Director John Waters has made an entire career out of having fairly unconventional taste. His movies are campy outsider art, and he’s now mounting a defense of one of the year’s most reviled films. In publishing his top 10 films of the year in Vulture, Waters put Joker: Folie à Deux in the sixth spot.
“Finally, a love story I can relate to,” the director wrote accompanying his list. “So insane, so well thought out, so well directed, so much smoking! It’s Jailhouse Rock meets Busby Berkeley with a 9/11 That’s Entertainment! ending that will make you shake your head in cinematic astonishment. Stupid critics. Gaga so good. Joker so right. Die, dumbbells, die!”
The Joker sequel was the most unconventional pick on Waters’ list, which also included several Oscar contenders, The Brutalist, Hard Truths, Queer, and Emilia Perez. Kristen Stewart’s lesbian thriller Love Lies Bleeding was his top film of the year.
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Joker: Folie à Deux did not have the same kind of success as the first film, bombing both with critics and at the box office. The movie made just $206 billion, paling in comparison to the original, which made more than $1 billion.
Waters is not the first director to come to the movie’s defense. Quentin Tarantino did the same during an interview in October on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. Tarantino said that Joaquin Phoenix “gives one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life.” He also said that he admired director Todd Phillips’s gonzo approach and the fact that he had gotten a studio to shell out that much money for the film.