Ari Aster pranks Midsommar audience by showing them his brand new movie, instead
Audiences thought they were getting Ari Aster's Midsommar; instead, they were treated to a sneak preview of Joaquin Phoenix's Beau Is Afraid
Aux News Ari Aster
Earlier today, we were talking about the traditional April Fool’s day pranks, which tend to range from genuinely irritating to “Actually kind of clever and cool!” Every once in a while, though, you get the best kind of pranks: The ones that actually make something new, or at least as-yet-unseen, and then surprises people with the excitement of getting to experience it out of the blue. The kind that Hereditary director Ari Aster unleashed on an unsuspecting audience today, who were expecting to see a screening of Aster’s 2019 film Midsommar—and instead were treated to a full preview of his new movie, Beau Is Afraid, a month before it’s supposed to be out
Aster pulled the prank on an audience at New York’s Alamo Drafthouse, who were then shown the full version of the three-hour Joaquin Phoenix-starrer. (Looking around online, it looks like several theaters showed the “Midsommar director’s cut” today.) In an after-movie Q&A, moderated by Emma Stone, Aster talked about the film’s creation—including revealing an anecdote in which Phoenix collapsed on set during a scene with Patti LuPone:
There was a scene that was very intense for Patti and it was a shot that was on Patti, it was not on him and all of a sudden he fell out of frame. I was really pissed ’cause it was a really good take. It felt confusing so I went around the corner and he was collapsed. I knew it was bad because he was letting people touch him and people were tending to him and he was allowing it. The point is that he fainted in somebody else’s take, he wasn’t on camera and he was helping them, he was in it for them to the point where he collapsed. It’s very poetic that he collapsed in somebody else’s shot.
Plot details about the film—which is due out on April 21, for those of us not lucky enough to get pranked in this particular way—are scant, although Phoenix reportedly plays “a paranoid man [who] embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother.”
18 Comments
I would be so unbelievably pissed off if someone pulled that prank on me.
Surely anyone going to see a Director’s Cut of Midsommar in cinemas is an Aster fan? You’d be overjoyed at getting to see his new film before anyone else.
*girl in the front row in a Midsommar flower dress*I disagree.
They might just be a Midsommar fan and excited to see it on the big screen. To have it replaced with an untried horror-comedy? It better be a damn good movie.I’m in for anything by the Coens, but if I’m expecting to see Fargo on the big screen for the first time and I get Hail, Caesar instead? No, “overjoyed” would not be the word.
I mean maybe but imagine you went to see The Matrix and instead the Wachowskis’ surprised you with Jupiter Ascending
Um, why is Joaquin Phoenix passing out on set???
Maybe he forgot to eat breakfast.
Yeah, he relates what sounds like a medical emergency like a charming anecdote
Maybe he was bleeding out.“Every dangerous thing that Beau does, Joaquin did.” That meant falling down ladders, barreling through forests and crashing through glass doors. The latter stunt left him with a shard of glass in his side. “I think we did one more take after that,” Aster said. (Variety)They may both find insurance rates are a bit higher on their next projects.
“My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?” – Laurence Olivier
He was kidding. What a joker.
Did people pay for tickets & not see what they were promised? That’s fraud.
Hopefully they provided the option of refunds for audience members who weren’t interested in seeing the new film.
Are you 70 years old
I love “Midsommar” so much that I would feel conflicted.
April Fool has lost all it’s meaning ever since Think Geek went out of business.
Amen. Although ThinkGeek didn’t go out of business as much as GameStop bought them and killed them.
Um, is Phoenix OK?