‘Joker’ director Todd Phillips picks his three favourite movies
While Todd Phillips might be best known for directing a series of comedy movies in the 2000s, including Road Trip, Old School and Starsky and Hutch, he has occasionally proven a versatility across his filmography that has seemingly been missing from the back catalogues of many of his contemporaries.
After all, Phillips’ first film was the 1993 documentary Hated, which focuses on the highly controversial punk musician GG Allin and his band, the Murder Junkies. Phillips is also known, of course, for his excellent psychological thriller film Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role, which serves as the origin story of the iconic cinematic villain and as further proof of Phillips’ range.
Like any great director, though, Phillips possesses a deep love for the cinematic medium itself and once stated his favourite movies of all time in an interview with the BBC. The list of three varies in genre and approach to filmmaking and reveals Phillips’s inner passions and interests.
The first film Phillips notes is the 1941 comedy film Sullivan’s Travels, directed by Preston Sturges. A satirical take on the Hollywood film industry starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake, Sturges’ film tells of a famous comedy director who decides to live as a “tramp” for a short while in order to better understand the main character of his next film. During this time, he befriends a poor, apprising actress who joins him on his private quest.
Expressing his love for Sullivan’s Travels, Phillips noted, “There are some amazing things Sturges does with tone, which I think is a director’s key job – you’re the purveyor of tone, and what Sturges did so well is literally muck around with five, six, seven tones within that movie. I think it’s such a difficult thing.”
Up next for Phillips is the 1970 documentary Gimme Shelter, directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin. The film details the last few weeks of The Rolling Stones’ US tour of 1969 that ended with the tragic Altamont Free Concert, the gig that saw the killing of Meredith Hunter by a member of the Hells Angels.
Phillips had first seen Gimme Shelter when he was around 15 years old, and it served as one of the films that showed him the power of cinema in its ability to capture the truth. “The Maysles actually captured the end of the 1960s on film: you can literally trace it back to ten frames in that movie when the guy gets stabbed at the concert,” he said. “All this free love and peace ended at that moment.”
Finally, Phillips rounds his top choices off with Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 comedy-drama Boogie Nights, starring Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds, John C. Reilly and a swathe of other stars. It tells of a young man who becomes a popular porn actor during the Golden Age of Porn in Los Angeles in the 1970s and charts his subsequent downfall into addiction and depression.
“Paul Thomas Anderson is the greatest director of my generation by leaps and bounds,” Phillips gushed about his fellow director. “He’s so ambitious in every way, and he uses every tool given to a director – music and editing and casting and costume and sound – to its fullest potential. To watch that movie is to really watch a guy at the top of his game.”
Todd Phillips’ three favourite movies:
- Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
- Gimme Shelter (Albert & David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, 1970)
- Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)