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Todd Phillips Tells All on Making ‘Joker 2’: Musical Numbers, Method Acting and Joaquin Phoenix’s Broadway Dream That Started It All


Todd Phillips unpacks the creation of ‘Joker 2', a sequel that began with Joaquin Phoenix’s dream and sees Lady Gaga singing as Harley Quinn.

It’s a movie that kicks off with a Looney Tunes-inspired cartoon starring the Joker (courtesy of “The Triplets of Belleville” animator Sylvain Chomet) before hurtling through prison riots, courtroom faceoffs and a variety-show sequence that finds Phoenix and Gaga portraying a homicidal Sonny & Cher. So in 2003’s “Old School,” audiences got to see Will Ferrell’s neutered newlywed streaking through the suburbs after funneling a few beers, while in “The Hangover,” Ed Helms’ henpecked dentist gets drugged out of his mind and marries a prostitute, bidding farewell to a lifetime of coloring inside the lines. Phillips’ next film, 1998’s “Frat House,” a documentary he co-directed with Andrew Gurland, found him trading the underground scene for college living, but the hazing and binge drinking that he encountered on campus wasn’t all that different from what Allin was doing onstage.

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