One of the biggest question marks on the 2024 film calendar is “Joker: Folie à Deux.” For the sequel to his Oscar-winning DC villain origin story, Todd Phillips blew up his narrative formula by deciding to make a musical. Lady Gaga joined the franchise as Harley Quinn, but little is known about how Phillips plans to infuse music into his version of Gotham. Film history is not exactly littered with superhero musicals, so it can be difficult for outside observers to gauge what his points of reference might be.
However, cinematographer Lawrence Sher might have given fans one of their first big hints about the film’s influences. Sher, who shot both “Joker” and “Folie à Deux,” recently revealed that he used an infamous Francis Ford Coppola musical as a point of reference. In an interview with YouTuber Matti Haapoja, Sher listed Coppola’s 1981 film “One from the Heart” as one of the film’s visual inspirations.
“’One from the Heart,’ which is an old Francis Ford Coppola movie,” Sher said when asked about films that he has recently studied. “I broke that down for the new ‘Joker’ so that it was part of the conversation. Whether those images ended up really influencing the new one, in part maybe they did, they became a conversation starter for me and Mark Friedberg the production designer and Todd as we scouted in those early days. Even if it’s not a reference that you’re going to take on set and say ‘I want it to look like that,’ it’s like brain food. It’s dream food.”
“One From the Heart” follows a young couple played by Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr who reconsider their breakup after spending a chaotic night in Las Vegas with two new lovers. The film was a critical and commercial flop, grossing less than $1 million on a $26 million budget. But the film has enjoyed a slight reappraisal in recent years with cinephiles praising the virtuosic cinematography and artful depictions of Las Vegas (even if the narrative aspects are still generally panned).
“Joker: Folie à Deux” opens in theaters on October 4, 2024.
