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Now, what do they do for an encore?
Its a lot easier coming into something as the insurgent as opposed to the incumbent, Phillips said.
Nobody knew what we were doing.
The hard part about doing this is you feel the eyeballs on you.
Those eyeballs were readily apparent from inside the Palazzo del Casino.
Was it some kind of protest?
Then it hit me: Lady Gaga was entering the building.
In the press conference, Gaga needed no introduction.
Which was good, because her co-star wasnt sure what to call her.
Gaga was very … Phoenix began, before checking her preferred nomenclature.
Stefani, he corrected, was like, Were gonna sing live.
Phoenix is the kind of actors actor not known for doing sequels.
The answer came in a dream Phoenix had in which he was singing onstage as the character of Joker.
I called Todd, because I thought there might be something there, he said.
And … there wasnt.
But that grew into the germ of an idea.
He has music in him, Phillips said.
What if he sang?
Thus, aJokermusical, in which the man born as Arthur Fleck sings a selection of mid-century standards.
At first, Joker was supposed to perform in the manner of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. That was when it clicked for me.
We took those standards and decided to do our own interpretation.
Gaga plays a new incarnation of Harley Quinn, in this telling a Joker superfan.
(Six years afterL.
Gaga,her press-conference placard called her by her full stage name.)
For me, it was about unlearning technique, she said.
Her pop-star training went out the window.
At the press conference, the director waved off this suggestion.
This movie was not in response to that in any way.
Movies are way too hard to make [to function] as a statement in response to something.
I cant say yes or no, but its not necessarily my goal to stay in this space.
In other words, withFolie a Deux, Phoenixs Joker may have finally sung his 11 oclock number.
As they say in theater: Send in the clowns.
