(gentle music)
- [Host] Todd, what was the toughest thing
about making Joker?
- When we were struggling to get Joker made,
which sounds funny, because it exists
in the superhero world, but it's really not
one of those movies, in fact, it was
greatly inspired by the works of Martin Scorsese
and Sidney Lumet, and other filmmakers that I sort of
grew up worshiping in the 70s and early 80s,
and their movies.
But we had a really hard time getting
that film made, which seems insane today,
now seeing how well the movie's done.
But we spent a year at Warner Bros.,
and I saw emails back and forth,
literally where they said, "does he realize,"
meaning me, "does he realize we sell
"Joker pajamas at Target?" (laughing)
And so-- - Is that true?
- It's very, what you're saying,
(laughing) didn't movies come first and pajamas come second?
Are the pajamas dictating the movies?
You can't make your decisions based on that,
and that was my argument, of course,
was were we really gonna dictate movies based on pajamas?
But it exists, this idea.
- But you know those pajamas when you see them. (laughing)
(overlapping chatter) - How do you navigate
that system? - Well--
- Do you get one person to be your ally--
- Yeah. - Or, you do, who?
- One by one.
The problem at Warner's for me was
the regimes change so often-- - Oh god, yes.
- And a lot of studios do. - Yeah, it happens, yeah.
- And so you finally get everybody on board,
and all of a sudden, they're gone,
and now you're starting over, and you start over with
sometimes people don't like to inherit other stuff from
other people-- - Definitely not.
(laughing) King of Comedy was a good example.
- Was it? - Yeah, yeah.
- So you're overcoming that, but I mean,
this film in particular, luckily, we had
the head of marketing who didn't change, Blair Rich,
who really championed it from the script
and got what we were trying to do, got that it was
sort of an anti-comic book movie, so to speak.
(gentle music)
- Were you worried before the film came out
that there might be some violence?
- No, because I just didn't subscribe to that,
quite frankly, bullshit thing that was happening
in the media where they just pick a movie every so often
and declare it means something that it doesn't.
We had think pieces being written about this movie,
where people proudly wrote, "I haven't seen the movie,
"I don't need to see the movie,
"I'm not gonna see the movie," and then they would write
two pages about why the movie's bad. (laughing)
I mean, it becomes difficult to be,
first thing to be misunderstood before anybody saw it.
When we premiered in Venice,
we had a great screening in Venice,
we won the Golden Lion, it was a huge deal.
From that moment on, everything changed, weirdly.
People come at it as a target and start talking about
again, why it's dangerous.
And we really wanted to go, we made a movie about
childhood trauma and loss of compassion
and lack of love in a person's life and what that might do,
but everybody always wants to talk about the spark
and not the powder, but the film's really about the powder,
what makes that happen.
(gentle music)
- [Host] What do you most like about the filmmaking process,
and what do you most dislike?
- I love editing.
- You do? - Yeah.
Actually, I think, I go to the set,
well, I like set as well, but mostly to grab things
so I can go to the cutting room, quiet, dark,
and experiment-- - We always say,
making the movie, it's the price you pay
to get to the editing room.
All that stuff you-- (overlapping chatter)
- And then you change your whole script,
you change the acting,
it change everything. - Everything, yes.
- You start the film. - (overlapping chatter)
- But I think it's because directors by their nature,
are control freaks, it's what kind of leads us to this,
and there's nowhere you have more control
than in the editing room.
There's always these variables, makes it fun,
being on set is fun, casting the movie's fun,
but it's a little out of control.
You get to an editing room, and you finally control--
- That's the fun though, trying to get control
out of out-of-control. - Yes, yeah.
- That's the thing, that's the tension
is riding those horses, you know?
- And I just think it's, it was just listening to this,
and I'm going, yeah, making movies is jazz,
it's not math, it's not,
there's not a way you do it.
You prep and you do, but then you come in, like you said,
and it might just change on the day.
I was doing a movie with Robert Downey Jr. once
and he turned to me and he goes,
"it feels like we're on the set of a student film."
And he meant it as a compliment.
- It's a compliment, amateur.
- Just like, we just go with it.
(overlapping chatter)
This very loose vibe.
For comedies, it's just what I learned works for comedies.
But I definitely carried it over with Joker,
and I think Joaquin, very particular actor,
I don't know that he would need that on every movie,
but for this movie, that's what he needed.
(gentle music)