Palestinian Tawfeek Barhom directed, wrote and co-stars in the 13-minute drama, which is a co-production between Palestine, France and Greece. The film also stars Ashraf Barhom.
“I’m Glad You’re Dead Now”
Courtesy of Tawfeek Barhom, Kidam, Foss Productions
The story follows two brothers who return to the island of their childhood, where hidden tensions and long-buried secrets force them to confront a haunting past that binds them together.
Phoenix said, “This is a film that confronts memory, trauma, and reconciliation in a way that feels urgent and necessary today. I’m proud to be part of its future.”
Mara added, “From the moment I saw ‘I’m Glad You’re Dead Now,’ its emotional weight and restrained power stayed with me. I am honored to support Tawfeek’s vision and the film’s continuing journey.”
Barhom said, “I am deeply moved that Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix have chosen to stand with this film and its story. Their belief honors the film’s spirit, and their creative support will be invaluable as we take ‘I’m Glad You’re Dead Now’ to wider audiences.”
The producers said Phoenix and Mara will “participate in upcoming press, festival introductions, and strategic collaborations to ensure the film’s continued impact and reach.”
The film is co-produced by France’s Kidam and Greece’s Foss Productions. Kidam is best known for “Zero F**** Given” (Critics’ Week, Cannes, 2021), starring Adèle Exarchopoulos. Foss Productions has produced or co-produced many short and feature films, such as “Suntan,” “Pity” and “Echoes of the Past.”
The producers are Tawfeek Barhom, Akis Polizos, Stylianos Kotionis and Alexandre Perrier.
Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan re-teaming as the body-swapping mother and daughter duo in “Freakier Friday” and albums from 5 Seconds of Summer and the rapper NF are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.
Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys team up for the new limited-series thriller “The Beast in Me,” gamers get Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Apple TV’s star-studded “Palm Royale” is back.
New movies to stream from Nov. 10-16
— Richard Linklater’s love letter to the French New Wave and the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” “Nouvelle Vague,” will be streaming on Netflix on Friday, Nov. 14. In his review, Associated Press Film Writer Jake Coyle writes that, “To a remarkable degree, Linklater’s film, in French and boxed into the Academy ratio, black-and-white style of ‘Breathless,’ has fully imbibed that spirit, resurrecting one of the most hallowed eras of movies to capture an iconoclast in the making. The result is something endlessly stylish and almost absurdly uncanny.”
— Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan re-team as the body-swapping mother and daughter duo in “Freakier Friday,” a sequel to their 2003 movie, streaming on Disney+ on Wednesday. In her review, Jocelyn Noveck writes, “The chief weakness of ‘Freakier Friday’ — an amiable, often joyful and certainly chaotic reunion — is that while it hews overly closely to the structure, storyline and even dialogue of the original, it tries too hard to up the ante. The comedy is thus a bit more manic, and the plot machinations more overwrought (or sometimes distractingly silly).”
— Ari Aster’s latest nightmare “Eddington” is set in a small, fictional New Mexico town during the coronavirus pandemic, which becomes a kind of microcosm for our polarized society at large with Joaquin Phoenix as the sheriff and Pedro Pascal as its mayor. In my review, I wrote that, “it is an anti-escapist symphony of masking debates, conspiracy theories, YouTube prophets, TikTok trends and third-rail topics in which no side is spared.”
— An incurable cancer diagnoses might not be the most obvious starting place for a funny and affirming film, but that is the magic of Ryan White’s documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light,” about two poets, Andrea Gibson, who died in July, and Megan Falley, facing a difficult reality together. It will be on Apple TV on Friday, Nov. 14.
— There’s nothing worse than a band without a sense of humor. Thankfully 5 Seconds of Summer are in on the joke. Their sixth studio album, “Everyone’s a Star!,” sounds like the Australian pop-rock band are having fun again, from The Prodigy-esq. “Not OK” to the self-referential and effacing “Boy Band.” Candor is their provocation now, and it sounds good — particularly after the band has spent the last few years exploring solo projects.
— The R&B and neo soul powerhouse Summer Walker has returned with her third studio album and first in four years. “Finally Over It,” out Friday, Nov. 14, is the final chapter of her “Over It” trilogy; a release centered on transformation and autonomy. That’s evident from the dreamy throwback single, “Heart of A Woman,” in which the song’s protagonist is disappointed with her partner — but with striking self-awareness. “In love with you but can’t stand your ways,” she sings. “And I try to be strong/But how much can I take?”
— Consider him one of the biggest artists on the planet that you may not be familiar with. NF, the musical moniker of Nate Feuerstein, emerged from the Christian rap world a modern answer to Eminem only to top the mainstream, all-genre Billboard 200 chart twice, with 2017’s “Perception” and 2019’s “The Search.” On Friday, Nov. 14, he’ll release “Fear,” a new six-track EP featuring mgk (formerly Machine Gun Kelly) and the English singer James Arthur.
— Apple TV’s star-studded “Palm Royale” is back just in time for a new social season. Starring Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Allison Janney, Leslie Bibb, Kaia Gerber, Ricky Martin AND Carol Burnett, the show is campy, colorful and fun, plus it has great costumes. Wiig plays Maxine, a woman desperate to be accepted into high society in Palm Beach, Florida, in the late 1960s. The first episode streams Wednesday and one will follow weekly into January.
— “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” cast member Heather Gay has written a book called “Bad Mormon” about how she went from a devout Mormon to leaving the church. Next, she’s fronting a new docuseries that delves into that too called “Surviving Mormonism with Heather Gay.” The reality TV star also speaks to others who have left the religion. All three episodes drop Wednesday on Peacock.
— Thanks to “Homeland” and “The Americans,” Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys helped put the prestige in the term prestige TV. They grace the screen together in a new limited-series for Netflix called “The Beast in Me.” Danes plays a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who finds a new subject in her next door neighbor, a real estate tycoon who also may or may not have killed his first wife. Howard Gordon, who worked with Danes on “Homeland,” is also the showrunner and an executive producer of “The Beast in Me.” It premieres Thursday.
— David Duchovny and Jack Whitehall star in a new thriller on Prime Video called “Malice.” Duchovny plays Jamie, a wealthy man vacationing with his family in Greece. He hires a tutor (played by Whitehall) named Adam to work with the kids who seems likable, personable and they invite him into their world. Soon it becomes apparent that Adam’s charm is actually creepy. Something is up. As these stories go, getting rid of an interloper is never easy. All six episodes drop Friday, Nov. 14.
— “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints” returns to Fox Nation on Sunday, Nov. 16 for a second season. The premiere details the story of Saint Patrick. The show is a passion project for Scorsese who executive produces, hosts, and narrates the episodes.
— Billy Bob Thornton has struck oil in the second season of “Landman” on Paramount+. Created by Taylor Sheridan, the show is set in modern day Texas in the world of Big Oil. Sam Elliott and Andy Garcia have joined the cast and Demi Moore also returns. The show returns Sunday, Nov. 16.
— The Call of Duty team behind the Black Ops subseries delivered a chapter last year — but they’re already back with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. The new installment of the bestselling first-person shooter franchise moves to 2035 and a world “on the brink of chaos.” (What else is new?) Publisher Activision is promising a “reality-shattering” experience that dives into “into the deepest corners of the human psyche.” Beyond that storyline there are also 16 multiplayer maps and the ever-popular zombie mode, in which you and your friends get to blast away at relentless hordes of the undead. Lock and load Friday, Nov. 14, on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S or PC.
— Lumines Arise is the latest head trip from Enhance Games, the studio behind puzzlers like Tetris Effect, Rez Infinite and Humanity. The basic challenge is simple enough: Multicolored 2×2 blocks drift down the screen, and you need to arrange them to form single-color squares. Completed squares vanish unless you apply the “burst” mechanic, which lets you build ever-larger squares and rack up bigger scores. It’s all accompanied by hallucinatory graphics and thumping electronic music, and you can plug in a virtual reality headset if you really want to feel like you’re at a rave. Pick up the groove Tuesday on PlayStation 5 or PC.
The Voice of Hind Rajab, the Gaza-set drama that received an emotional 21-minute ovation at the Venice Film Festival following its world premiere, has secured U.S. distribution.
Indie Willa has set a Dec. 17 release in New York City and Los Angeles ahead of a national rollout for the Venice Silver Lion Grand Jury winner based on the final, real-life calls of six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was trapped in a car in Gaza before being killed by Israeli tank fire.
“We’re looking forward to partnering with Willa on the distribution of our film.After weighing numerous opportunities, we chose to keep this release in the family, Willa brings thoughtfulness and vision to distribution, and together we’re building a release that honors the spirit in which the film was created,” the film’s producers, Nadim Cheikhrouha, Odessa Rae and James Wilson, said in a joint statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.
The Voice of Hind Rajab is based on true events and the calls of six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was trapped in a car in Gaza on January 29, 2024, after Israeli tank fire killed her relatives. The Palestine Red Crescent Society stayed on the line with the child for more than an hour as she pleaded for rescue.
An ambulance sent to reach her was itself destroyed, killing the two medics on board. Hind’s voice — fragments of which spread online and were later verified and analyzed by outlets including The Washington Post, SkyNews and Forensic Architecture — became one of the most haunting and emblematic testaments of the war in Gaza.
“As one of the executive producers of the film, I’m honored that my distribution company can serve the cause of sharing the film with audiences. It’s a powerful work that demands to be experienced in theaters, and we’re proud to champion it alongside the producers Nadim, Odessa, Jim, and my fellow executive producers to ensure it reaches the widest possible audience,” added Elizabeth Woodward, CEO and founder of Willa, in her own statement.
Ben Hania wrote and directed the film, which stars Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Amer Hlehel and Clara Khoury. The producer credits are shared by Nadim Cheikhrouha, Odessa Rae and and James Wilson, while Willa’s Elizabeth Woodward, Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Glazer and Cuaron executive produce.
The Scot’s latest feature — following Lawrence as Grace, a new mother who finds herself spiraling into the depths of psychosis — had its U.K. premiere Friday night at London’s Royal Festival Hall, with Ramsay going into more depth about the filming process at a Saturday Screen Talks session with fellow industry execs and creatives.
Known for her movies Ratcatcher (1999), Morvern Callar (2002) and We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Ramsay discussed getting to know Hollywood heavy-hitters and recalled meeting Phoenix, star of her 2017 neo-noir psychological thriller You Were Never Really Here. The film follows Phoenix as a traumatized mercenary named Joe, who is hired by a politician to rescue his kidnapped daughter in New York.
“He’s amazing,” began Ramsay, “I mean, he’s totally terrifying. He’s a beast, you know? When I first met him, I was like — oh, my God, I think I said something really stupid like, ‘Are you left-handed or are you right-handed?’”
She went on to explain the lengths that Phoenix, an Oscar winner for his performance in Joker, would often go to on set. “He would just never do the same thing twice, he’d just surprise you,” she continued, remembering one unscripted take where Phoenix purposely fell down some stairs. “Everyone’s running, going, ‘What’s happened to Joaquin?!’” said Ramsay. “He just thought, ‘I’ll try this and see if it works.’ […] Honestly, I’ve never worked with such an exciting actor in my life,” she added. “He’s phenomenal and he wants to just get on with it — he’s not into all the paraphernalia and these bullshit things… I feel bad for telling you that story because he’ll kill me!” When filming wrapped, Phoenix suggested they take the same crew and make another film straight away.
Ramsay delighted the BFI LFF audience with a couple of anecdotes about You Were Never Really Here, including one on a French financier who was desperate for it to go to Cannes. “He was obsessed with Cannes,” recalled the celebrated filmmaker. “He wanted to see a cut every week… [I said], ‘You can wait until you get the director’s cut. But he persuaded me into it. And then [he said], ‘This is shit, this is shit’ for the rest of the edit, which was actually so soul-destroying.”
Joaquin Phoenix in You Were Never Really Here.
When the movie finally nabbed a spot on the 2017 Cannes lineup, there were still scenes to shoot and Ramsay was left with a week to get the film ready. It later won best actor for Phoenix and best screenplay at the prestigious festival, but it was “the nuttiest film I had ever been on,” according to its director.
When asked about bringing music into her films, Ramsay admitted it was only after working with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood on You Were Never Really Here that she had enjoyed hiring composers. “I never used music unless it was in the scene. And then the more and more I worked on features, and especially after I worked with Jonny Greenwood, whose work really enhanced my film, I changed my mind,” she said. “Because I feel that music can tell you so much about character.” She added that receiving files from Greenwood, who recently composed the score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s buzzy thriller One Battle After Another, was like “getting a Christmas present… I was just blown away by the music.”
Towards the end of the session, Ramsay was nervous to reveal too much about her latest film with Lawrence and Pattinson. “Jennifer Lawrence was just in a permanently bonkers situation,” she did tease, before going into depth about the characters of Grace and Jackson. “She does the most outrageous things, but he still loves her, you know?”
“But she kind of takes it to the limit,” continued Ramsay. “It’s also about her marriage and whatnot, and she feels a bit invisible… There’s all that hope moving into a new house, there’s wild sex and then a baby comes in and he doesn’t want sex with her anymore. Those kinds of things that happen in relationships are in the film as well as elements of [postpartum depression].”
The Eddington writer-director didn’t have to entertain The Hollywood Reporter‘s questions about an embryonic draft of his COVID-19 Western, but he did so anyway, further illustrating how the writing and rewriting process doesn’t truly end until picture is locked. The film always introduced its fictional small town setting of Eddington, New Mexico through the perspective of a troubled local vagrant named Lodge (Clifton Collins Jr.), but according to an earlier script, the sequence originally contained a real-life tech billionaire with a notable history on the big screen.
As Lodge babbles and walks barefoot back to town, Aster establishes a sign for a proposed data center, which is one of numerous issues that has divided Eddington’s sub-3,000 population and the nearby reservation known as Santa Lupe Pueblo. Similar data centers are being built all over the U.S. right now in order to support Big Tech’s overwhelming investment in AI infrastructure. However, there have been widespread objections over these facilities’ potential resource depletion, particularly water.
Meta’s own data centers have been in the news due to this very concern, and so it makes sense why Aster once scripted a quick scene involving Meta chairman, Mark Zuckerberg. Lodge once watched the tech CEO emerge from a stretch limousine with a map in hand so he could assess Eddington’s offerings. But the appearance was scrapped during ongoing development, never advancing to the point of having to assemble a casting list.
“That fell by the wayside a long time before we started making it,” Aster tells THR during a recent FYC conversation. “That was an early idea, and it was only one moment.”
The battle for Eddington’s soul is primarily waged by Joaquin Phoenix’s Sheriff Joe Cross and Pedro Pascal’s Mayor Ted Garcia. The two men have opposing views on just about everything: politics, the aforementioned data complex and COVID-19 safety protocols as of May 2020. Furthermore, they have longstanding personal grievances, mainly involving Joe’s wife, Louise (Emma Stone).
After a dust-up with Ted over the local grocery store’s adherence to the state’s mask mandate, Joe impulsively announces his rival candidacy for mayor of Eddington, and tensions eventually boil over to the point of deadly violence. Eddington contains a number of images, story points and themes that struck a chord at the time of its theatrical release in July 2025, but a number of them have proven to be quite prophetic of more recent events within America’s fraught political landscape.
“I’m pretty heartbroken about where we are. I’m very scared. I feel immense dread all the time. This movie came out of that sense of dread, and I certainly see how the film is prescient,” Aster says. “There are things that have happened since [the theatrical release] that the film anticipates, but the film is also the product of me just trying to look unblinkingly at where we are. If I’m not using the world right now for my work, then it’s just going to be using me. This is a very, very dark moment, and so I hope that the film feels reflective of where we are.”
Below, Aster also discusses other adjustments he made to his ever-evolving script, including the substantial dialogue removal during Joe and Ted’s duel over the volume of Katy Perry’s “Firework.”
***
The final shot has lingered in my mind since July. My first thought in the theater was, “This is who won, and this is who was always going to win.” Is that reading on your wavelength?
Yep! (Aster smiles.)
I read an early version of the script that does not end with that shot. It ended with invalid Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) and Dawn’s (Deirdre O’Connell) unique bedroom arrangement, minus the third party. When did it occur to you that the data center shot should be the exclamation point on the piece?
Well, it was in the shooting script before we started production, so you probably read a version that was maybe half a year before we began shooting. But it felt like it came to be a very important part of the film’s spine before we began. And now, it’s the heart of the film. It’s the point of the film.
Ari Aster and Pedro Pascal on the set of Eddington
Richard Foreman/A24
There have been recent stories about the water-related impact of a Meta data center in Georgia, and that’s one of several ways in which Eddington has become even more relevant since its theatrical release. On one hand, it might be reaffirming to know you had your finger on the pulse, but on the other hand, I can’t imagine you want to be right about all these things. Do you actually feel conflicted about the film’s prescience?
I’m pretty heartbroken about where we are. I’m very scared. I feel immense dread all the time. This movie came out of that sense of dread, and I certainly see how the film is prescient. There are things that have happened since [the theatrical release] that the film anticipates, but the film is also the product of me just trying to look unblinkingly at where we are. As a storyteller, I take as many pieces of this landscape, this culture, and build a house out of it, create a piece of architecture. If I’m not using the world right now for my work, then it’s just going to be using me. This is a very, very dark moment, and so I hope that the film feels reflective of where we are.
I don’t have any answers, and the movie doesn’t pretend to have any answers, but it’s very easy to lose the forest for the trees. So I hope that the movie is able to pull back far enough to give a broader picture of where we are. Of course, I have a very limited picture of where we are because I’m also just completely mired in my own identity and, honestly, in my own algorithm. I have access to the information that I have access to, and I do what I can to get as broad a picture of what everybody is seeing, especially while I was making this film. I really tried to do that.
Eddington is a dark film, and I’ve heard people describe it as mean-spirited. But again, it’s trying to reflect the mood of the country, and things have gotten really mean. Things are very cruel. This culture is incredibly cruel, and things have gotten really obscene. So, in some ways I had to tamp all that stuff down in the film because it could have easily been much more alienating and much more unpleasant. So it was interesting to have to actually sand off the edges in some cases just so it could be digestible.
Micheal Ward, Joaquin Phoenix and Luke Grimes in Ari Aster’s Eddington
Richard Foreman/A24
A Mark Zuckerberg character was once scripted to appear during Lodge’s (Clifton Collins Jr.) opening sequence. (Per Lodge’s POV, he sees Zuckerberg get out of a stretch limo at night and survey the town while holding a map.) Did that quickly fall by the wayside?
Oh, so you read a much older version. Yeah, that fell by the wayside a long time before we started making it.
So you never got as far as thinking about casting?
No, that was an early idea, and it was only one moment, as you know.
[The following question contains major spoilers for Eddington.]
The former opening also had the first of two major jurisdictional standoffs between Sheriff Joe Cross and Santa Lupe Pueblo police. Did you decide that it would be more dramatic to save that type of conflict for the investigation into the Garcia murders?
Well, we actually did shoot one version of that first standoff, the one with the charred body near the wheelchair and the land grant. That was something that we did shoot, and it was just too long and complicated. It was something that was meant to never quite come back into the story. So that was something that we reshot in the middle of editing. There were a few pickups we needed, and we decided, “Let’s do something simpler at the beginning here so that we can just get going.” And we didn’t need to repeat the jurisdictional issue. It worked right in the middle of the film, well enough that it didn’t need the doubling. [Writer’s Note: Joe’s opening scene instead became a more streamlined squabble with reservation police over his resistance to wearing a mask on their soil.]
Joaquin Phoenix’s Sheriff Joe Cross and Pedro Pascal’s Mayor Ted Garcia in Ari Aster’s Eddington
Courtesy of Cannes
I thought it was interesting how you removed most of the scripted dialogue from two big scenes: the party fight between Joaquin and Pedro’s characters, and Louise’s (Stone) departure. Did you make that determination? Or did the actors insist that they could sell most of it with just their expressions and body language?
No, that was changed [by me]. Yeah, you read a really early version that shouldn’t be available to read.
Sorry, I just didn’t want to give you the same interview you’ve already been given.
No, it’s fine. Things always leak. I changed that [party scene] as I was working on the script and polishing it and seeing what we needed. A lot of the dialogue that’s in that scene we pulled earlier, so it’s in [Joe and Ted’s] interaction on the street. But that was all just work that I had been doing to make the film leaner. It then became clear to me that, at that point in the film, enough words have been exchanged, and the scene would be much stronger with just the specific action of what’s happening.
There were a number of stories this year about Joaquin and how he tends to go through a period of self-doubt in the lead-up to a project. This is not unheard of among artists. He usually works through it, but sometimes he doesn’t. Assuming he’s had phases on your two movies where he gets in his head, what’s the key when that happens? Do you just talk things through and find a happy medium?
Joaquin completely throws himself into whatever he’s doing, and he takes the decision to actually commit to something very seriously. I think he suffers over it, and I certainly understand that. I have nerves about everything I’m doing and wondering whether it’s the right thing. With Joaquin, I think he faces that with every scene. For every scene, he comes in and asks, “How do I find this? How do I find something interesting, true and urgent that is worth expressing?” I think he lives in horror of the idea of acting and just giving a performance. I think he even recoils at that word performance, and that’s why I really love working with him.
He will challenge everything you put in front of him, and that very often yields something surprising and, sometimes, electrifying. What you want from any actor is for the scene or the movie to come to life, or to get away from you and take on its own energy. And there is a magic to what Joaquin does. He’s trying to summon that. He’s trying to summon something that is beyond him. He’s also a very technical actor, surprisingly technical. He knows what he’s doing, and he’s very conscious of craft.
Joaquin Phoenix’s Sheriff Joe Cross in Eddington
A24
I’m always fascinated by the fraternity between filmmakers. I routinely hear stories of Guillermo del Toro spending a day in a filmmaker’s editing room and whatnot. Zach Cregger also just told me about a major contribution that your buddy Bill Hader made during the rewriting of Weapons. You’ve thanked people such as Chris Abbott on your last couple films, and the same goes for one or both of the Coens, too. Can you talk about the support or contributions you receive from your community?
I live in New York, and I know a lot of New York filmmakers. We’ll be called into a feedback screening to watch something before it’s done and give notes. Typically, when you see somebody in the thank you section, you’re thanking them for giving feedback, or showing up and just watching the film before it’s done. Sometimes, you’re getting a lot of feedback from somebody, meaning, if you’re close with them, you’ll talk to them for a while. Yeah, Joel [Coen] was very helpful, Ethan [Coen] was helpful. I’m friends with Bo Burnham, and he’s always helpful. He’s very smart. They’re all incredibly smart people. Bill [Hader] is also somebody that I’ll often bounce stuff off of, and he’ll bounce stuff off of me. So it’s great to have friends like that.
You’ve mentioned previously that you have a follow-up of sorts in the world of Eddington. Based on the ending, I’m guessing that it would involve the Michael character. What’s your temperature on that potential project at the moment?
Well, I just want to keep making films that are engaging with the world and with the moment and with where we are. We’re living in such a combustible time, and things are changing so quickly and so drastically. So it feels important to be engaged with that and to not retreat from that.
*** Eddington is currently available on digital ahead of Oct. 21’s Exclusive 4K Release via A24.
Celebrities are the “hot ones,” but they’re giving the cold shoulder to traditional media, at least in podcast form.
In the shifting landscape of Hollywood publicity, a curious paradox has emerged: the most press-averse celebrities are suddenly embracing the very medium that demands the most intimate conversation. The traditional press junket, with its rowdy hotel suites and rotating carousel of journalists armed with the same five questions, is giving way to podcasters.
Stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, who has spent decades perfecting the art of strategic media avoidance, recently settled into the surprisingly comfortable confines of Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast to discuss “One Battle After Another,” his $130 million Warner Bros. epic that struggled to find its footing at the box office this past weekend. For a full hour, the notoriously private actor shared anecdotes that would have been unthinkable in a traditional press setting, including the revelation that his childhood agent once suggested he rebrand himself as “Lenny Williams” because “Leonardo DiCaprio” was deemed “too ethnic.”
Similarly, and earlier this year, Joaquin Phoenix, who has made his disdain for conventional press obligations abundantly clear, made his podcast debut on Theo Von’s show to promote Ari Aster’s “Eddington” — another hefty-budget gamble that failed to ignite opening weekend audiences. Phoenix’s appearance felt less like a promotional obligation and more like a genuine conversation, a stark contrast to his expressed hatred of “TV stuff.”
This migration to podcasts represents a significant media evolution and a strategic pivot toward demographics that studios desperately need to recapture. The young male audiences that populate the listener bases of these celebrity-hosted shows are the same moviegoers who have been steadily abandoning theaters. It’s a pattern that extends far beyond Hollywood — politicians and business figures have similarly embraced long-form podcast appearances, with figures like Joe Rogan playing increasingly influential roles in shaping public discourse and, arguably, electoral outcomes.
Yet this new landscape comes with its own complications. While podcasts offer the promise of more authentic conversation, they rarely deliver the journalistic rigor that traditional media aspires to maintain.
These aren’t adversarial interviews designed to challenge or probe; they’re largely collaborative exercises where celebrity guests are invited to be charming versions of themselves without significant pushback.
The appeal for notoriously private stars becomes clearer when considered against the backdrop of traditional celebrity media obligations. Beyoncé hasn’t granted a conventional interview in over a decade, not since releasing her self-titled album in 2013. Since then, her rare media appearances have been entirely on her terms — personal essays submitted to magazines or carefully curated profiles where her silence speaks louder than words.
“F1” star Brad Pitt once articulated the fundamental tension: “There’s this whole other entity that you get sucked into. You have to go and sell your wares. It’s something I never made my peace with.”
This reluctance stands in stark contrast to performers who view publicity as integral to their craft. Jamie Lee Curtis has become legendary for her promotional enthusiasm, with many crediting her tireless advocacy as instrumental in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” securing seven Oscar wins, including her own supporting actress victory. It helped Pamela Anderson with her campaign last year for “The Last Showgirl” and had a great opening weekend for the sequel “Freakier Friday.”
“I wish I had 10 Jamie Lee Curtis’s on every one of my films and titles,” an awards strategist tells Variety. “It would make my job, and yours, infinitely easier and even more enjoyable. There’s nothing like someone who gets it and is positive about it.”
But Curtis represents an increasingly rare breed in an industry where privacy has become both more precious and more impossible to maintain. As social media continues to erode the boundaries between public and private personas, the podcast format offers something unprecedented: the illusion of intimacy without the adversarial undertones of traditional journalism.
That doesn’t mean these big podcasters aren’t good at what they do. Sean Evans has built a recognizable brand with spicy talk series “Hot Ones,” and is constantly praised for his insightful and thought-provoking questions.
The success of celebrity podcast appearances like DiCaprio’s says that audiences are hungry for authentic connection with stars, even as those same stars become increasingly wary of traditional media exposure. It’s a delicate balance that speaks to larger questions about celebrity, privacy, and the evolving relationship between performers and their audiences.
I think we’d like to see a world with both, right?
People are increasingly falling in love with A.I. chatbots—and not on purpose. Ghariza Mahavira for Unsplash+
It was once a trope of science fiction, most notably in Her, the 2013 Spike Jonze film, where Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an A.I. character. Now, chatbot relationships are not only real but have morphed into a complex sociotechnical phenomenon that researchers say demands attention from developers and policymakers alike, according to a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The report analyzed posts between December 2024 and August 2025 from the more than 27,000 members of r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, a Reddit page dedicated to A.I. companionship. The community is filled with users introducing their tech partners, sharing love stories and offering advice.In some cases, Redditers even display their commitments with wedding rings or A.I.-generated couple photos.
“People have real commitments to these characters,” Sheer Karny, one of the study’s co-authors and a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab, told Observer. “It’s interesting, alarming—it’s this really messy human experience.”
For many, these bonds form unintentionally. Only 6.5 percent of users deliberately sought out A.I. companions, the study found. Others began using chatbots for productivity and gradually developed strong emotional attachments. Despite the existence of companies like Character.AI and Replika, which market directly to users seeking companionship, OpenAI has emerged as the dominant platform, with 36.7 percent of Reddit users in the study adopting its products.
Preserving the “personality” of an A.I. partner is a major concern for many users, Karny noted. Some save conversations as PDFs to re-upload them if forced to restart with a new system. “People come up with all kinds of unique tricks to ensure that the personality that they cultivated is maintained through time,” he said.
Losing that personality can feel like grief. More than 16 percent of discussions on r/MyBoyfriendIsAI focus on coping with model updates and loss—a trend amplified last month when OpenAI, while rolling out GPT-5, temporarily removed access to the more personable GPT-4o. The backlash was so intense that the company eventually reinstated the older model.
A cure for loneliness?
Most of the Reddit page’s users are single, with about 78 percent making no mention of human partners. Roughly 4 percent are open with their partners about their A.I. relationships, 1.1 percent have replaced human companions with the technology, and 0.7 percent keep such relationships hidden.
On one hand, chatbot companionship may reduce loneliness, said Thao Ha, a psychologist at Arizona State University who studies how technologies reshape adolescent romantic relationships. But she also warned of long-term risks. “If you satisfy your need for relationships with just relationships with machines, how does that affect us over the long term?” she told Observer.
The MIT study urges developers to add safeguards to A.I. systems while preserving their therapeutic benefits. Left unchecked, the technology could prey on vulnerabilities through tactics like love-bombing, dependency creation and isolation. Policymakers, too, should account for A.I. companionship in legislative efforts, such as California’s SB 243 bill, the authors said.
Ha suggested that A.I. products undergo an approval process similar to new medications, which must clear intensive research and FDA review before reaching the public. While replicating such a strategy for technology companies “would be great,” she conceded that it’s unlikely in light of the industry’s profit-driven priorities.
A more achievable step, she argued, is expanding A.I. literacy to help the public understand both the risks and benefits of forming attachments to chatbots. Still, such programming has yet to materialize. “I wish it was here yesterday, but it’s not here yet,” Ha said.
Haynes is working on a new gay romance movie titled De Noche. The film, however, ran into trouble last year when Phoenix abruptly dropped out of the project. It is still unclear why the Joker actor suddenly backed out.
Per Deadline, however, De Noche is now back on as Pascal is circling the role that was previously going to be played by Phoenix.
What else do we know about Todd Haynes’ new movie with Pedro Pascal?
“Pascal would join Danny Ramirez, who was originally attached to the project,” Deadline’s article notes. “They’ll play two men in love who leave Los Angeles for Mexico, the feature set in the 1930s. Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler’s Killer Films is producing. Killer recently worked with Pascal on A24’s summer romantic comedy Materialists.”
Production on De Noche is expected to begin in 2026 in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Vachon was vocal about Phoenix’s sudden departure. She said at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2024, “Todd Haynes is 62. He’s not old, but there’s a finite number of films that he will be able to do in his lifetime. I consider him one of the most extraordinary film artists of his generation. The idea that his time was wasted and a movie is not the result of all that time working with Joaquin is a tragedy to me…That I can’t get over. The idea that we as a cultural community lost an opportunity to have a new movie by Todd Haynes is a tragedy.”
Haynes’ filmography includes 1991’s Poison, 1995’s Safe, 1998’s Velvet Goldmine, 2002’s Far from Heaven, 2007’s I’m Not There, 2015’s Carol, 2017’s Wonderstruck, 2019’s Dark Waters, 2021’s The Velvet Underground, and 2023’s May December.
A release date for De Noche has not yet been announced.
While people have chosen to lambast Joker: Folie à Deuxfor all the wrong reasons (mainly because it doesn’t fit in any way with the fanboy expectation of the DC Universe—much the same fate that befell Marvel’s She-Hulk series), no one appears to be looking at all the very clear trolling Todd Phillips is doing. Not just of the so-called fans, but of a certain kind of person…as embodied by Harley “Lee” Quinzel. And while, obviously, Lady Gaga’s iteration of the character could never have been as iconic as Margot Robbie’s, Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver wield her for purposes beyond merely having Halloween costume cachet (which, by the way, this version of Harley does not).
To mirror the phoniness of everyone who claims to be a supporter of Joker (Joaquin Phoenix), it seems inevitable that Lee should turn out to be a total poseur as well. Accordingly, she initially tells Arthur at Arkham, “I grew up in the same neighborhood [as you]. Me and my friends used to take that staircase to school every day.” This said when Arthur steals a moment with her after being placed in the same B Ward music class, despite his assignation to the E Ward (a.k.a. where the dangerous and violent are relegated). Because, for whatever reason, one of the usually bullying security guards, Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson, still bearing an Irish name in character, naturally), decides to get him into the class. (Based on certain information given later, who’s to say that Lee wasn’t the one to make that happen?)
Having encountered Lee while walking past that class a few weeks prior, Joker is only too eager to attend—especially since Lee flashed him a flirtatious sign by wielding her index finger and thumb as a gun and pantomiming killing herself with it. Talk about love at first sight. Or so she wanted to manipulate him into believing….
This comes complete with further laying it on thick with her “poor me” backstory so that Joker will feel even more “kindred” with her as she tells him, “My parents didn’t give a fuck about me either. My father beat the shit out of me.” And then died in a car accident. An elaborate sob story, to be sure. Along with her explanation for being at Arkham: “I set fire to my parents’ apartment building.” As a result, “My mother had me committed. She says I’m psychotic.” Per Lee’s version of events, anyway. But even before she expresses contempt for her own matriarch, Arthur, apparently feeling comfortable in her midst, confesses, “Nobody knows, but I also killed my mother.” Lee smiles at him fondly, as though he’s just told her the sweetest thing ever (though, based on some women’s mothers-in-law, the smile isn’t totally out of left field). She then makes him feel even safer about parading his crazy around her by responding, “I should have done that.”
Although Lee’s secret intention is to make Arthur bring out his “true” self—Joker—the effect she ends up having on him is quite the opposite. For he falsely believes that Lee loves the “real” him, not the man who took leave of his senses for a few days, culminating in the murder of Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) on live television. To Lee’s dismay, that’s not who he is—because, like many of us, he gave in to a single moment that caused him to snap. A blind rage-sadness that made him do something he wouldn’t have ordinarily done. And now everyone, including Lee, wants him to be that guy. The one Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) describes on the news as follows: “His depraved acts of violence are only admired by his followers, not only in our city, but all over the country… And they are still willing to commit acts of violence in his name. Now these people, they believe Arthur Fleck to be some kind of martyr.”
Soon after Dent’s public declaration, Fleck appears on a TV special with interviewer Paddy Meyers (Steve Coogan). This arranged by his lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), as a means to funnel a bit more goodwill in Arthur’s direction. Indeed, Maryanne seems to be the only one in Arthur’s life who actually wants him to “just be himself.” Paddy, on the other hand, wants to invoke the beast for the sake of his viewership. Even after Arthur firmly tells him of the person that killed five (er, six) people, “That’s not me anymore. That’s not who I am.”
When Paddy demands what’s changed, Arthur announces that he’s not alone now. Paddy, like most of Gotham, is aware of who he’s referring to, with Lee’s overt displays of affection for Joker making headlines everywhere—especially since she’s out of Arkham and ready to talk to whoever will listen. Of course, she tells Arthur that the reason she’s being “sent home” is because “they’re saying you’re a bad influence on me.” This after the two “escaped” (a.k.a. danced a bit outside the confines of the prison) together when Lee insisted they ditch a screening of The Band Wagon, with Phillips strategically homing in on the scene during which “That’s Entertainment!” is sung.
Perhaps not aware of just how meta that choice would be, it bears noting that The Band Wagon was initially regarded as nothing more than a box office disappointment before going on to garner the eventual respect it deserved (one can only hope the same might happen for Joker:Folie à Deux). The choice is overt in its pointedness, placing especial emphasis on the lyrics, “Anything that happens in life/Can happen in a show/You can make ‘em laugh/You can make ‘em cry/Anything, anything can go/The clown/With his pants falling down/Or the dance/That’s a dream of romance/Or the scene/Where the villain is mean/That’s entertainment!”
Making mention of a “clown” isn’t the only thing that applies to Arthur, with his own dream of romance causing him to be blind to the fact that, as Maryanne warns him, “She’s playing you for a fool.” And even though Arthur tells Paddy, “You’re just like Murray, you just, you want sensationalism. You don’t care about—you just wanna talk about my mistakes, you wanna talk about the things I did in the past, not about who I am now, not how I’m different now,” it’s something he could just as well be saying to Lee. After all, she just wants him to be the bad boy that will assist her in securing her own fame. A viable fear of Arthur’s that leads into one of Joker’s musical fantasies of the two doing a duet as Sonny and Cher (except they’re Joker and Harley).
Soon, Lee starts to get a little too interested in her solo—a rendition of the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody”—with the crowd going quiet when Joker stops singing to tell her, “You weren’t even looking at me anymore. You were making it all about yourself. And the song is about loving meeeee!” The two then make nice as Lee agrees, “You’re right, let’s give the people what they want.” Joker assumes this to mean they’ll take it from the top again with their lovey-dovey song and vibes, only for Lee to pull a gun out and shoot him. For that is, in the end, what the people want. Because the Joker they had in mind didn’t live up to the ideal, with Lee, too, feeling exactly the same way after seeing far too much Arthur shine through.
And, in the end, her only motive for checking herself into Arkham was for the purpose of “seeing” Joker, like some sort of private museum display meant solely for her to enjoy and exploit however she wants. In the end, she doesn’t “see” him at all though. Nor does Arthur really see her. Not for what she is. That unveiling is left to Maryanne, who informs her client, “She didn’t grow up in your neighborhood. She lives on the Upper West Side with her parents [this clearly being a nod to the frequent shade thrown at Gaga’s own real-life background]. Her father is not dead, he’s a doctor. She voluntarily committed herself to the hospital and then just checked herself out when she wanted to.”
Arthur is still insistent that the lies Lee told him are true, prompting Maryanne to then ask, “Did she mention she went to grad school for psychiatry?” Needless to say, she’s a mental illness tourist—someone who likes to pick and choose certain facets of the DSM and try them on to see if it might make them more interesting. Not to mention a lover of poverty porn (à la Nicola Peltz-Beckham with Lola). Incidentally, Arthur sings a lyric from “Bewitched (Bothered and Bewildered)” that cuts to the core of who Lee is even before he finds out the truth, singing to Paddy, “She’s a fool and don’t I know it/But a fool can have her charms,” then shrugging, “Lost my heart, but what of it?/She is cold, I agree.”
And it’s true, her coldness knows no bounds by the end of Folie à Deux, when she emotionally gut-punches him right on the very staircase that made him iconic, breaking the news, “We’re not going away Arthur. All we had was the fantasy, and you gave up… There is no Joker, that’s what you said, isn’t it?” In effect, because he doesn’t want to play along with the fantasy that she and everyone else has of him, she’s got to move on. This by way of singing “That’s Entertainment!” to convey that spectacle is all anyone truly wants—from him and in general.
Arthur begs, “I don’t wanna sing anymore. Shh. Just talk to me.” He tries to cover her mouth while urging, “Just talk, please stop singing.” But she can’t be stopped. “That’s Entertainment!” must be sung in all its glory. Even though Phillips opts to leave out the additionally applicable lyrics, “The world is a stage/The stage is a world/Of entertainment!” and “The dame/Who is known as the flame/Of the king/Of an underworld ring/He’s an ape/Who won’t let her escape.” Funnily enough, that last line speaks to the version of Joker that Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn gets wet for. The one that Lee wants to enjoy, too.
Only she’s instead saddled with this flaccid incel type who hardly lives up to previous images of Joker played by the likes of Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger and even Jared Leto (panned as Suicide Squad was, Leto still delivered on being the kind of “sexy” Joker Lee wants). A disappointment that effectively ends Lee’s “tour” of how the other half lives.
That was the message Francis Ford Coppola tried to get across in a social media post on Saturday. As his new film Megalopolis continues to bomb at the box office, he praised Todd Phillips for making Joker: Folie à Deux, which is likewise struggling.
The Joker sequel, which is launching in theaters around the globe this weekend, is opening well behind expectations after becoming the first Hollywood comic book pic in history to receive a D Cinemascore. The audience backlash isn’t a huge surprise, considering that the follow-up is a musical, making for an unusual hybrid that fanboys might not have wanted.
Coppola says Phillips’ films have always amazed him and provided enjoyment. He also suggested that moviegoers may not be ready for a film such as Joker: Folie à Deux. “Ever since the wonderful The Hangover, he’s always been one step ahead of the audience never doing what they expect. Congratulations to Joker: Folie à Deux,” Coppola wrote on Instagram.
That’s only slightly worse than the D+ awarded to Megalopolis when it opened in cinemas last weekend. Coppola’s dystopian epic debuted to a mere $4 million against a production budget of $120 million before marketing. No major studio would touch the movie, so Coppola raised the funds himself, including putting up some of his own money. Lionsgate came aboard at the 11th hour to distribute the movie, which is on course to earn less than $1 million this weekend.
Joker: Folie à Deux — a hybrid antihero pic and a musical that stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga — had no trouble getting made after Phillips’ Joker grossed $1 billion globally in 2019 and earned numerous Oscar nominations, as well as a best actor win for Phoenix. The first Joker cost $55 million to make before marketing; the sequel cost a net $190 million to $200 million, upping the stakes dramatically.
When Folie à Deux first came on tracking three weeks ago, it looked like it would open to $70 million. While still behind the first film’s $96 million domestic opening, it was a respectable number. However, as reviews started coming in and the film was screened for influences, interest waned and there was a notable dip in tracking. Heading into this weekend, the forecast was $50 million to $60 million.
Joining the D CinemaScore club isn’t the only thing that Coppola and Phillips have in common, as it turns out.
Coppola said in his Instagram post he’s honored that Joker 2 cinematographer Lawrence Sher has talked about how Coppola’s infamous 1981 musical One From the Heart— a critical and commercial flop, which nearly put his Zoetrope studio out of business — provided inspiration for Folie à Deux. (In recent years, critics have revisited One From the Heart, turning it into something of a cult classic.)
Reviewers haven’t been kind to either Megalopolis or Joker 2, which have a 46 percent and 33 percent critic’s score on Rotten Tomatoes.
In many ways, the real reason the sequel to Joker is called Joker: Folie à Deux has little to do with a shared delusion between Harley Quinn and Arthur “Joker” Fleck, and more to do with Todd Phillips and Scott Silver calling out the delusions that fans have about those they worship. A delusion that can be shared by both parties in the situation only so long as the “revered” obliges the projections being cast onto them (see: Taylor Swift). Once they stop, however, the fans’ “love” for them suddenly disappears, turning often to hate—hence the expression: “there’s a fine line between love and hate.”
In Harleen “Lee” Quinzel’s (Lady Gaga) case, the love she claims to feel disappears as soon as Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) refuses to be “the guy” (read: Joker). The one she fell “in love” with when she watched him blow Murray Franklin’s (Robert De Niro) brains out on live TV. Or the one who was portrayed in the “really good” (Lee’s words) TV movie about the entire course of events (presumably including dramatized scenes of Fleck’s hyper-shitty early life). So it is that, like fans with celebrities, Lee’s first connection with Arthur is entirely parasocial.
At first, of course, he’s only too willing to play the part she expects of him, knowing on some level that her attraction is rooted in what she knows of him through the media’s portrayal—which only focuses on his “Joker era.” As such, he’s often reluctant to be “full Arthur” around her, while simultaneously being amazed that she could possibly be interested in him in any capacity—Joker or otherwise. And yet, like many who have been glamored by lovebombing, Joker falls for Lee’s flattery easily, letting her beguile him with the notion that they’re both two broken souls who can “mend” one another. To boot, that he is powerful and can do anything he wants—a feeling that becomes even more adrenaline-boosting when buttressed by notions of “two against the world”-type love. As for Lee, she sees in Joker someone who can be her diabolical savior. The “sexy” solution to all her “psychotic” woes because he accepts them, is unfazed by them. And because his are so much worse.
Accordingly, it doesn’t take long for the pair to start projecting all of their unhinged ideals and fantasies onto one another—with Joker in particular constantly fantasizing about Lee in various musical settings that often remind one of a sort of “macabre La La Land” (particularly that sequence when they’re dancing with a giant moon behind them). Indeed, in one of many contrasts to the usual telling of Joker and Harley’s story, it is so clearly Joker who is more obsessed and smitten with Harley than the other way around (as Margot Robbie’s version elucidates in Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey). Because, as he tells his interviewer, Paddy Meyers (Steve Coogan), he’s a changed man now thanks to “not [being] alone anymore.” Falling prey to the old adage, “You’re nobody until somebody loves you” (which really should have been a musical number in the movie at some point). Or until you create a sinister alter ego and go on a killing rampage like Joker. Thereby becoming a magnet for freaks and faux freaks alike. Lee, as it turns out, subscribes to the latter category—ostensibly looking to Joker to make her “legitimate” on the disturbed and deranged front. As it transpires though, she’s ultimately more fucked-up than Joker in terms of callousness and plotting. Discarding him with ease once he renounces his Joker identity on live TV.
Up until that moment, however, she was willing to do whatever it took to be with him based on her false projection, hoping against hope that he’ll take her cues about how he’s “supposed to be.” Case in point, she even insists upon Arthur wearing the Joker makeup she smuggles into his prison cell. So committed is she to upholding this projection of hers. Joker, meanwhile, is still too blinded by his “love” for her (read: his own false projection), dumbly remarking, “You brought makeup.” Lee asserts, “I wanna see the real you.” She then starts to apply the signature Joker colors to his face. This apparently getting her “wet” enough to not be totally repulsed when Arthur asks her, “Can you do it?” before they start to fuck. As in: can she guide him/his penis on how to even “do sex”? The scene is among the grimmest in the movie, with no fantastical/musical elements added to it as a means to mitigate the drab, grotesque “consummation” of their “relationship.” A relationship that is a folie à deux in that each person has their own separate but shared delusion about the other.
Perhaps one of the most overt examples of this from Lee is her wording of the phrase, “When I first saw Joker—when I saw you on Murray Franklin… for once in my life, I didn’t feel so alone anymore.” That she has to remind herself that the pathetic, maquillage-free person in front of her is “technically” Joker—not Arthur—seems telling of the fact that she’s already noticed a disconnect between the man on the screen and the flesh and blood man in front of her. Who, if she’s being honest, can’t quite measure up to the projection she already saw and then built further up as her own.
Arthur’s parallel belief in Lee as a kindred spirit (especially since she lies to him and says she’s from the same neighborhood and also had an abusive childhood) is also doomed to be dashed sooner or later. Particularly since his “living in a fantasy world” tendencies start to ramp up as he dreams of the two of them together in various musical scenarios, singing such love songs as “Folie à Deux” (one of the original songs on Harlequin) and “To Love Somebody” (originally sung by the Bee Gees). The lyrics of the former are most telling of each person’s respective projection as Lee lackadaisically sings, “In our minds, we’d be just fine/If it were only us two.” This line indicates that without the inevitable outside influence of others, maybe their delusions about one another could stand a chance and the relationship could still survive…albeit on a bed of lies.
Lee then adds, “They might say that we’re crazy/But I’m just in love with you.” And yes, it is an adage widely disseminated in various art forms that the word (and act of) “love” is synonymous with “crazy.” To name a few examples, “The things we do for love,” “Love makes you do crazy things,” “Your love’s got me lookin’ so crazy right now,” etc. But the “crazy” in Joker: Folie à Deux is all about the insanity of projection rather than true love itself being the thing that makes a person go “crazy.”
Then again, isn’t every form of falling in love ultimately a product of projection? People fall in love with the version of someone they build up in their head only to unearth some form of disappointment after they’ve already convinced themselves it’s love. Gone too far down the rabbit hole to turn back. But for Lee, it isn’t too late (as it never is for rich girls) once she realizes that Arthur refuses to be “who he really is.” Or rather, who she and everyone else so desperately wanted him to be: Joker.
It was Todd Phillips himself who said that Joker was never intended to have a sequel. In many regards, that’s not what Joker: Folie à Deux is, so much as a “second act” or “companion piece” that follows up the rise of Joker with the fall of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix). Regardless, a large majority of viewers and critics haven’t been able to receive Joker: Folie à Deux in the spirit with which it was intended.
From the beginning of the announcement of the movie’s existence, the automatic reaction upon hearing that a “sequel” to Joker would arrive in the form of a musical was met with more than slight hesitancy on the part of many “purists.” That Lady Gaga was going to be cast in the role of Harley Quinn—brandishing the diminutive “Lee” instead, as though to differentiate from Margot Robbie’s untouchable performance—was meant, perhaps, to assuage those who were nervous about the film’s viability. Granted, there are just as many who lost even more faith in it upon seeing Gaga’s name next to Joaquin Phoenix’s. And yet, it is not really supposed to be taken seriously as a musical (those who do are naturally going to pan the movie). That genre merely being a tool to exemplify the artifice and spectacle that ensues after a person achieves notoriety-turned-laudability/“respectable” fame. As Arthur Fleck does in Joker after going on a killing rampage spurred, ultimately, by his total ostracism from society.
Ending up at Arkham Asylum at the end of Joker, Arthur has developed more than a mere cult following for his presumed anti-Establishment, anti-wealthy, generally anarchic tendencies. Whether he wanted to or not, he becomes a symbol. Something that the alienated and disenfranchised can project their disillusionments onto. And, although Arthur was seemingly happy to become that symbol at the end of Joker, his reluctance about being some kind of figurehead for chaos and misanthropy has waned in Joker: Folie à Deux, as he realizes that, once again, no one is actually seeing him—Arthur. They just want Joker, and he’s no longer sure if that’s who he “is,” or if it was who he became during a moment of weakness/a general nadir.
Taking place two years after the rampage he went on in 1981 (even though five years have lapsed since Joker came out in 2019), the movie, nonetheless, has a decidedly 1970s feel and aesthetic, complete with sartorial choices—particularly during the fantasy sequences—and a blatant nod to The Sonny and Cher Show (hence, calling it The Joker and Harley Show) when Lee and Joker are singing the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody” on a TV stage in front of a live audience. By this point in the movie, Arthur has fallen hopelessly and blindly in love with Lee, forced to question that love when his lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), reveals to him that everything she’s told him about herself is a lie—particularly the fact that she grew up in the same neighborhood as Arthur with similarly abusive parents when, in fact, she’s from the Upper West Side (a meta detail considering Gaga’s own origins there) and her father is a well-to-do doctor. It is after this moment that he not only has The Joker and Harley Show fantasy (wherein said fantasy is tainted by the reality that she might not be all that she seems), but also starts to comprehend that maybe the only reason anyone is interested in him at all is because of their false projections. Much as he falsely projected onto her the ideal of a perfect “other half” who might save him from his misery.
The misery that Phillips and his co-writer, Scott Silver (who also co-wrote Joker), highlight in the very first few minutes of the movie via an “old-timey” WB cartoon called “Me and My Shadow,” in which Joker struts into the Franklin Theater (in ironic honor of Murray Franklin [Robert De Niro], one imagines) with his shadow starting to act out in ways far more sinister than Peter Pan’s. Eventually, the shadow self overtakes the real Joker long enough to go out onstage, wreaking havoc before and during the performance so that when he finally is subdued by the real Joker again, it is that real Joker who is blamed for everything his shadow self did.
It also bears noting that, in the title card of “Me and My Shadow,” while the flesh and blood Joker is wielding his index finger and thumb in the shape of a gun, his shadow self is toting a real gun—this being the ultimate clue that Joker is merely Arthur’s id, not who he really is a.k.a. who everyone, including Lee, wants him to be. That musicals themselves are entirely rooted in fantasy and fantastical elements further accentuates the idea that Arthur is now living in a distorted reality, a nightmare that he didn’t entirely create. For it is the public that has perpetuated this image of him as Joker…even if he’s no longer necessarily certain that’s who he wants to be (hell, if that’s who he ever was). And even if that acknowledgement means not getting the girl in the end as a result.
And yes, it becomes increasingly difficult for Arthur not to notice what a “social climber,” for lack of a better word, Lee is. Which is ironic considering she’s already at the top of the social stratum. But what gets her off is “slumming it” with Joker, who she visits in prison at one point to wistfully encourage him, “You should see it out there, they’re all going crazy for you” (Gaga loves a Madonna reference, after all). Only they’re not going crazy for “him,” but rather, “Joker.” A man who doesn’t really exist. When Arthur finally admits that to everyone in the final courtroom scene, any “public sympathy” he might have had by pleading some “insanity defense” by way of the “it wasn’t me, it was my alter ego” excuse disappears entirely. And with it, his devoted following who wanted him to be “that guy.” The guy that could represent all of their ideals and beliefs because he, too, possessed them. In the end, however, Arthur is still the confused, emotionally insecure incel that audiences first met in Joker (even if he does get to give Lee a few pathetic thrusts during an impromptu conjugal visit).
Yet, even though this very public admission should have been the death of Joker and all that he “means,” it instead opens the door for those who simply want to cherry-pick various “tenets” of his message to form their own factions, leaving the title available for a new, truly nefarious Joker who will take the helm without hesitation or any “pussy” qualms about doing what “needs” to be done. Because the Joker can be anyone, everyone. In some sense, it’s akin to how Trump is the latest symbol for white supremacy and fascistic conservatism, yet his “acolyte,” JD Vance, is the next-generation, more extreme version of it, poised for a takeover with Trump being too decrepit (and concerned with being “liked”) to maneuver his so-called beliefs toward an “optimum” level.
In another sense, Arthur’s reluctance to accept his notoriety without questioning why people are so obsessed with him (or rather, his false image) also echoes another au courant occurrence: Chappell Roan renouncing fame and insisting she’ll abandon music altogether if her fans keep acting batshit. Arthur, too, has these same kinds of feelings, but doesn’t have the, let’s say, “likeability” aspect that Roan has going for her to carry it off. What’s more, Roan has yet to be knocked off her “pedestal” the way Joker is in Folie à Deux. Though that does seem inevitable since, to loosely quote Madonna, there is nothing the public loves more than elevating and then desecrating those they “worship.”
This, in part, is what makes the reaction to Folie à Deux so predictable, with critics lining up to condemn it despite how in love they were with Joker in the first film. And perhaps that was Phillips’ intent in making Folie à Deux: to show something to the world about itself and the way it treats their “gods.” Even if they still can’t seem to see it.
Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is a man suffering from split personality. His alter ego is that of Joker, a comedian who literally has killer jokes. In the first film, we see him kill six people as Joker. He’s set for a trial and while his lawyer Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), wants to bring the split personality angle into play, arguing that Fleck shouldn’t be punished for Joker’s crimes, he dismisses her as the lawyer and starts to put forward his own defence, much to the delight of the publicity seeking defence attorney, Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey). In between, Fleck meets a mentally disturbed singer Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (Lady Gaga) in the jail. Her alter ego is that of Harley Quinn and she’s fascinated by Joker, finding him to be her feminine counterpart. Through her, Flick discovers the singer in him. If in the first film he saw himself as a crack comic artiste, here he begins to see himself as something akin to Fred Astaire, a singing-dancing sensation who draws maximum crowds everywhere. The film has a wonderful soundtrack, with the two stars collaborating on covering such classics as Get Happy, For Once in My Life, and What the World Needs Now Is Love and many more. The film is a proper musical spectacle, as the Joker, in his imagination, expresses his emotions as songs from a musical, turning his life into a Broadway act.
Director Todd Phillips has borrowed characters from the DC comics universe but turned them into something raw and human. The film isn’t set in the fictional city of Gotham but in New York. And is riddled with real-life issues. We see corrupt guards exercising their power over hapless prison inmates, ambitious lawyers courting fame and power instead of justice, groupies idolising madmen, and anarchy raising its head as people lose faith in the government. The film also touches upon the issue of identity. Who are we really? What do we appear to the world or something that only we can see in our mind’s eye? Like the first film, it bats for mental health. Both Joker and Harley Quinn need counselling and could have been saved from themselves if the society was kinder to them. Again, the apathy that we see is real and not of the comic world. The difference between them is that while Harley Quinn knows about the mask and wants to embrace it, Joker seems to be tired of the facade and wants to end the fiction.
Joaquin Phoenix, who won the Academy Award for his turn as Joker, is in fine form here as well. The gaunt, lean body he developed for the role pays homage to his integrity as a performer. We see Arthur Flick’s mind unravelling through the actor’s performance. The lines between realities blur, as Arthur tries to come to grips with who he really is, even as he finds musical talent flourishing within him. And unlike the first film, he actually finds true love here, something that comes as a redemption to him. The actor’s face is a canvas for a hundred expressions as his character lives through different possibilities. It’s again a performance of a lifetime for the consummate actor. Lady Gaga matches him scene by scene, even as she unravels the special brand of madness that’s Harley Quinn. We’ve heard of girls falling in love with serial killers and she’s one such girl. She’s in love and she wants the world to know it. She showed us how good she was in A Star Is Born (2018) as here she again stamps her authority as an actor.
Watch the film for the command performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga and for the musical score which will take you back to the Golden era of Hollywood musicals.
For those of us who love the glamor and the glitz of the entertainment industry, September passes by in a train of tulle and sartorial spectacle. Fashion weeks across New York, Paris, London, and Milan take the cake.
Packed front rows and celebrity-studded catwalks keep the internet entranced. From my couch – clad in my hole-ridden sweatpants – I judge couture and ready-to-wear fashion shows from the mega-brands and the sparkling stars who actually attend these exclusive events.
But to me, fashion week is just the punctuation to the summer film festival season. There’s the Tribeca Film Festival and Cannes, Toronto Film Festival, and Venice International Film Festival to name the heaviest hitters. Some films premiere across all these festivals; others are more selective. But each one has its headlines: the drawn-out standing ovations, the celebrity attendees, the future award winners.
Indeed, September marked the Venice Film Festival, one of the most anticipated film events of the year, and spawned some of the most talked about films of the year. The 2024 Venice Film Festival’s pomp and circumstance – arguably the film festival circuit’s glittering crown jewel – transforms the floating city into a playground for the cinematic elite.
Venice has long been the preferred launchpad for Oscar hopefuls and auteur passion projects alike. In recent years, Timothee Chalamet used it to flex his fashion prowess, the cast of The Idol used it to gaslight us into thinking it was going to be a good show (as we extensively reviewed: it wasn’t), and the Don’t Worry Darling cast played out their workplace drama for the world to see. This year was no exception. Lido was alight with couture gowns and paparazzi flashes, albeit a lot less drama and gossip to satiate us. So, rather than hashing out the latest cast feuds, let’s talk about the films.
What to watch at the Venice Film Festival 2024?
The 81st Venice International Film Festival is organized by La Biennale di Venezia and ran on the Lido di Venezia from 28 August to 7 September 2024. A parade of A-listers descended upon the city, ferried to Lido in glamorous water taxis to promote some of the films we’ll be seeing at award shows this year, and….some films that flopped.
Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore – those chameleons of the silver screen – graced the red carpet for Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut, The Room Next Door, which ultimately snagged the coveted Golden Lion (Venice’s top prize). The ever-ethereal Nicole Kidman turned heads alongside her fresh-faced co-star Harris Dickinson after her turn in The Perfect Couple. Meanwhile, Daniel Craig proved he’s still got it, swapping his Bond tuxedo Loewe alongside new It Boy Drew Starkey in Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.”
This year’s theatrics were at their peak – enough to manufacture and stoke social media chatter. And it worked. Brad Pitt and George Clooney played up their pairing’s nostalgia factor by chasing each other around the red carpet, reliving their youth but also relying on the reputations of their glory days. Luca Guadanino took a selfie with his absolutely stacked cast. Jenna Ortega looking fabulous in one of her gothic Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice outfits proved that thematic press tour dressing is far from dead.
But this year’s films were just as conversation-worthy. Let’s dive into the films that have everyone talking:
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Tim Burton returns to the 1988 classic that launched his career, reuniting with Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder while adding Gen Z darling – Jenna Ortega – to the mix. After her turn in Wednesday, Scream, and even the video for Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste,” it’s clear that Ortega can handle horror – she’s a scream queen with the acting chops to back it up. The result is a nostalgic trip that manages to feel fresh, thanks in large part to Ortega’s deadpan charm (honed to perfection in Wednesday) as set in counterpoint to Keaton’s manic energy. It’s a welcome return to form for Burton. His triumphant release is a rare example of commercially and critically successful and was an energetic opening to the Festival.
Babygirl
The latest in the buzzy pantheon of female-driven age-gap dramas, Babygirl carves out a fresh niche for our darling Ms. Kidman. After her comic turn in A Family Affair, A24’s latest offering sees her playing an all-business CEO who becomes entangled with her much younger intern (Harris Dickinson). Fans of Triangle of Sadness, Scrapper, or The Iron Claw will recognize Dickinson and admire his remarkable range. It takes an impressive young actor to shine alongside Kidman but Dickinson is up for the task. Director Halina Reijn – fresh off her Gen Z slasher hit Bodies Bodies Bodies – brings a distinctly female gaze to the May-December romance trope. The result is a steamy, thought-provoking exploration of power dynamics that will have HR departments squirming in their seats.
The Room Next Door
Pedro Almodóvar ventures into English-language territory with this Golden Lion winner, proving that his particular brand of melodrama translates beautifully in any tongue. Based on Sigrid Nunez’s book What Are You Going Through, the film pairs Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, two of cinema’s most captivating chameleons. It follows a writer who reconnects with an old friend after years of distance in a tale of friendship, grief, and deep discussions about what it means to be a writer. It’s intimate and intellectual but feels accessible and human thanks to Almodóvar’s direction and the nuanced performances of these two powerhouse thespians.
Maria
This year’s Venice International Film Festival was a big one for shimmering stars of the silver screen. Angelina Jolie triumphed as opera legend Maria Callas, securing instant iconic status and positioning herself for Oscar recognition. The gravitas she lends to Pablo Larraín’s portrait of Callas reveals that Jolie’s side projects (like her fashion brand, Atelier Jolie) have not dampened her acting skills. Following in the footsteps of Natalie Portman’s Jackie and Kristen Stewart’s Spencer, Jolie disappears into the role of the troubled diva. Larraín’s dreamlike direction and Jolie’s raw performance make for a haunting exploration of fame, art, and the price of genius. When picking Jolie for the titular role, Larrain said he wanted an actress who would “naturally and organically be that diva,” and Jolie delivered with aching nuance. Oscar buzz is already building, and rightly so.
Queer
Speaking of actors challenging themselves, no one is in their comfort zone in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer. For this adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical novel, Guadagnino reunites with his A Bigger Splash star Ralph Fiennes and ropes in Daniel Craig. Craig shed his 007 persona entirely in order to play Lee – a Burroughs stand-in – as he navigates the seedy underbelly of mid-century Mexico City. It’s a mix between last year’s Venice darling Strange Way of Life by Pedro Almodóvar and Guadagnino’s famous Call Me By Your Name.Drew Starkey – of Outer Banks fame – is the object of his desire, with Guadagnino’s camera lingering on his lithe frame in a manner that would make even Timothée Chalamet blush. It also stars singer Omar Apollo in his first major acting role. Between unflinching sex scenes and luscious landscapes, it’s a heady blend of desire and ennui that solidifies Guadagnino’s place as cinema’s Yearner In Chief.
Disclaimer
Venice isn’t all movies. Some limited dramas also make their way to Lido. Two years ago, The Idol got the full Venice treatment, but we know how that went. Luckily, Alfonso Cuarón’s return to the festival circuit fared better. This twisty psychological thriller stars Cate Blanchett – last at Venice with Tar. This time, she plays a documentary filmmaker whose life unravels when a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table. As always, Blanchett is a force of nature, her icy exterior cracking as she realizes that she’s the subject of a book that will reveal her long-buried secrets. Cuarón proves he’s as adept at space epics as he is with intimate character studies, crafting a nail-biting exploration of truth, memory, and the stories we tell ourselves.
The Order
Starring Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, and Jurnee Smollett, The Order is a historical crime drama that plunges us into the action-packed world of counterfeiting operations, bank robberies, and armored car heists in the Pacific Northwest. Told through the eyes of the lead detective, these crimes are deemed acts of domestic terrorism, revealing the deep-seated hatred and violence in the United States. Inspired by the January 6 insurrection – when nooses were hung in front of the Capitol Building – this film references a fictional white nationalist insurrection that’s at the center of William Luther Pierce’s 1978 novel The Turner Diaries. Taking this hatred back to its roots, The Order explores how these same psychologies have been buried in the US consciousness for decades.
Joe Alwyn, Taylor Swift’s ex-London Boy, sauntered through Venice alongside castmates Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist. This sprawling epic follows a Hungarian immigrant architect (Brody) navigating love, loss, and artistic integrity. Initially forced to toil in poverty, he soon wins a contract that changes the course of his life for the next 30 years. Clocking in at a hefty three-and-a-half hours, it’s not for the faint of heart. But those who stick with it will be richly rewarded with a deeply felt meditation on the American Dream and the cost of creation. Corbet’s ambition is a labor of love, as his official statement expresses how he spent “the better part of a decade revving the engine to bring this particular story to life.” His toiling is definitely worth it.
Joker: Folie à Deux
Closing Venice was the ambitious, melodramatic Jukebox musical Joker: Folie à Deux. It’s the polarizing sequel to the controversial original, and although everyone’s talking about it — no one can make up their minds about whether or not it’s good. Todd Phillips returns to Gotham, bringing Lady Gaga along for the ride as Harley Quinn to Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. The addition of musical numbers is either a stroke of genius or a bridge too far, depending on who you talk with. Phoenix and Gaga commit fully to the madness, their chemistry undeniable even as the plot threatens to buckle under the weight of its own ambition.
This is a swing for the fences that doesn’t always connect, but you have to admire the creative audacity. Gaga is electric, though you can’t help but wonder if her talents are wasted in this convoluted film that, just like the original, isn’t always sure what it’s trying to say.
As the curtain falls on another Venice Film Festival, one thing is clear: cinema is alive and well, continuing to push boundaries and provoke thought even in the face of industry upheaval. Whether these films will stand the test of time remains to be seen, but for now, they’ve given us plenty to chew on as we sail away from the Lido and into the heart of awards season.
VENICE, Italy (AP) — “ Joker ” is a hard act to follow. Todd Phillips’ dark, Scorsese-inspired character study about the Batman villain made over a billion dollars at the box office, won Joaquin Phoenix his first Oscar, dominated the cultural discourse for months and created a new movie landmark.
It wasn’t for everyone, but it got under people’s skin.
Knowing that it was a fool’s errand to try to do it again, Phillips and Phoenix pivoted, or rather, pirouetted into what would become “ Joker: Folie à Deux.” The dark and fantastical musical journey goes deeper into the mind of Arthur Fleck as he awaits trial for murder and falls in love with a fellow Arkham inmate, Lee, played by Lady Gaga. There is singing, dancing and mayhem.
If Phillips and Phoenix have learned anything over the years, it’s that the scarier something is, the better. So once again they rebelled against expectations and went for broke with something that’s already sharply divided critics.
As with the first, audiences will get to decide for themselves when it opens in theaters on Oct. 4.
“HOW ARE YOU GOING TO GET JOAQUIN PHOENIX TO DO A SEQUEL?”
Any comic book movie that makes a billion dollars is going to have the sequel talk. But with “Joker” it was never a given that it would go anywhere: Joaquin Phoenix doesn’t do sequels. Yet it turned out, Phoenix wasn’t quite done with Arthur Fleck yet either.
During the first, the actor wondered what this character would look like in different situations. He and the on-set photographer mocked up classic movie posters, like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Yentl” with the Joker in them and showed them to Phillips.
“Sometimes you’re just done with something and other times you have an ongoing interest,” Phoenix said. “There was just more to explore. … I just felt like we weren’t done.”
So Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver got to work on a new script, one that leaned into the music in Arthur Fleck’s head. Then his dreary Arkham life turns to Technicolor when he meets and falls for Lee, a Joker superfan.
“Joaquin Phoenix is not going to do a line drive. He’s not going to do something that’s fan service,” Phillips said. “He wanted to be as scared as he was with the first movie. So, we tried to make something that is as audacious and out there and hopefully people get it.”
LADY GAGA FINDS LEE’S VOICE, AND LOSES HER OWN
One decision that’s already sparking debate is casting someone with a voice like Lady Gaga’s and not using that instrument to its full power. Phillips, who was a producer on “A Star is Born,” wanted someone who “brought music with them.” But Lee isn’t a singer.
Actor Lady Gaga and director Todd Phillips delight in returning to Venice Film Festival with “Joker: Folie à Deux,” as Gaga reveals why she sings differently in the eagerly anticipated sequel. (Sept. 5)
“Singing is so second nature to me, and making music and performing on stage is so inside of me. Especially this music,” Gaga said. “I worked extensively on untraining myself for this movie and throwing away as much as I could all the time to make sure I was never locking into what I do. I had to really kind of erase it all.”
Phoenix, who wasn’t quite sure what it would be like working with someone who has such a larger-than-life superstar persona, found Gaga to be refreshingly unpretentious and available. And as an actor, he admired her commitment to the character.
“Her power is in singing and singing a particular way,” he said. “For her to sacrifice that through character, to do something that people would call a musical, but to not be performing it in the way that would sound best as a singer but to approach it from the character was a very difficult process. I was really impressed with her willingness to do that.”
In addition to writing a “waltz that falls apart” for the film, Gaga is releasing a companion album, “Harlequin” on Friday with song titles including “Oh, When the Saints,” “World on a String,” “If My Friends Could See Me Now” and “That’s Life.”
Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix at the Venice Film Festival. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)
SORRY PUDDIN’, THIS AIN’T MARGOT ROBBIE’S HARLEY QUINN
“We’re never going to outdo what Margot Robbie did,” Phillips said. “You have to do something 180 degrees in the other direction.”
Sure, Lee will still casually light something on fire to get some time alone with Joker, but the tumult is more internal. And Gaga threw herself into making Lee something new: A real person, grounded in a reality that came before her.
“I spent a lot of my time on developing her inner life (which) for me had a lot to do with her storm and what thing was always making her about to explode,” Gaga said. “There’s a particular kind of danger that she carries with her, but it’s inside and it’s kind of explosive.”
“DO YOU JUST WANT A BRUTE?”
Phoenix and Brendan Gleeson, background center, in a scene from “Joker: Folie à Deux.” (Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
Brendan Gleeson didn’t have much hesitation about joining the ensemble. He’d worked with Phoenix before on “The Village” and was in awe of what he’d done on the first movie.
“He has an absolute relentless integrity and curiosity and drive,” Gleeson said. “He won’t just plough the same furrow for its own sake.”
But he also didn’t want to play the simple version of an Arkham prison guard.
“I said, look, do you just want a brute? Because I’m not sure I just want to do a brute,” Gleeson said. “He wanted something more. We tried to find layers in this guy.”
CREATING MAYHEM
Anyone who has worked with Phoenix knows that he likes to keep things fresh. That may mean something as small as changing the location of a prop or as big as throwing out choreography that you’ve been rehearsing for months at the last minute.
“I think we both love mayhem and not just in movies but on the set,” Phillips said. “It had to feel like anything can happen.”
Gaga, director Todd Phillips, and Joaquin Phoenix at the Venice Film Festival. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP, File)
With the crew 95% the same as the first, everyone was ready to be flexible. Gaga, too, dove right in, suggesting that they sing live on camera.
“It changed the whole making of the film,” Phillips said. “We were not only singing live, we were singing live differently every take.”
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT?
Since Arthur killed Robert De Niro’s talk show host Murray Franklin on live television in the first film, he’s become a kind of icon and curiosity thanks in no small part to an oft referenced, but never seen, television movie that was made about him. Now, the trial is going to be televised as well.
“Underneath it all, there’s this idea of corruption and how everything is corrupt in the system, from the prison system to the judicial system to the idea of entertainment, quite frankly,” Phillips said. “This idea that in the States at least, everything is entertainment. A court trial could be entertainment, and a presidential election can be entertainment. So, if that’s true, what is entertainment?”
NO LONGER A COMPLETE WILD CARD
It’s easier to be to the insurgent, not the incumbent, Phillips said. Although a Joker film is never going to fly completely under the radar, the spotlight is undoubtedly more intense this time around.
“You do feel like you have a larger target on your back,” Phillips said.
While much of the film was made on Warner Bros. soundstages in Los Angeles, the production did go back to New York to film again on the Bronx staircase (which now come up on Google Maps as the Joker Stairs) and outside a Manhattan courthouse. The production staged a massive protest scene, with Gaga, almost concurrently with the media frenzy around the Donald Trump hush money trial as if there weren’t enough eyes on them already.
Some are also handwringing about the sequel’s bigger budget and whether it can match the success of the first. But Phillips has learned to take it in stride.
“There’s a different amount of pressure, but that just comes with making movies,” he said. “You can’t please everybody and you just kind of go for it.”
Gleeson has an even sunnier outlook.
“It has kind of arthouse movie integrity on a blockbuster scale. It’s great news for cinema, is the way I look on it,” Gleeson said. “If these event movies can continue to have depth and can be so conflicting like this one, is we needn’t worry about the future of cinema.”
SO, IS IT A MUSICAL?
Phoenix and Lady Gaga in a scene from “Joker: Folie à Deux.” (Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
One thing Phillips didn’t mean to do was ignite a discourse about what is and isn’t a musical. He’s just trying to manage expectations.
“People go, ‘what do you mean it’s not a musical?’ And it is a musical. It has all the elements of a musical. But I guess what I mean by it is all the musicals I’ve seen leave me happy at the end for the most part, ‘Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ not being one of them. This has so much sadness in it that I just didn’t want to be misleading to people.”
At least he’s consistent? Joaquin Phoenix is once again making headlines for allegedly leaving a movie on short notice. In a recent episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, James McAvoy recounted the timeline of him replacing Phoenix as the lead in M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Split. We’ve known for a while that Phoenix left the project abruptly; The Guardian reported in 2017 that Phoenix had dropped out “at the 11th hour.” But what does that really mean? “I think he ditched it two weeks before they started shooting,” McAvoy told Horowitz. “It was really last minute. I had two weeks.” (Hey, it could’ve been worse — Phoenix reportedly quit a Todd Haynes gay romance movie just five days before filming was scheduled to start this year.)
Split follows a man with dissociative identity disorder. Given the amount of time McAvoy had to prepare, he was understandably nervous for the first table read. “I’m sitting there like, God, I’ve got to do all these 15 characters and be judged by everybody in the room, including Universal studio executives, including Jason Blum and all that … and I haven’t even found some of the characters,” he recalled. “It just came on really, really quick.” Still, McAvoy doesn’t seem too disappointed with the way things went down. Noting that it can keep an actor from overthinking, he suggested, “Sometimes coming in last minute is the best way.” Hmm … [in our best PR voice] maybe Phoenix was just trying to help!
The Venice Film Festival has begun—get ready for 11 days of some of the best red carpet fashion of the year. WireImage
While last year’s Venice Film Festival was a quieter, more subdued occasion than usual due to the SAG-AFTRA and WAG strikes, the 2024 iteration is expected to bring the usual array of A-list filmmakers and celebrities to the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido for a week and a half of premieres, screenings and parties.
Isabelle Huppert is the 2024 jury president, and this year’s cinematic line-up is packed with some of the most anticipated movies of the year. Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival, as is Luca Guadagnino’s Queer (with Daniel Craig and Jason Schwartzman), Pablo Larrain’s Maria (starring Angelina Jolie) and Halina Reijn’s Babygirl (Nicole Kidman), among many others. Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, screened out of competition, will open the festival.
Along with plenty of must-see films, the stars also bring their sartorial best for the glamorous film festival in Venice, Italy, strutting down the red carpet in fashionable designs—this is, after all, the very event that brought us couture moments like Florence Pugh’s dazzling black glitter Valentino ensemble at the Don’t Worry Darling premiere, along with Zendaya’s custom leather Balmain dress in 2021 and Dakota Johnson in bejeweled Gucci.
The 81st annual Venice International Film Festival kicks off on August 28 and runs through September 7, which means a whole lot of high-fashion moments are headed for Lido. Below, see the best red carpet fashion from the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
When the filmmakers and celebrities aren’t attending premieres, screenings and official fêtes, they’re enjoying all that Venice has to offer, and they’re doing so in style—the Venice Film Festival is where you’ll find some of the best off-duty looks, because is there really any better backdrop than that of a Venetian gondola?
While last year’s Venice Film Festival was a somewhat sleepier event due to the SAG-AFTRA and WAG strikes, the 2024 edition is back in full force, with highly anticipated movies including Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, and Pablo Larrain’s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie, set to premiere.
The 81st annual Venice Film Festival runs from August 28 through September 7, so get ready for 11 days of incredible fashion. Below, take a look at the best off-duty looks from all your favorite stars at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Christine Vachon, a producer behind Todd Haynes‘ gay romance movie from which Joaquin Phoenix abruptly left last week, said on social media this weekend that the situation has been “a nightmare.”
Reports surfaced on Friday that Phoenix exited the drama feature just five days before filming was set to begin in Guadalajara, Mexico. The role will not be recast. The actor’s reason for the exit was unclear, and felt further confusing to those around the project as Phoenix has brought the project to Haynes.
Vachon, of Killer Films, shared an article about the situation to Facebook over the weekend, and wrote: “A version of this did happen. It has been a nightmare.”
Vachon also addressed criticism that Phoenix, who is straight, had been set to take a starring role in Haynes film about a gay character. “If you are tempted to finger wag or admonish us that ‘that’s what you get for casting a straight actor’ — DON’T,” she wrote. “This was HIS project that he brought to US – and Killer’s record on working with LGBTQ actors/crew/directors speaks for itself. (and for those of you who HAVE — know that you are making a terrible situation even worse).”
Vachon has since deleted the post.
Haynes’ movie was set to focus on an intense gay romance in the 1930s and co-star Danny Ramirez, whose credits include Top Gun: Maverick and the forthcoming Captain America: Brave New World. In addition to Vachon, Pam Koffler was set to produce. A source told The Hollywood Reporter that the team was “devastated” by Phoenix’s exit, and that the amount of money spent on the film was in the low seven figures.
The actor, who returns as Arthur Fleck/Joker in director Todd Phillips‘ musical sequel to 2019’s Joker, recently recalled what it was like singing in front of Gaga, who not only plays Lee/Harley Quinn but is also a professional Grammy-winning singer.
“I do seem to remember her spitting up coffee the first time I sang, so that felt good, that was exciting, and made me feel confident,” Phoenix quipped during an interview with Empire magazine.
He and the “Shallow” singer went on to work together to build a musical rhythm between their characters for the highly-anticipated film.
“Gaga was always very encouraging of just, ‘Go with what you feel, it’s fine’,” Phoenix said. “For somebody who’s not a performer in that way, it can be… uncomfortable to do that, but also very exciting.”
The Beau Is Afraid actor also explained the importance of music for his character, notably since Arthur Fleck “has music in him,” per Phillips’ words in the first installment.
“It was important to protect that with poor phrasing and occasional bum notes,” Phoenix added. “Arthur grew up hearing his mother play these songs on the radio. He’s not a singer, and he shouldn’t sound like a professional singer. He should sound like somebody that’s taking a shower and just bursts out into song.”
Joker: Folie à Deux, which hits theaters Oct. 4, sees failed comedian Arthur Fleck meet the love of his life, Harley Quinn, while incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital. Once he’s released, the duo embarks on a doomed romantic misadventure.
“People know me by my stage name, Lady Gaga, right? That’s me as that performer, but that is not what this movie is; I’m playing a character,” she said. “So I worked a lot on the way that I sang to come from Lee and to not come from me as a performer.”
