In just over a month, South African audiences will be able to watch Joker.

If you’re really keen, you can mark down October 4 in your diary, but I’m sure you’ll be hearing all about in the weeks leading up to opening weekend.

According to most of those who have already seen it, including the Venice Film Festival that gave it an eight-minute standing ovation, Joaquin Phoenix delivers a potentially Oscar-winning performance.

Naturally, despite the fact that Heath Ledger’s family have long since rubbished rumours that playing the Joker had a role to play to his death, there is a great deal of interest in Phoenix’s mental journey in playing the film’s antagonist, Arthur Fleck.

He’s now opened up about that journey, with some headline-grabbing quotes to help with the film’s PR, reports the Daily Beast:

According to director Todd Phillips, he and Phoenix met six months prior to shooting to design the character, his look, and his laugh. But it was the actor’s dramatic weight loss—a reported 52 pounds—that really made things click.

“The first thing for us was the weight loss—I think that’s really what I started with. And, as it turns out, that then affects your psychology. You start to go mad when you lose that amount of weight in that amount of time,” said Phoenix. “There’s a book that I read about political assassins and would-be assassins that I thought was really interesting, and kind of breaks down the different types of personalities that do those sorts of things.”

The 2OV office vibe sure plummets when we get ‘hangry’, so no surprises that losing 52 pounds (23,5 kilograms) would prove tough.

The actor also spoke about Fleck’s ‘journal’:

“Very early on in the rehearsal, I was given the journal that he had—his journal and joke diary. And that was really helpful, because I had been there for a couple of weeks and wasn’t sure how I was going to start, and Todd sent this [empty] journal,” he recalled. “I didn’t know what to write, so I asked [Todd] for some suggestions, and after a few days, I ignored his suggestions and suddenly it was coming out. It became a really important part of the discovery of the character at that time.”

Phoenix repeatedly stressed that it was important for him to maintain the “mystery” of the character, and that he and Phillips engaged in a collaborative process where “throughout the course of shooting, every day we were discovering new aspects to his character and shades to his personality up until the very last day.”

If you’re playing the role of the Joker, you have to do a maniacal laugh, which is part of what made Ledger’s take so successful.

Phoenix says that getting this particular aspect right wasn’t something that came easily:

“Before I even read the script, Todd came over and talked me through what he wanted out of this character and this movie, and he showed me some videos, and he described the laughter as something that was almost painful,” offered Phoenix. “And so ultimately, I think Joker is a part of him that’s trying to emerge, and I think that was a really interesting way of looking at this laugh…It felt like a new, fresh way of looking at it. But honestly, I didn’t think that I could do it. I would practice alone and then asked Todd to come over to audition my laugh, because I felt like I had to do it on the spot and in front of somebody else. It took me a long time.”

Judging by the trailer, he seems to have created a suitably pained, yet menacing, chuckle.

Just over a month and you can see for yourself what all the fuss is about.

[source:dailybeast]