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Ayer was frequently asked about removing Leto’s scenes. “Just because something is cool and charismatic,” the director told Collider, “doesn’t mean it can survive in the final cut. The flow of the film is the highest teacher. “
Leto may have felt like he had crossed a line. After the movie came out, he began to hark back to his earlier boasts about putting used condoms on the pole (a violation of health and safety regulations, as much as anything else).
“Some things were mentioned about the gifts and the fact that he was giving people used condoms, which was not true,” he told Entertainment Weekly. (The reference to the condom, it was widely noted, was one that he had mentioned himself in filmed interviews.)
“Some of the things you do,” he continued, “can go viral or be talked about. Especially with the Joker, some of those things just took on a life of their own. And most of it was total nonsense. “
Leto, according to contemporary accounts, was devastated that the Joker was reduced to a bit player, and that Warner Brothers had greenlit a separate Joker movie, starring Joaquin Phoenix. As a 2019 Hollywood Reporter article put it: “Leto’s frustration that Warner Bros was moving forward with the Phillips project was so great early on that he tried to strangle the rival Joker in his crib.
“According to sources familiar with Leto’s behavior, when the Oscar-winning actor learned about the Phillips project, he not only complained bitterly to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff , to call the head of Warner Bros parent company. “
