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According to the short, Phoenix had been keen to do all of his makeup and hairstyling himself, due to a slight aversion to being touched with the frequency required to work on him. Apparently, the crew was able to work out a compromise by which they would complete their work as quickly as possible, but there was yet another problem: Phoenix’s gnawing hunger.
The actor famously lost over 50 pounds for the role of Fleck, and while on set, he was almost always hungry. Now, if you’re anything like us, you know that being hungry all the time leads to irritability, which can then lead to a generally uncooperative disposition. We are not famously mercurial actors, and neither (we assume) are you, so you can probably just take the mental state you’re picturing and multiply it by a factor of 20 or so.
While in the middle of the makeup and hair dyeing process, Phoenix would be prone to just up and walking out — and it wasn’t just for a quick stroll around the set. The crew would often have a tough time finding him to do touch-ups for the next scene, which could cause continuity problems.
This became such an issue that the crew member in charge of continuity (who was not named in the presentation) threw up their hands and quit in the middle of the production. Since Joker didn’t arrive in theaters fraught with continuity errors, we can only assume that director Todd Phillips was able to replace the departed crew member with somebody possessed of infinite patience.
Written by: Looper
