Joker

I went to see this movie because Joaquin Phoenix was in it, period. I have hated—with a passion—all of the Batman movies I've seen, except for Batman (1966), so I neither read, heard, nor anticipated anything about this one, and in fact allowed myself to fool myself into thinking it wasn't a Batman movie at all, to the point that I was momentarily confused when they called New York “Gotham.” If it wasn't for the suffocating score (I may never want to hear anything that sounds remotely like a cello again), it could have been enjoyable at times—if I'd been able to sink back, back into time, maybe to the age of 16 or so, when I first saw Taxi Driver and thought: “One of these days I'm gonna get organizized, too!” I guess there was some relief (as in “The Cinema of What It Ain't”) in not seeing Joker magically transform into the chess master genius. And the joy of watching him run down hallways and slide around corners almost made up for so many blows to the head and face that you might think it was The Three Stooges, or a Wes Anderson movie. The final nail in the coffin, though, was that it had a perfect ending (the Indian-head test pattern after the talk show that went awry)—but made the unforgivable mistake of tacking on not one but two additional, and unnecessary, and increasingly weak endings.

Also, I found the ironic use of two Sinatra songs to be one too many, and “Send in the Clowns”—come on. The really funny thing though, is after the movie ended with that song, the next movie I watched, later the same day, began with a muzak-like version of that song! You can't make the stuff up that is the odd coincidences in my life; well, you could, but what would be the point? This later movie was the 2013 cut of Moon Dust, made locally here, by friends, and contains some performances that are as good as anything I see ever. Also, if it had an official budget, that figure won't be found in a Variety article, because no one's getting paid back and the movie in not released (though it should be—all of the versions).

Maybe I'm too hard on Batman movies because I don't really know or get the Batman world, and if people do, I'm sure that helps. I was a little too young for the Batman comics my mom bought for me at the grocery store around the time the TV show was on, and, of course, not sophisticated enough to understand why the two didn't resemble each other outside of the costumes. I still have a few of those comics, and I might put a couple on my reading list and see what they make me remember or feel about my seven-year-old self grappling with them. I'm not sure how long it took me to realize the Adam West Batman was a comedy, but when I did it didn't detract from some of the bizarre and powerful performances found there occasionally. I think I was an adult before I realized that Cesar Romero's Joker was actually a clown. “Holy shit, he's a clown!” I said one day. I guess I had just thought he was an actor who went a little heavy with the powder. My favorite character and performance, though, not just in this show, but maybe ever, was Frank Gorshin's Riddler. That very first two-part episode with him and Jill St. John is maybe my favorite TV episode of all time. But all of them with Frank Gorshin—I wonder if there are outtakes somewhere? I wonder if you could just take the Riddler episodes and some outtakes and put them all together and make a full length Riddler movie? He was truly inspired. You probably can't even remember how much—go back and watch some of those episodes and pay attention to every little gesture and word, how he does everything. I've never seen anything like it. If you're reading this and you don't agree with me, and we happen to have dinner anytime soon, we'd be best to steer the conversion away from the subject of mad genius.

Randy Russell 10.11.19