‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ or — An In-depth Analysis?

Todd Phillips’ ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ (2024) opens with a short animated sequence by the director of ‘Belleville Rendezvous’ (2003), Sylvain Chomet. “My goodness!” I gasped to myself when I immediately recognised his distinctive animation style appearing on screen, “I totally forgot I once worked with Sylvain Chomet!”

Or, to be more accurate, that Sylvain Chomet once wanted to work with me.

I’ve told this story many times before but for anyone who doesn’t know it goes like this –

Many years ago I wrote and produced two comedy series for BBC Radio Scotland. Being a huge fan of The Goons, Round the Horne, Warner Bros. cartoons and how comedy, music (specifically Italian jazz) and sound effects can combine together to generate fantastical images I set out to make radio comedy that could function as “cartoons for the mind”. Chomet, based in Edinburgh at the time, heard my work, loved it and publicly declared “I want to work with Colin Edwards!” (I swear I’m not making this up)

So, one morning, I received a phone call from a production company telling me that the Oscar nominated animator Sylvain Chomet was eager to work with me and would I be interested? Obviously I said “Yes!” and that’s how Chomet ended up animating one of my radio sketches before we set about making a pilot together for the BBC.

The only problem was the production company heavily interfered, as production companies frequently do, and their constant meddling managed to batter out all the life, energy and madness of what we were coming up with. The result was a disappointment. Not only that but both myself and the then head of Radio Scotland agreed that my original radio recording of the sketch was significantly superior to Chomet’s animated version. This is because I wrote it specifically for the medium of radio where it would explicitly make the listener conjure up all the crazy images for themselves, whereas seeing everything fully realised visually robbed the sketch of that essential magic.

It was the only time I ever gave up creative control and the only time the end product was a let-down.

Still, it was wonderful to work with Sylvain and I will always remember the time he threw a huge party to celebrate the project and, on my arrival, thrust a glass of Champagne into my hand, presented me to his guests and enthusiastically announced to one and all — “This is Colin Edwards and he is a genius!”

It’s a memory I’ll always cherish and…

Oh my god! I’m so sorry! I’ve completely forgotten I should be talking about the movie and not myself! I do apologise for being such a raving narcissist.

So how was ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’? I dunno. Whatever. To be honest I didn’t really give a shit as I was too distracted remembering how amazing and talented I apparently am.

Anyway, as I was saying. After announcing how much of a genius I was Chomet then waxed lyrical in front of everyone about how brilliant and wonderful my…

[FADE TO SOLIPSISTIC BLACKNESS AND RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE]