Sher is that Larry, he told Business Insider in an interview shortly after the video went viral. He explained the outtake originated as a prank on the movie’s director Todd Phillips, who was also received an Oscar nod on Monday. Sher has collaborated with Phillips on all of his movies since 2009’s The Hangover and Joker is their sixth film together. But the joke didn’t land on set.

Phoenix is “such a good actor that nobody even got it on set”, Sher said. “He played it too straight.”

But the film certainly landed with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Joker led the nominations with 11, including for best picture, director (Phillips) and actor (Phoenix). It was also a hit with audiences and grossed more than US$1 billion worldwide.

“I knew based on the script and the material that this was an opportunity I wanted to do,” he said. “We knew we had an opportunity to do a character piece and the nature of the structure allowed us to put more emphasis on ‘art’ than we’ve done before. With comedy, you do your best to make a funny scene. With Joker, there were opportunities to be more artful in composition and lighting. If we did that for The Hangover, it would take you out of the film.”

Sher also talked last year about what Phoenix was really like on the set, the controversy surrounding the movie’s graphic violence, and whether any comic books inspired the filmmaking process.

What Joaquin Phoenix was like on set

Sher said Phoenix is a “super playful guy and loose”, hence the prank on Phillips. But on set, Phoenix was zeroed in on his character Arthur, who ultimately becomes the villainous Joker.

5 reasons why Joker is going to clean up at the Oscars

According to Sher, the first scene that was filmed for the film is an early scene in the final product, when Arthur is sitting in a social worker’s office, uncontrollably laughing (in the film, Arthur has a condition in which he exhibits physical reactions that don't match how he’s actually feeling, so he’ll laugh if he’s angry or sad). 

“That scene on paper was a four- or five-page scene,” Sher said. “It’s an intense scene. And the first shot was the close-up of when he laughs. And that’s everything. That’s the Joker, his laugh. I remember looking forward to that.”

Sher described the sensation among the crew after the first take: “There was silence and [director] Todd [Phillips] gave a quiet note. We were looking at each other like ‘that was [expletive] awesome.’”

After the second take, Phillips told Phoenix that it was “[expletive] great,” Sher said, at which point Phoenix stormed out of the room.

“Todd said, ‘I don’t think I was supposed to tell him it was good; I think I screwed up’,” Sher recalled. “Those first few weeks were intense.”

Sher added that Phoenix once apologised to him for “acting weird” as Arthur, but would become more “loose and cocky” when he transitioned into the Joker character.

Joker isn't your typical comic book film

Phillips has downplayed the movie’s comic book roots in interviews, despite some similarities to writer Alan Moore and artist Brian Bolland’s classic 1988 Batman story, The Killing Joke, in which Joker was a failed stand-up comedian.

“We didn’t draw from the comic books,” Sher said. “But that allowed Todd and [me] to come at it from a different angle. We weren’t as influenced by those things.”

But Sher said he did flip through The Killing Joke and found the imagery “striking”.

Joaquin Phoenix on brother River and following Heath Ledger as the Joker

“In the same way I saw the evocative imagery in The Killing Joke, we were creating evocative frames that you could put on a wall and felt like you could create a graphic novel version of this film,” Sher said. “The camera work isn’t aggressive in the film. It’s a study of this character. We weren’t influenced by [comic books], but we created something that hopefully represented a vision fans would be happy with.”

There is one particular shot in the film that is reminiscent of another on-screen Joker appearance. Near the end of the film, Phoenix’s Arthur – now fully transformed into the Joker – is riding in the back of a police vehicle. It’s a shot that evokes one in the 2008 Batman film The Dark Knight, in which Heath Ledger’s Joker is hanging his head out of the window of a police car.

Sher said that “we are all aware of that shot” and that it’s a “great shot and image”, but the scene in question in Joker isn’t an homage to that. 

Joker was surrounded by controversy last year for its graphic depictions of violence, which gained national attention when The Hollywood Reporter reported in September family members of the victims of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, cinema shooting were sending a letter to the studio Warner Bros expressing concerns about the film.

The shooter, who killed 12 people and injured 70 more during the attack on an audience during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, was compared to The Joker for sporting bright-orange, dyed hair. Reports at the time also indicated he told arresting officers to call him “The Joker”, but The Denver Post has since debunked those reports.

The letter didn’t call for a boycott of the film, but urged Warner Bros to use its “political clout and leverage in Congress to actively lobby for gun reform”, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

In a statement, Warner Bros said neither the character or the film are “an endorsement of real-world violence of any kind”.

Sher said he “didn’t expect some of the conversations to go where they went”.

“I think that we recognised we were making a film that depicted heinous things,” Sher said. “But the intention was to show a person’s descent into chaos and choosing this future for himself, one that’s not hopeful but destructive. We knew we wouldn’t sugarcoat the brutality. We knew we were making a film about a person who does bad things and becomes a ‘hero’ to some people.”

Sher added that he’s a “huge proponent of sensible gun control,” but doesn’t believe movies are a catalyst for violence. 

“The one thing said about this film that I think was unfair was that it was ‘irresponsible’,” Sher said. “Arthur is given a gun by his colleague and he literally says ‘I’m not supposed to have a gun.’ We pointed out how society failed him. I don’t have an issue with people not liking the film. But I also thought that when people at large finally saw the film, the conversation wouldn’t be about that any more because it doesn’t lionise him.”

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This article originally appeared in Business Insider.