Joker: Where In New York The DC Movie Was Filmed

Todd Phillips’ Joker maintains an effective gritty tone throughout, helped by the fact it was actually shot at multiple locations around New York. The 2019 Joker origin story has been widely praised since its release, with lead actor Joaquin Phoenix winning an Oscar for his performance as Arthur Fleck. The story chronicles Fleck’s journey from beleaguered outcast to homicidal villain. Aside from Phoenix’s unnerving performance, the film is memorable for its vivid depiction of mid-80s urban decay – that and being one of the most controversial movies of the 2010s.

Throughout its 122 minutes, Joker manages to do what all successful Batman-themed cinematic outings have done: make Gotham City its own character in the film. The meticulously recreated facades of 1980s New York, combined with Lawrence Sher’s cinematography brought a bleak vision of the fictional city to life. To create this grim and realistic tone, Phillips, who took inspiration from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, shot scenes in and around New York, minimizing the use of sound stages. Joker‘s mid-80s Gotham was pieced together using these various Bronx, Brooklyn, and even New Jersey locations – heightening the sense of realism Phillips was going for. One memorable Joker subway scene was even inspired by the true story of a New Yorker who got so frustrated with crime in NYC he shot a group of teens who tried to mug him on the train.

Joker has a lot of locations that New Yorkers will recognize, and since its release, the giant staircase Arthur can be seen ascending and descending at points throughout the film has become one of them. The stairs are located in The Bronx, connecting Shakespeare and Anderson Avenues in the Highbridge neighborhood. Like much of New York in the 80s, the now-famous steps were previously considered a dangerous area to venture, but since Joker‘s release have become a tourist destination, angering local Bronx residents. As well as being the home of the movie’s most recognisable scene, this borough also provided Arthur’s apartment complex, located on Anderson Avenue. The Bronx also hosted the film crew at its Bedford Park subway stop – though filming was also done at an abandoned 9th Avenue station in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Before any stairs or subway stations make an appearance, Joker features a downtown Gotham scene, in a location the filmmakers referred to as “Gotham Square”. Arthur Fleck stands in the crowds holding an advertising board, but behind the scenes of Joker, this was actually filmed in Newark, New Jersey, on Market and Broad Streets. Gotham Square was actually an amalgamation of these streets and CGI, with visual effects artists adding background buildings and extending the main road further to create the illusion of the scene playing out on a downtown avenue – just one of the many details Joker viewers may have missed.

There were also practical techniques used to take Newark back to the 1980s, with Phillips and his crew putting up signs and transforming the existing Newark Paramount theater into a porn theater – the kind Times Square was infamous for hosting during the 80s. Jersey City’s William J. Brennan Courthouse doubled as the building known in the film as Wayne Hall – the site where activists gather to protest Thomas Wayne.

Elsewhere, the crew headed to Brooklyn, using Brooklyn Army Terminal for Arkham Asylum. Scenes were also filmed in DUMBO – the upscale neighborhood that sits below the Manhattan Bridge on the Brooklyn side. To ensure DUMBO fit the gritty aesthetic of Joker, numerous practical changes were made such as graffiti and piles of trash bags being placed on street corners. When it came to Manhattan, Phillips and his crew stuck mainly to Chinatown and Harlem, where Arthur Fleck’s clown agency ‘Ha-Ha’s’ is based. The very first scene of the film finds Fleck inside the agency applying his clown makeup, which was shot in a second-floor storage facility on the far-west side of the city. Support beams for New York’s West Side Highway are visible out the window – adding a sense of oppression to Joker from the very beginning.

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