https://variety.com/2019/film/news/joke ... 203352046/
And this comes after the US military warned of a credible risk of incel violence at film screenings of Joker:Warner Bros. Entertainment has restricted access for print and broadcast journalists from the red carpet at the upcoming U.S. premiere of “Joker.”
The event, which will take place on Saturday in Hollywood at the famous TCL Chinese Theatre, will now only allow photographers access to talent and filmmakers. Expected attendees include Joaquin Phoenix, director Todd Philips, and supporting stars like Zazie Beetz and Frances Conroy.
“Our red carpet is comprised of photographers only,” a studio spokesperson told Variety, “a lot has been said about ‘Joker,’ and we just feel it’s time for people to see the film.”
The move to restrict access to interviews comes after a week of headlines about the violent and provocative nature of the film, and measures to inform and protect American moviegoers as they prepare to screen it.
Mid-size theater chain Landmark is prohibiting costume play based on Phoenix’s turn as the iconic Batman villain. On Thursday, Variety reported that the Los Angeles Police Department would increase its visibility at area theaters. The department said it has not received any specific threats about the movie, but encouraged moviegoers to be vigilant.
“The Los Angeles Police Department is aware of public concerns and the historical significance associated with the premiere of ‘Joker,’” said department spokesman Josh Rubenstein. “While there are no credible threats in the Los Angeles area, the department will maintain high visibility around theaters when it opens.”
Concerns about the “Joker” movie and its portrayal of the titular character’s violent tendencies as a result of ostracization have sprung up since the movie’s debut at the Venice Film Festival, with some expressing worry the thriller paints the central mass murderer too sympathetically.
The families of the 2012 Aurora shooting signed a letter to Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarnoff that, despite refraining from calling for “Joker” to be pulled from release, did say the movie’s “sympathetic origin story… gave us pause.”
Instead of calling for a boycott or ban, the families and friends of victims asked Warner Bros. to end political contributions to candidates who take money from the NRA and vote against gun reform; use its political clout to lobby congressional leaders for gun reform; and fund survivor funds and gun violence intervention programs.
Warner Bros. responded with a statement of its own on Tuesday, writing that “neither the fictional character Joker, nor the film, is an endorsement of real-world violence of any kind. It is not the intention of the film, the filmmakers or the studio to hold this character up as a hero.”
https://io9.gizmodo.com/u-s-military-is ... 1838412331
So, what could be a worse response than barring media from the film's premier? How about the star being unable or unwilling to answer whether the film could be taken as promoting or glorifying violence?The U.S. military has warned service members about the potential for a mass shooter at screenings of the Warner Bros. film Joker, which has sparked wide concerns from, among others, the families of those killed during the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado.
The U.S. Army confirmed on Tuesday that the warning was widely distributed after social media posts related to extremists classified as “incels,” were uncovered by intelligence officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In a September 18th email, service members were instructed to remain aware of their surroundings and “identify two escape routes” when entering theaters. In the event of a shooting, they were instructed to “run, hide, fight.”
“Run if you can,” the safety notice said. “If you’re stuck, hide (also known as ‘sheltering in place’), and stay quiet. If a shooter finds you, fight with whatever you can.”
The Army said it became aware of potential threats after receiving a bulletin from the FBI, but that it was unaware of any specific plots or suspects. The notice, which was marked “For Official Use Only,” was relayed purely as a precautionary measure, it said.
A separate memo, issued on Monday by senior officials in the U.S. Army’s criminal investigation division, stated that the Army had obtained “credible” intelligence from Texas law enforcement officials pertaining to “disturbing and very specific chatter” on the dark web “regarding the targeting of an unknown movie theater during the release.”
“We do this routinely because the safety and security of our workforce is paramount,” an Army spokesperson said of the widely distributed warning. “We want our workforce to be prepared and diligent on personal safety both inside the workplace and out.”
Incel is a term that was adopted in the ‘90s by an online subgroup of self-professed “involuntary celibate” men. Over time, some radicalized members of the incel community have formed an ideology that promotes violence. Elliot Rodger self-identified as an incel before he killed six people near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014. And James Holmes, the man who opened fire in a crowded movie theater in 2012 has become a bit of a hero to the incel community. It’s often been repeated that Holmes was inspired by the Joker, a claim that primarily rests on statements the killer reportedly made to police after the fact in which he said he “was the Joker.” Speaking with the Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Oates, Aurora’s chief of police at the time, said that “there is no evidence” the shooter ever said that.
In the alert emailed to service members, Army officials claimed that incels “also idolize the Joker character, the violent clown from the Batman series, admiring his depiction as a man who must pretend to be happy, but eventually fights back against bullies.”
If Joker wasn’t called “Joker,” you’d never know it was a DC movie. Though there are characters…
“While our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, the FBI is in touch with our law enforcement and private sector partners about the online posts,” an FBI spokesperson said. “As always, we encourage the public to remain vigilant and to promptly report suspicious activity to law enforcement.”
In an age of frequent mass shootings by predominately white American men—at least some of whom have referenced in writing their frustrations with sex—the film has sparked controversy over its desire to compel its audience (at least in its first half) to empathize with a mentally unbalanced and unloved “loser” who inevitably resorts to mass murder.
The gritty film, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, reportedly makes strides to depict its titular character in a far more realistic fashion than his comics counterpart. Rather than being transformed into the “Joker” after falling into a vat of acid—as the villain so often does in depictions of his DC Comics origin—a harsh life compounded by constant mockery and an inability to “get the girl” is what ultimately leads to his rise as the infamously batty executioner of comic book lore.
The Hollywood Reporter reported Tuesday that families who lost relatives in the Aurora shooting, which claimed the lives of 12 moviegoers in 2012 during a screening of the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises, signed a letter this week to Warner Bros. sharing concerns about the Joker film. With the film set to open on October 4th, the families asked the legendary film studio to donate to groups that aid victims of gun violence.
“We are calling on you to be a part of the growing chorus of corporate leaders who understand that they have a social responsibility to keep us all safe,” the letter reportedly says. The film will not be shown in the Colorado theater where the shooting occurred.
An Air Force officer at Robbins Air Force Base in Georgia—granted anonymity to discuss the Defense Department’s warning freely—said that such notices are occasionally circulated by security managers, but only when deemed “credible.” The officer said that in some cases, commanders may issue an advisory in response; however, one was not issued in this case.
“Frankly, beyond the email, I’ve heard little about it,” the officer said. “A few folks said they’d avoid opening night, or passed it on to their family members for consideration, but I haven’t heard much else in conversation beyond that.”
Warner Bros. did not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement broadly addressing the controversy over the film, Warner Bros. called gun violence a “critical issue” and said that in recent weeks it has called on policymakers to enact legislation to address what it called an “epidemic” of violence. Regardless, the purpose of storytelling, it said, was to “provoke difficult conversations around complex issues.” The company went on to make clear that the film does not endorse real-world violence and said that “it is not the intention of the film, the filmmakers or the studio to hold this character up as a hero.”
You can read the email that was circulated by the military in full below:
Team,
Posts on social media have made reference to involuntary celibate (“incel”) extremists replicating the 2012 theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, at screenings of the Joker movie at nationwide theaters. This presents a potential risk to DOD personnel and family members, though there are no known specific credible threats to the opening of the Joker on 4 October.
Incels are individuals who express frustration from perceived disadvantages to starting intimate relationships. Incel extremists idolize violent individuals like the Aurora movie theater shooter. They also idolize the Joker character, the violent clown from the Batman series, admiring his depiction as a man who must pretend to be happy, but eventually fights back against his bullies.
When entering theaters, identify two escape routes, remain aware of your surroundings, and remember the phrase “run, hide, fight.” Run if you can. If you’re stuck, hide (also referred to as “sheltering in place”), and stay quiet. If a shooter finds you, fight with whatever you can.
** this is a condensed version of an HQ Army Materiel Command, G-3, Protection Division Security message **
Got a tip? Contact the reporter by email (dell@gizmodo.com) or send an encrypted text using Signal to 202-556-0846.
Update, 6:30 p.m.: We’ve added a comment from the FBI.
Update, 11:00 p.m.: Added details about a 2nd memo obtained by i09, posted in full below. (Note: While the letter states that intelligence was drawn from the “Travis County, TX Sherriff’s Office,” Gizmodo has learned it was actually drawn from the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Joint Crime Information Center.)
https://i09.gizmodo.com/joaquin-phoenix ... 1567029747
No, it gets worse: the director has responded to criticism with whining about how the Left is just as bad as the Right:Because Todd Phillips’ Joker tells the relatively grounded story of a disaffected white man who goes on a terroristic rampage because he feels as if he’s been dealt a bad hand in life, there’s been an ongoing discussion about whether the movie has the potential to inspire certain viewers to model themselves (idealistically) after the titular villain.
Even though the Joker is objectively made out to be the villain of his own film, it’d be disingenuous to say that he isn’t framed in a heroic way because the story being told is about his origins and ascendance. We know that the clown is destined to become one of Gotham’s most enduring threats and one of the few people capable of going toe-to-toe with Batman, and so the Joker’s on-screen actions, horrific though they made be, all build toward the idea of him becoming a powerful, important figure in society.
While the Joker movie is meant to be a critique of people like its central character, it’s easy to see how it could also be interpreted as a celebration of them—but, apparently, that idea never quite occurred to Joaquin Phoenix or Warner Bros. During a recent interview for a profile in the Telegraph, Phoenix allegedly stopped the conversation dead in its tracks after being asked whether he’d given any thought to the possibility that audiences might take the wrong message away from the movie.
Rather than stopping to mull the question over, Phoenix simply left, much in the same way he was alleged to often do while shooting the film itself:
“Yet Phoenix doesn’t seem to have considered this kind of question at all. So when I put it to him – aren’t you worried that this film might perversely end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about, with potentially tragic results? – his fight-or-flight response kicks in. Mine too, just about.
It takes an hour’s peace-brokering with a Warner Bros PR to get things back on track. Phoenix panicked, he later explains, because the question genuinely hadn’t crossed his mind before – then asks me, not for the last time, what an intelligent answer might have sounded like.”
And no, Phoenix never answered the question.
It seems unfathomable that Phoenix could have taken this role on without spending any time reflecting on the cultural landscape the movie exists in, given the actor’s reputation for diving deep into the essence of the characters that he plays. Even if he somehow managed put together his take on the Joker in a vacuum, it seems just as unlikely that this topic never came up during the movie’s production process, or that someone at Warner Bros. wouldn’t have thought to themselves “hmm, someone’s probably going to ask about the movie glorifying angry white men taking up arms.”
Joker—a movie few people have actually seen yet—hits theaters on October 4.
https://thewrap.com/joker-director-todd ... exclusive/
And then there's this scathing review from the New Yorker:Director Todd Phillips is pushing back on recent criticism that his upcoming film “Joker,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, might promote real-world violence.
“We didn’t make the movie to push buttons,” Phillips told TheWrap’s editor-in-chief, Sharon Waxman, in an interview last Friday about the filmmaking process. “I literally described to Joaquin at one point in those three months as like, ‘Look at this as a way to sneak a real movie in the studio system under the guise of a comic book film’. It wasn’t, ‘We want to glorify this behavior.’ It was literally like ‘Let’s make a real movie with a real budget and we’ll call it f–ing Joker’. That’s what it was.”
But the movie, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in August and received an eight-minute standing ovation, is already kicking up controversy for its dark tone. The plot focuses on an irredeemable villain who escapes punishment. The film’s detractors say it creates an its all-too-realistic reminder of the angry loners who have been committing mass shootings in our country.
Though “Joker” has yet to hit theaters, film critics have already described its depictions of violence. In a scene described by TheWrap critic Alonso Duralde, Phoenix’s character incites a mob of protesters after a violent act on a subway. “But this act of violence makes Arthur feel seen for the first time,” he wrote.
Last week, families of victims killed in the 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, wrote a letter to Warner Bros., the studio behind ‘Joker,’ calling for donations to gun-victim charities because of the film “presents the character as a protagonist with a sympathetic origin story.” The mass shooting occurred during a showing of the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises.” The shooter, James Holmes, was likened to Joker for his bleached orange hair and voicemail he left at a private-gun range a month before the mass murder.
Warner Bros. responded to the letter, saying that “Joker” was not meant as an endorsement of real-world violence.
“Gun violence in our society is a critical issue, and we extend our deepest sympathy to all victims and families impacted by these tragedies. Our company has a long history of donating to victims of violence, including Aurora, and in recent weeks, our parent company joined other business leaders to call on policymakers to enact bi-partisan legislation to address this epidemic,” a representative from Warner Bros. said in a statement on Tuesday. “At the same time, Warner Bros. believes that one of the functions of storytelling is to provoke difficult conversations around complex issues. Make no mistake: neither the fictional character Joker, nor the film, is an endorsement of real world violence of any kind. It is not the intention of the film, the filmmakers or the studio to hold this character up as a hero.”
A U.S. Army Base at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, has also warned about the film’s violence at an upcoming showing, saying in a memo to commanders Monday: “Commanders need to be aware of this threat for Soldier and family safety and to increase situational awareness should they choose to attend the release of this movie.”
To the issue of controversy over the movie, Phillips confesses confusion. “I’m surprised… Isn’t it good to have these discussions? Isn’t it good to have these discussions about these movies, about violence? Why is that a bad thing if the movie does lead to a discourse about it?”
Phillips thinks that people as a whole are waiting for a target they can pounce on — and “Joker” may be an obvious one. And in this case, it’s not about the right-wing targeting Hollywood movies over guns — it’s broader than that.
“I think it’s because outrage is a commodity, I think it’s something that has been a commodity for a while,” he said. “What’s outstanding to me in this discourse in this movie is how easily the far left can sound like the far right when it suits their agenda. It’s really been eye opening for me.”
https://newyorker.com/magazin/2019/10/0 ... ing-matter
I'm inclined to listen to the New Yorker, and not see it at all.At the beginning of “Joker,” Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), seated in front of a mirror, hooks a finger into each corner of his mouth, and pulls. Up, then down: a grin, a grimace. We are meant to think of the masks, comic and tragic, that were worn by the actors in ancient Greek drama. Over the next couple of hours, those two moods will be welded together, until we can’t tell the light from the dark.
Arthur is a clown, and a would-be comic, but he’s really not funny at all. So badly does he bomb at a comedy club that footage of his set is replayed on television. That’s the joke. He lives in Gotham City, which, as everybody knows, equals New York City minus the peace and the pastoral bliss. The year, by my reckoning, is 1981, since “Blow Out” and “Zorro: The Gay Blade” are advertised on cinema marquees. Other highlights include a garbage strike. Arthur works for a clown agency, and one of his jobs is to stand on the street in a red nose and a green wig, holding a promotional sign for a local store. When some kids grab the sign, he gives chase, his enormous shoes clomping on the sidewalk. Another clown lends him a gun, for safety’s sake, but it drops out of Arthur’s costume, clattering to the floor, while he’s entertaining children in a hospital ward and singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” A tough gig for Arthur, who says, “I haven’t been happy one minute of my entire fucking life.”
And there you have it. “Joker” is a miserabilist manifesto. It’s directed by Todd Phillips, who co-wrote it with Scott Silver, and whose previous films, from “Road Trip” (2000) and “Old School” (2003) to the “Hangover” triptych, have delighted in the imperishable idiocy of the American male, and in his stubborn plans to dodge the draft of adulthood. Arthur Fleck, you might say, represents a nasty new twist on this theme. He still shares an apartment with his aging mother, Penny (Frances Conroy); their relationship is close but tense—he washes her hair while she takes a bath—and he must search for confidants elsewhere. As well as befriending, or imagining that he has befriended, a single mother (Zazie Beetz) who lives in his building, he meets with a social worker (Sharon Washington), appointed by the city, who monitors his medication. We learn from her that Arthur has been institutionalized in the past, and he carries a card that he shows to people when they flinch away from him. It reads “Forgive my laughter: I have a condition.”
But what condition? Could it be pseudobulbar affect, which is neurological in origin and gives rise to uncontained laughing and crying? Under stress, Arthur certainly breaks into a hyena’s cackle, which stops as abruptly as it starts; he also weeps, and, in closeup, we follow the tracks of the tears on his clown’s white-painted face. (I haven’t seen such artful drips since 1971, when Dirk Bogarde’s hair dye melted, along with his soul, at the end of “Death in Venice.”) The film, however, takes no serious interest in what might be wrong with Arthur. It merely invites us to watch his wrongness grow out of control and swell into violence, and proposes a vague connection between that private swelling and a wider social malady. “Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?” he asks. Guess what: it’s both!
“Joker” is not plotted so much as crammed with mangy incidents. Like animals, they come in two by two. By a charming coincidence, for example, two major scenes take place in public toilets. There are also two extended subway sequences: one in which Arthur uses his gun for the first time, and another in which, pursued by police, he ducks in and out of the carriages, as if in homage to “The French Connection” (1971). Most important of all, we get two father figures. One is Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), the host of a TV talk show, under whose wing Arthur dreams of finding shelter and approval. The other is Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), a wealthy brute who is running for mayor of Gotham. (He has a young son named Bruce. Get it?) Thirty years ago, Penny Fleck worked for him, and Arthur hopes to exploit that distant link, though Wayne has nothing but scorn for the Flecks of this fragmented world. “Those of us who have made something of our lives will always look at those who haven’t,” he declares, “and see nothing but clowns.”
Trailing clouds of controversy, “Joker” descends upon us. The online discussion has mounted from the rampant to the manic, undeterred, or perhaps exacerbated, by the fact that nobody, apart from critics and festivalgoers, has actually seen the movie. (Emotions run high when people are low on facts.) In one corner are those who crave a masterpiece: a film that will unearth a new psychic intensity in the domain of the comic book, ideal for our distended times. In the opposite corner are those who fear that Phillips and Phoenix may give license to all the lonely people out there—in particular, to any messed-up white guys who feel wretchedly uncherished and would welcome a tutorial in the art of lashing out.
What is agreed upon, among those who have seen “Joker,” is the prowess with which Phoenix holds it all together. His face may get the greasepaint, but it’s his whole body, coiled upon itself like a spring of flesh, from which the movie’s energy is released. He’s so thin that, when he strips to the waist and bends, his spine and shoulder blades jut out from the skin; is he a fallen angel, with his wings chopped off, or a skeleton-in-waiting, halfway to the grave? Francis Bacon, I think, would have stared at Arthur with a hungry eye.
The trouble is that Phillips, too, is in thrall to his hero, unable to avert his gaze, or his camera, from the lurid spectacle. The same was true, you could argue, of earlier Jokers—Jack Nicholson, in “Batman” (1989), or Heath Ledger, in “The Dark Knight” (2008), whose features cracked in tandem with his mind. But those were supporting roles, whereas Arthur is the main attraction. No longer is he forced to be part of the scenery; he is the scenery, and such is the strenuous effort of Phoenix’s performance that it becomes exhausting to behold. Get a load of me, he seems to say, and the load is almost too much to bear. Now and then, other actors, less worked up, pass across the stage: Bill Camp as a detective, for example, or Brian Tyree Henry as a hospital clerk, both wonderfully weary, like visitors from Planet Normal. I must admit, they come as a relief.
Here’s the deal. “Joker” is not a great leap forward, or a deep dive into our collective unconscious, let alone a work of art. It’s a product. All the pre-launch rumblings, the rants and the raves, testify to a cunning provocation, and, if we yield to it, we’re not joining a debate; we’re offering our services, unpaid, to the marketing department at Warner Bros. When Dalí and Buñuel made “L’Âge d’Or” (1930), they wanted to start a riot, and they succeeded, but “Joker” yearns for little more than a hundred op-ed pieces and a firestorm of tweets. With ticket sales, naturally, to match.
The evidence for this daring scheme is everywhere you look, in Phillips’s film, and everywhere you listen. Nicholson’s Joker may have danced and pranced to the sound of Prince’s “Partyman,” but Phoenix gyrates, on a steep flight of steps, to “Rock ’n’ Roll Part 2,” a 1972 hit by Gary Glitter. It used to be popular with sports teams, rousing the crowds at N.F.L. and N.H.L. games, before Glitter was convicted, in 1999, of possessing child pornography, and, seven years later, of sexually abusing minors, in Vietnam. Since then, understandably, the song has tumbled out of favor. Do you believe that the decision to revive it, for “Joker,” is anything but a studied choice, nicely crafted to offend? Please. I happen to dislike the film as heartily as anything I’ve seen in the past decade, but I realize, equally, that to vent any inordinate wrath toward it is to fall straight into its trap, for outrage merely proves that our attention has been snagged. Just ask the President of the United States.
“Joker” has its own political poise. Lest it be accused of right-wing inflammation, allowance is made for issues more congenial to the left. Cuts to welfare, we are told, will soon block Arthur’s access to therapy and medication, and the movie’s plea for the downtrodden to be given their rightful say harks back to Frank Capra and Chaplin. In one bizarre scene, the nabobs of Gotham, in tuxedos and gowns, are even treated to a special screening of “Modern Times.” Why should Phillips nod to a film of 1936, if not to stake his claim as a legatee? No less brazen are the references to Scorsese, and to his probing of urban paranoia—in “Taxi Driver” (1976) and again in “The King of Comedy” (1982), where De Niro played a reckless proto-Arthur, fixated on a talk-show host.
“Joker” peaks in chaos and conflagration, ignited by Arthur’s crimes. Earlier, he slew three fellows in suits on the grimy subway: a fell deed that was taken by the have-nots as a call to arms against the haves. Now the city swarms with a mob of the frustrated, all sporting Joker masks and wreaking indiscriminate revenge. Arthur smiles indulgently upon them, like a wolf surveying its pups, then climbs onto the hood of a smashed vehicle and glories in the applause. (You can sense the movie congratulating itself.) We’re not far from the flaming climax of “White Heat” (1949)—another Warner Bros. shocker, with James Cagney as, yes, a mother-stricken murderer named Arthur, beset by psychiatric problems and laughing his way to perdition. Back then, the Times was dismayed: “Let us soberly warn that ‘White Heat’ is also a cruelly vicious film and that its impact upon the emotions of the unstable or impressionable is incalculable.” No such worries for Phillips’s movie; its impact is solemnly calculated to the final inch. I was expecting something called “Joker” to be fun. More fool me. ♦
This article appears in the print edition of the October 7, 2019, issue, with the headline “No Laughing Matter.”
Anthony Lane has been a film critic for The New Yorker since 1993. He is the author of “Nobody’s Perfect.”Read more »
