‘Joker 2’ Team ‘Very Often’ Met in Joaquin Phoenix’s Trailer to ‘Tear the Script Up and Start All Over’: ‘It’s Three Hours Later and You’re Rewriting It on a Napkin’

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Joker: Folie à Deux” director Todd Phillips recently told Variety for a cover story that the goal in making the anticipated sequel to 2019’s “Joker” was “to make it feel like it was made by crazy people.

The inmates are running the asylum.” It appears the director got his wish in part from his leading star Joaquin Phoenix, who would throw out the script on a whim and gather with Phillips and co-star Lady Gaga in his trailer to rewrite entire scenes from the ground up. “We’d very often meet in Joaquin’s trailer and sometimes we would just tear the script up and start all over,” Gaga recently told Vanity Fair for her own cover story. “It was a really cool, liberating process.” Phillips confirmed Gaga’s story and told the publication: “My line about Joaquin is that he’s the tunnel at the end of the light.

You think, ‘Okay, this scene works, let’s just go shoot it.’ And Joaquin’s like, ‘No, no, no, let’s just have a quick meeting about it,’ and it’s three hours later and you’re rewriting it on a napkin.

What’s great about Lady Gaga is that she really holds her own both off camera when we’re in the trailer tearing things apart—which she probably spent the night before learning—but also on camera.