Making movies is supposed to be glamorous, but filming the new Joker movie has apparently been a little rough. It seems a group of extra that were filming a scene in a subway car recently found themselves stuck in the car for three hours, resulting in an unknown number of them being forced to urinate on the subway tracks when they weren't allowed a bathroom break.
It's unclear exactly what happened that resulted in these extras being stuck on the subway car together unable to leave. The revelation of what happened came about following a complaint being filed with the Screen Actors Guild, which requires extras to get a break every two hours, and the fact that they couldn't leave the subway car resulted in a violation. The incident is now being investigated by SAG and, according to TMZ, Warner Bros. is also looking into what transpired.
Anything can happen on a film set and that can certainly include excessive delays, but a situation that leaves people stuck on a subway car and peeing in between the cars seems a bit extreme. The fact that they were apparently also "locked" on a subway car also takes things to another level. Being stuck on the subway is no fun even if you're going someplace that you want to go, which clearly wasn't the case here.
Based on the report it sounds like this scene only involved extras, there's no mention of Joaquin Phoenix or other actors being involved. This was likely just being done to get shots of people on a subway as part of a larger sequence that will be edited together. It seems like this may have been just an attempt at getting some quick shots that took much longer than expected. Production may not have wanted to let the extras break so they wouldn't need to wrangle everybody together once filming was ready to go, but things got delayed and took longer than expected.
While delays are inevitable, if things really got to the point where people had to relieve themselves on subway tracks then clearly things went too far. Of course, if people were actually locked in the subway cars, as the report claims, then it seems like things went too far long before that, as that could be a serious safety hazard, not merely a sanitation problem.
Normally extras just show up and do a job and get paid a little a get to be in a movie. It's simple and easy and then everybody moves on. Unfortunately, being an extra on the new Joker movie apparently wasn't quite as much fun as the name implied. We'll have to wait and see if anything comes of the investigations or if we're ever given an explanation for what caused such a messy situation.
Of course, the Joker himself would probably find this story hilarious, so perhaps it's not too surprising such a situation occurred on this particular movie.
