Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction”) is praising Todd Phillips’ movie “Joker: Folie à Deux.” The much-anticipated follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2019 film “Joker” recently bombed at the box office. It found very few defenders among audiences and critics.
Tarantino and his “Pulp Fiction” co-writer Roger Avary recently chatted with Bret Easton Ellis for the latest episode of the “Bret Easton Ellis Podcast.” When the duo was asked what movies they had checked out in the theater recently, Tarantino said he watched “Joker: Folie à Deux” at an empty showing.
“I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously,” said Tarantino. “And I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking. But I thought it was going to be an arms-length, intellectual exercise that ultimately I wouldn’t think worked like a movie, but that I would appreciate it for what it is.”
“And I’m just nihilistic enough to kind of enjoy a movie that doesn’t quite work as a movie,” he added. “That’s like a big, giant mess to some degree. And I didn’t find it an intellectual exercise. I really got caught up into it. I really liked the musical sequences. I got really caught up. I thought the more banal the songs were, the better they were.”
“Joker: Folie à Deux”’s Influences
The director points out that “Joker” drew inspiration from Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” and “King of Comedy.” But he saw his own influence all over “Joker: Folie a Deux,” comparing it to his script for the Oliver Stone-directed “Natural Born Killers.” Comparing his characters Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory Knox (Juliette Lewis) to Phillips’ Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) and Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga).
“As much as the first one was indebted to Taxi Driver, this seems pretty f—ing indebted to ‘Natural Born Killers,’ which I wrote,” says Tarantino. “That’s the ‘Natural Born Killers’ I would have dreamed of seeing, as the guy who created Mickey and Mallory. I loved what they did with it. I loved the direction he took. I mean, the whole movie was the fever dream of Mickey Knox.”
He also believes Phoenix gave “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life in this movie.” Even being moved to tears during a scene in “Joker: Folie à Deux.”
Behind The Camera
“Todd Phillips is the Joker. The Joker directed the movie,” Tarantino theorized about Phillips’ directing. “The entire concept, even him spending the studio’s money — he’s spending it like the Joker would spend it, all right? And then his big surprise gift — haha! — the the jack in the box, when he offers you his hand for a handshake and you get a buzzer with 10,000 volts shooting you — is the comic book geeks. He’s saying f— you to all of them. He’s saying f— you to the movie audience. He’s saying f— you to Hollywood. He’s saying f— you to anybody who owns any stock at DC and Warner Brothers.”
“This is under the Clive Barker rules of subversion at a massive level,” he explains, “Joker 2 applies under that category, under every shape and form. And Todd Phillips is the Joker. Un film de Joker, all right, is what it is. He is the Joker.”
Ellis’ Thoughts
“I feel while listening to you guys that I am such a normie,” said Ellis. “I’m with the overwhelming audience reaction to it, I found it excruciating, the most unpleasant movie I’ve seen in years.”
Adding that the movie’s good ideas “kept imploding one after the other by the way they were approach,” and “it was such a missed opportunity in so many ways.”
