Film Courage: Were you the only cinematographer being considered for the job [of JOKER movie]? Lawrence Sher, ASC: That only Todd [Phillips]
can answer. I mean I mean I'm yeah exactly I've uh
I mean I've done the last six movies this is our sixth film in ten eleven
years now I I mean he brought the script to me quite early but only Todd can answer.
okay was he well you know in US and the filmmaker the director and DP
relationship is such a tight one it's such an important one we work so closely
together we argue sometimes there's so many things that go into that
relationship even myself having directed I recognize how important that
relationship is and I never take for granted the fact that I'm gonna get
another job with Todd simply because I got the last four or five I just always
treat it like it's a new slate it's a new movie he has a complete prerogative
and right to want to switch things up choose somebody else all those things of
course I love working with them and I would do it forever but it's uh I also
recognize that you know it's uh it's it's it's and it's like an at-will thing
in which I'm grateful every time I have the opportunity to do a movie with him
but I don't know I listen there was a lot of really good TPS and I know Todd's
fans of of many of their work we talked about the other DPS work so yeah I mean
- Todd I guess when did you and Todd Phillips first discuss Joker did he call
you and say I had this yeah he called me basically I'd talked to me a little bit
about the idea like I think I think I figured out this idea of like how we can
make something that could be really cool this character study but we basically
take a character from the you know from DC universe and make something that just
feels wholly unique like gunsight not a comic book movie really just like an old
what could have been made in the 70s but it just happens to be you know you know
a movie that's about somebody who ultimately is part of that universe and
I thought that was amazing I was before I read the script that was
probably I don't know you know six months before I read the script or
something like that and then finally once he sort of really worked it out
with Scott and got to a place where it was like a draft in which he wanted to
show me that's when I first read it but I'd known about the idea for some months
before that I was actually working on Godzilla king of the monsters in Atlanta
and I was on my porch when Todd it wasn't the call to say hey it was more
of like I sent you the script have you read it yet let's talk about it and so I
had already read the script and then I'll actually know maybe maybe I have
anything wrong maybe it was just a call that I was sitting on my porch and he
said I've got the script I'll send it to you soon but I'd like you to shoot it do
you want to shoot it and so it was that and I just was sitting on the porch with
my wife and and our daughter I think at the time who's like just been born in
Atlanta and and and I was like yeah man I want to shoot this so I think it was
before I even read the script for sure yeah yeah what do you talk about in your
first meeting with a director especially a director that you know so well that
you've done many films with how is that conversation different or the same as
maybe other conversations with other directors when you first start a project
yeah it's interesting with Todd and I our conversations were never like
long-winded five six hour of meetings conversations are often like little
conversations or even sometimes just like one or two ideas thrown out over
months and months and months so they're never like really sometimes we'll do an
actual page turn and we'll do it in small blocks where we actually turn
through the page and take notes on sort of just ideas of like how we think we
should shoot this are there any specific shots any special pieces of equipment is
this obscene that's hand held is it a scene this long lens is it a scene that
has a lot of camera movement it's more of just what's the emotion of the scene
and how do we translate that on screen and so we'll do that probably later in
prep once I'm you know officially on the job and
have some time to break off and we'll do that you know as successfully as we can
to get all the way through the script sometimes we don't get all the way
through the script sometimes we just get through 30 or 40 pages but it starts to
inform the bigger picture of what the the movies gonna be early conversations
are really pretty short you know it's like I think our first conversation on
Joker was literally about aspect ratio you know about what format like what
aspect ratio we'd shoot it in and we both wanted to shoot it in 185 which was
great because we were in agreement so that was pretty straightforward it was
like feels 185 and I was like yeah it feels 185 into that conversation and
then it was like we're definitely gonna shoot film maybe we shoot a large format
like 70 millimeter film you know we we've loved those films it felt like
there was something about this movie in in in you know in it's not Lawrence of
Arabia and that sort of 70 millimeter way but more like perhaps the master in
the way that PT Anderson shot large-format there in that it's a real
character study and that was a bit of a two-hander between you know Joaquin and
and what's-his-name great actor Philip Seymour Hoffman right but nonetheless it
was an intimate story but really a deep dive into the character and the minds of
these human beings and we thought oh that would be an interesting way to
isolate this character in his environment but allow us to sort of have
this almost like true three-dimensional quality where we could really draw the
audience into them by shooting large-format so we had that discussion
early and and then we just talked about how just the vibe of it should feel
handmade like it doesn't want to feel even though it's a studio movie it just
wants to feel very sort of constructed by human beings and that it doesn't want
to feel too polished and too clean and all these things and and and then we
would start to say things like well you know it's a character study in all those
great seventies movies which really were the decade in which you would see those
character studies every weekend being released in the theaters you know
whether it was you know obviously taxi driver or something like that or King of
Comedy of those have some correlation but also
Serpico or Dog Day Afternoon or straight time or any of these movies that just
felt singularly about somebody Midnight Cowboy and and those vibes not
necessarily the look and feel the movies per se because we weren't really
referencing them sometimes we'd reference them and think though that's
that's gonna show us something about how the movie should look and mostly we
would come away from like looking at a scene or something out of those movies
and go it's not it's not really the look of the movie like we would hope maybe oh
we could look at that that would be the template and we could just copy that
template as to like color or contrast or or the look and feel and it was always
like it's not really the movie so a lot of it was the discovery of like what the
movie isn't to then figure out like what the movie wants to be but certainly tone
wise and the fact that those movies really were made by filmmakers that felt
unencumbered by the studio's and they were out there just making these movies
in an independent way even though they were released by big studios that's I
think the vibe of what we talked about and so those were the early
conversations and then you know you're having conversations every day when you
location scout right every time you see a location even if it's not the right
one you discover things about the scene you know you have discussions about oh
why isn't this not the right one oh because I want him to be able to travel
from here to here and so you're discovering things all the time when
you're in prep mostly in location scouts even though location scouts are arduous
and I remember Soderbergh when he claimed he was gonna retire even though
he like said I'm retired and then made five movies that year or something
anyway he I think had a quote or something where he's like I just don't
want to ever be I spent another day in a scout fan cuz they're just tiresome
right there to be in this van travelling around going in and out of like
apartments and locations and just they can be tiring and I understand what
filmmakers hate them but what's interesting about them is how
informative they are to the look and feel of the movie because you got the
production designer you've got me you've got Todd
you've got the producer so everyday you're basically having those
discussions in ways that are sometimes you know a sentence here a sentence
there so that's the real prep of a movie as opposed to like what you would
imagine are these like you know long eight-hour days if I sitting and talking
about cerebrally about what the movie should be though it's not really that at
all and also building that world the feel of the sounds not just the music
I'm talking about like that they yelling out and in this feeling of just total
chaos when when he would go out into the city and how sort of contentious it was
and I really I thought that was really well done with the yelling like you'd
hear yeah even like all this I think the sound design in the movie is
unbelievable and yeah it's like it's I think the big thing that comes across
obviously in the script it was a big part of the the story about about what
Todd was trying to do here was you know how hard and and cold the city can be to
individuals right the city on mass is this just like world of people sometimes
striking out violently against each other but really you've got this like
sort of lonely man in the middle who at his heart is actually quite gentle and
and all he's trying to do is sort of continue to do his thing and he's really
just a an individual that's that's you know that that I think it's a it's an
example of how society treats each other and the effects that I can have
particularly when we either treat each other without empathy and humanity or we
just look you know we have invisibility you know we just like we just see past
them and walk past them and all those sort of big ideas as to how society
treats each other and I think that was a big part of it and and what better way
to sort of expose that but when Arthur is in that world to show everyone around
him you know as as uncaring effectively or just like
and it's the word the words more you know you know they that the that the
world the time in uncaring it's like it said that they have no that they're
you're just invisible like it on the bus in the beginning yes the woman sort of
is saying you know please don't bother my kid but everyone else on the bus
could care less you know nobody's intervening nobody's sort of coming to
his defense nobody's really cares it's just trying to do their thing so you
know I think that's part of it yeah there was also the feeling of disdain
that people had for him that you started and I don't know if that was how the
laughter something that seems disarming then became this tool of like or were
people looked at him with just this total disdain like yeah I think it's
like disdain and and but just insignificant you know I think I think
we we can recognize in Arthur and his struggle every day so many parts of
ourselves and you know it's the way you look past the homeless person because
you just rather not look at the person then then confront the for the reality
of their situation or or or somebody who's suffering from madness or
psychosis like we see them all the time in our in our world we see them on the
streets we walk past them it's interesting like I had somebody say the
movie reminded them of that Woody Allen movie with Kate Blanchet that she won
there she was certainly dominated though it was it you have blue Jasmine right
and I thought it was really interesting because blue Jasmine's like a origin
story of a person speaking crazy to themselves on a bench right like that's
ultimately who she ends up at the end of the movie it's like blue Jasmine is just
an origin story of like how this woman got to be in that bench and I thought oh
yeah it's actually a pretty similar analogy this is an origin story of how
this man became the person he was and like all the things that led to it and I
thought that was kind of a cool analogy and also to there's a class issue
because isn't she in San Francisco and so having grown up there I know as much
in the 80s I know you talked about this in other interviews
but at that time a lot of mentally ill people were on the streets and yeah I
would see that and that's why I really picked up on the voices because I would
hear that a lot as a child walking down the street in San Francisco you would
hear these this yelling yeah and that movie dealt with class in another way
which was like she came from money but she was now going to a place of like
losing it and what does that feel like right like hey she actually lived in
both worlds and she ends up just being that person that you sort of you know
walk right past and don't think about and she's got a whole story right and so
this is this movie is no different you know it's it's a guy that you know it's
it's uh you wonder like in the backstory of the people in the movie and they keep
that woman on the bus or the people on the bus if this was like a real-life
story would go oh my god that guy the guy just chopped Murray Franklin that's
the same guy on the bus like that you would even do that thing where suddenly
you know you correlate one thing to another and say like wow I barely even
noticed him right it's like that thing that you that we do all the time with
people that strike out on society and suddenly they're seen but you know
previously unseen so then the Santa Monica resident I would agree so for
them they thank you you do that at Starbucks and you get a look of light
yeah I mean it's just really interesting it's just I think it's one of the
powerful parts of this movie that I think has helped it break out and and
frankly it's something that I think I'm super proud of is besides taking and
making something that is holy just a piece of entertainment that can make
money and you know all the things that are the business of show business has to
do but as a piece of filmmaking and storytelling that it can help just shine
a light on some of those issues I've had people in queue nays and other people
who have said you know they suffer from mental illness and it really spoke to
them and if it spoke very powerfully to them and the fact that they feel
invisible and they felt feel unseen and and all of these things and and it's not
that they feel that way and feel like they want to strike out against
society the way Joker did it you know it's that they just feel suddenly like
they understand like they feel just a kinship with with the story that we were
telling and so it's it's that I think is the most positive aspect of the success
of the movie is that it's touched people you know be you know in ways that I
think we would hope for but but not necessarily expected
you