man? Yeah, I mean, people think I'm like a party guy or a bro, so to speak, or a fraternity thing. It couldn't be more opposite from that.

Who I am or, you know, oh, we got to go to Vegas with Todd. It's like, no, no, no. That's so not me. It's really funny. You've spent 10 years maybe on the same character? No. Get out of here. Five years. No, it's not 10 years. Five. Well, okay. Five years. Yeah, you're right. Seven years. You're right. I've spent seven years thinking about Joaquin Phoenix. That's true. Right. I know I'd be incapable of doing like one character.

one kind of project for so long. I know I've been hosting Fresh Air forever, but it's a different person every day. I'm not kind of drilling down into one character and one, you know, basically one story or, you know, different chapters of one story for so long. Um,

What did that do to you mentally to be living in that world for so long? And it's a very troubled world. It is. And it is a world of... You're right. I don't know. I mean, I like to think it didn't affect me in the ways I think that you're getting at. But...

Again, going back to what I said earlier, like as a director, all you want to do is be around great actors. All you want to do is watch great actors. I feel so blessed that I've spent, as you say, the last five years definitely staring at Joaquin Phoenix's face, talking to Joaquin Phoenix, working with Joaquin Phoenix. I think he's the best at what he does. I think he's on Mount Rushmore for sure of his generation of actors. So I just feel so lucky, you know,

But yeah, it's nice to be done with it. No, at the same time, it's nice to be done with it. So are you ready to make another comedy now? You know what? I am ready to make another comedy. I think that's what the world needs. I think we are going through this end of this year is probably going to be wild. And it does feel like everybody just needs to calm down and laugh again.

Todd Phillips, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming back to the show. Wow, Terry, thank you for having me, and it was wonderful talking to you. Todd Phillips directed and co-wrote Joker and the new musical sequel, Joker Folie Adieu. The film will be released in theaters October 4th. The soundtrack will be released that day as well.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, the inside story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller investigation, as told in a new book by three leaders of Mueller's team. We'll talk with one of them, Aaron Zebley, about the dilemmas they faced, why they didn't indict Trump, and the consequences of Attorney General William Barr's misinterpretation of the report. I hope you'll join us.

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering today from Charlie Kier. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Joel Wolfram, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Seward. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

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