We know Gotham. Whether we’re comic book maniacs or not. We’ve already experienced its construction and dystopian nightmare through the vision of dozens of creators. Like Batman and the Joker, you probably have your favorite interpretation and judge all others by it. That’s a punishing position for any artist to follow suit, but the pull of such iconic environments demands attention and revisitation. We will never escape the crime capital of pop culture.
In 1966, director Robert Butler and cinematographer Sam Leavitt imagined the Caped Crusader’s home turf as a four-color backlot of false fronts and bright faces. Tim Burton and Roger Pratt kept the grand stages for Batman ’89 but draped the cartoonishly gothic architecture in steam and shadow. For Joker, the birthplace of monsters and madmen is the most recognizably American rendering yet. This Gotham City is our New York City, not the one of today, but one rooted in the memory of 1970s and 1980s entertainment. It’s Taxi Driver and Death Wish cranked to 11 and then boiled into crack cocaine. Here is hell on earth, and it is the perfect distillation for how many people are feeling in 2019.
Lawrence Sher has shot all of Todd Phillips‘ films since The Hangover. The two have spent a decade crafting a point of view and an aesthetic they never could have possibly predicted being applied to the DC Comics universe. But here we are. Joker is an ugly parade of sorrow through the mind of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), leading its audience to empathize with a character most would actively avoid in daily life and few want to be explored in their fiction. The film is spewed from one idea of Gotham and the lowly creatures that troll its streets. Sher and Phillips welcome the dread of a city on the verge of chaos and in desperate need of a dark knight avenger.
I had a long conversation with Sher over the phone. We began our chat regarding Joker‘s theatrical presentation and how they decided to shoot the film digitally. From there, we venture into the wretched hive of scum and villainy, discussing the cinematic and real-world influences that went into Gotham’s latest onscreen portrayal. We end on the end, getting down to the business of the final scene, and spoiling the narrative for anyone who has not already seen the flick. And yeah, we talk Batman.
Here is our conversation in full:
So, I caught the film in 70mm the other night.
Where’d you see it?
I’m out in Washington DC, so I have the privilege of being near the AFI Silver.
That’s great.
Now, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that 70mm transfer because you shot it digitally, and my understanding is that when you convert it to 70mm the picture quality maxes out at 4K.
Well, we shot the movie, let’s say, in 5.5K. But that whole K thing is nonsense. Because a 2K ALEXA beats the pants off of an 8K RED. Look, RED’s not going to tell you that, but that’s just genuinely what I believe in, so much as image-wise. I believe it’s not so much about the K — and I’m not bashing RED, I’m just saying that sometimes we get obsessed over the amount of Ks and resolution.
Sure. I obviously do.
The big thing about the digital film conversion — because you’re not taking a DPV that’s a 4K and you’re basically not just re-photographing it onto a film printer — the main thing, and this is a big part of what we were looking for with Joker, but we ended up going digital for other reasons, is it just brings back a lot of inherent qualities of film that in a way are forgotten about in shooting digital and going through the DI space and coloring. Can I just give you a little back story to why we shot digital?
Yeah, please do.
The fact that we ended up in 70mm prints is ironic and absurd somewhat to Todd and me because we wanted to shoot 55mm film and we were strongly dissuaded from doing that via video and other forces because of budget. That was a little bit discouraging to us simply because that was our intent when we started the film. We thought this would be a great movie to shoot large format because we wanted the intimacy and the 1:85 and all of these elements that we thought, “Oh, this would be cool to shoot 55mm film.” But the truth is the cameras are really hard to find.
I think Kenneth Branagh had already put aside two. There are only four or five bodies that really are around and so we really would have probably struggled to find it. And Wonder Woman wanted to shoot 70/55, and they said no to that. Our movie was a much smaller budget, blah blah blah. So the short answer — or the short long version — was “No 55.” Then we went back to 35, and we were going to shoot 35 all the way up until really the last minute. What happened was we were testing it and we knew we were going to shoot the movie under very low light conditions in situations where we would probably not be rehearsing a lot of things. Not have marks on the ground. Even though we have very controlled things in this movie.
It’s very specific. Dolly moves and all these other things. But the speed. and the way in which we wanted to make this movie, and some of the improvisational elements of the way some of the key performance were going to be required flexibility. Then, at the very last minute, Todd, who was really adamantly against shooting digital, was like, “Let’s just consider it by putting them side by side and testing them.” And we really put them side by side, and the difference was mostly in color but they were damn close, right?
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