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Quentin Tarantino made headlines in late October when he defended “Joker: Folie à Deux” and said that Joaquin Phoenix gives “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life in this movie,” which apparently pissed off a lot of fanboys. The Oscar winner was a recent guest on “The Joe Rogan Experience” and called out some of the toxic reactions to his love for the maligned “Joker” sequel.
“I go on a show and I say that I like ‘Joker 2.’ Now there’s 150 articles on it,” Tarantino said. “One person listens to the thing and writes an article about it and there’s 150 ripoff articles on that. And then you read the comments: ‘Quentin is a fucking asshole. That movie fucking sucks. He’s a fucking asshole for saying that.’ Why am I a fucking asshole? I liked the fucking movie! That makes me a fucking asshole? You either like the movie or you don’t. I’m not plugging the movie. I’m not doing anything. I’m just saying I like it. Who gives a fuck what I like? What do you care what the fuck I like?”
“Then they say I’m a fucking asshole for not seeing something,” the director continued. “What the fuck do you care what I see or don’t see? Someone will say, ‘Well I think he’s missing out.’ Well I am sure there is a lot of shit I could say you’re missing out on and I don’t care if you miss out on.”
Popular on Variety Tarantino gave his “Joker 2” defense during an interview on “The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast.” He was one of the first prominent directors to speak up in support of the movie, which earned largely negative reviews and bombed at the box office with $58 million domestically and $206 million worldwide. These figures were a far cry from the $1 billion gross of 2019’s original “Joker” movie.
“I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously, and I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking,” Tarantino said. “But I thought it was going to be an arms-length, intellectual exercise that ultimately I wouldn’t think worked like a movie, but that I would appreciate it for what it is. And I’m just nihilistic enough to kind of enjoy a movie that doesn’t quite work as a movie or that’s like a big, giant mess to some degree. And I didn’t find it an intellectual exercise. I really got caught up into it. I really liked the musical sequences. I got really caught up. I thought the more banal the songs were, the better they were. I find myself listening to the lyrics of ‘For Once in My Life’ in a way I never have before.”
Tarantino also commended director Todd Phillips for being a joker himself, explaining: “The Joker directed the movie. The entire concept, even him spending the studio’s money — he’s spending it like the Joker would spend it, all right? … the comic book geeks. He’s saying fuck you to all of them. He’s saying fuck you to the movie audience. He’s saying fuck you to Hollywood. He’s saying fuck you to anybody who owns any stock at DC and Warner Brothers […] And Todd Phillips is the Joker. Un film de Joker, all right, is what it is. He is the Joker.”
Listen to Tarantino’s full interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience” here.
