April 22, 2024 • 28 mins
Gare talks with director Vera Drew about her new movie, The People’s Joker, a trans coming of age story masquerading as an unauthorized Batman parody.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. On
this show, we end up talking a lot about the
various ways of politicians, media personalities, and lobbying groups are
constantly trying to make life a living hell for trans people,
between restricting medical care, access to public spaces, as well
as banning and literally burning queer art. Basically a lot
(00:29):
of depressing stuff that's designed to make us trans people
go mad. We live in a transphobic society. All it
takes is one bad day for an aspiring comedian to
fall into a vat of estrogenizing chemicals and emerge a
jokrified harlequin. Filmmaker Vera Dru's new movie, a multimedia queer
(00:50):
fever dream, titled The People's Joker, takes this premise and
depicts what it's like trying to make a living as
an irony poisoned trans person in a Gotham city where
comedy has been made illegal. This isn't just an unauthorized
transgender parody of DC comics, though it is that as well.
The film is a wholly unique collaboration of dozens of
(01:11):
queer artists utilizing fair use to tell a Tran's coming
of age story with the gothic, queer coded imagery of Batman.
If you know anything about my tastes, you probably know
that this is incredibly up my alley. So, in a
departure from this show's usual doom and gloom, I'm putting
together a few episodes on what it means to be
(01:33):
a queer artist in today's political climate. More episodes will
come out next week, but I wanted to get this
one out right now, in time for listeners to catch
the theatrical run of The People's Joker, hopefully in a
theater near you right now or in the near future.
Last week, I was lucky enough to chat with the
clown Princess of Crime herself, Vera Drew, about the making
(01:57):
of The People's Joker.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
My name is Via Drew. I'm the writer, director, and
I also star in The People's Joker. I also did
some of the visual effects too. You can get tickets
online at the People's Joker dot com.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I would like to just start with the origin of
the People's Joker project. Why is there a transgender Joker
and why does that make so much sense?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I'm glad you feel like it makes sense. I mean
it kind of it kind of really started just because
Todd Phillips was like in the news, uh, talking about
like woke culture and how like it was too hard
to make comedy now and stuff, which is really funny
coming from a director who's made millions and millions of
(02:45):
dollars making comedy and like also like made Joker like
the year prior, and that is a comedy. Like it's
a dark comedy, but it's totally a comedy and it
made a billion dollars. But yeah, he was complaining about
woke culture, as is his right. But and my co writer,
(03:06):
the person who ended up becoming my co writer, bri LeRose,
actually just kind of jokingly commissioned me on Twitter to
re edit Todd phillips Joker, and actually venmowed me twelve dollars,
And yeah, I started doing it. Like in Earnest, I
started like actually re editing the movie. And I had
(03:27):
worked at Absolutely Productions for years as an editor and
had kind of come up as an alternative comedy editor.
So you know, at that point it was probably just
going to be like a lot of bart sound effects
and woosh noises and slips and slide whistles. But as
I was working on it and kind of just making
(03:48):
this like big piece of bound footage video art, like
a narrative kind of just like fell into place and
I it kind of just came in an instant, and
I was just like, oh, okay, I think, think I
actually want to make like a coming of age film,
but I want to make like a parody of the
Joker like in that process and kind of just like
(04:10):
tell like a really earnest and super personal autobiographical story
about my life and growing up in the Midwest and
coming out is trans and comedy and you know, my
relationship with my mom and toxic relationship I was in
and stuff, but kind of process and mythologize all of
(04:31):
that through through Batman characters. So that's kind of the
origin of the movie, I guess. I had also kind
of been kicking around an idea for like a body horror,
like a trans body horror movie before that that was
basically like about a drag queen who was physically addicted
(04:54):
to irony and like couldn't like survive without it, but
it was also like destroying her from the inside out.
The two ideas kind of like merged together into this
sort of I guess.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, that definitely comes through. One of my favorite parts
of this movie is that it gets to talk about
so many intimate aspects of trans experience, like trans misogyny,
the intersection of transphobia and misogyny that gets targeted against
transfems in particular, as well as trans for trans relationships
or T four T, and lots of other little things.
(05:26):
It's using the visual language of Batman as a shorthand
to contextualize parts of queerness that just don't often appear
in mass media. I showed my co host Mia the
film last week to get her thoughts on the movie
as a piece of queer art, since her and my
own tastes often greatly differ. What did you think of
the transgender clown it rips.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
One of the things that was the most interesting to
me about it is like, so I'd read some reviews
of it, and because it's, you know, because it's sort
of the submedia works, most of the reviews are by
those people, and it's really fun to see a movie
where you're reading it and you you look at this
and you're going, oh, these people didn't get it. They
much they do not know about T boy swag they
(06:12):
do not know about.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Like all of this stuff that's happening in.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
This And yeah, I mean, I think that's the thing
about it that's really interesting, because you know, transcoming of
age story is like one of the few kind of
stories you're sort of allowed to tell if you're trans,
less so in film more so like in writing, your.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Allowed to do this pecifically. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Yeah, And it's really interesting the way this movie starts
with a you know, for the first maybe ten minutes,
it's okay, this is like a pretty standard coming of
age story, and then it hits the real shit in
a way that doesn't ever show up on this stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Like I first told this movie a year ago, and
I was shocked at the depiction of like T for
tea relationships which you like never you never see, so
being able to look at like emotional abuse within a
T for T relationship being depicted this way, You're like,
oh my god. It's like actually like showing something that
(07:13):
is literally never talked about, like openly, like this is
something that we like people have experiences of, but it's
never really like shown or discussed. I found that to
be incredibly resonant and very like tastefully done.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah, I mean I was just like weeping watching parts
of it. Absolutely, there's a line in there that is,
I have never ever like one of the sort of
most real things that like you as a transwoman experience
is someone who's trans misogyny exempt saying they don't feel
safe around you.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
That being how they kick you, like how you get
ran out, how you get abused. That the fact that
that's in that's in film, and you can see all
of the people, like you can see sis people like
not getting it, like they just they don't they don't
understand what's going on. And that's really incredibly powerful in
(08:04):
a lot of ways, all while in like Jared Letter
Joker makeup.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, like it's it's amazing. They're like getting into all
of this like extremely intense stuff. The gas landing scene
was fucking phenomenal. But it all looks like this fucking
like copy pasted comic art spliced in with like speed
Racer and Return from Oz and it is with all
of these like adult swim aesthetics. Because ver Drew has
(08:29):
been an editor on a lot of like starting with
like Tim and Eric stuff to like Nathan Fielder to
Tim Robinson, very entrenched in this like layered collage, like
adult swim style, So that's present all throughout the movie.
It's extremely visually unique. It's it's kind of like like
it like an It really is like an Internet meme,
like brought to life and like puppeteered by like an
(08:50):
uncanny unseen hand. I think it really embraces the aesthetics
of like an ill fitting Halloween Harley Quinn cosplay costume.
It's like taking that and like deeply interrogating what that
visually represents and looks like and why someone would wear
an ill fitting Harley Quinn costume. It deeply understands all
(09:13):
of like the aesthetic sensibilities behind an image like that.
Extremely extremely fun. I think it's worth talking about, at
least in brief, the trajectory of this movie's release because
(09:35):
it is a very comic book. Joker fed story from
the idea of this film to its premiere at a
film festival, to all of the uncertainty and legal chaos
that came along the way. So an earlier cut of
this movie was originally set to premiere at TIFF, the
Toronto International Film Festival back in twenty twenty two, right
(09:57):
before the first showing water Broa sent a vaguely worded
but threatening letter, which resulted in the People's Joker being
pulled from the festival save for one late night screening
that got rave reviews. With its legal status uncertain, the
movie kind of went into limbo. Here's Vera drew on
(10:19):
what happened after the first tiff, showing.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
I really put all I had into this movie, you know,
like I really I cashed in every favor I had
ever accumulated in Hollywood financially, Like I took out a
huge loan to finish it. And it was just this big,
deeply personal thing that I had made that originally really
was just for me and my friends. Like it was
(10:43):
just kind of a thing that I had just made.
You know, maybe I would have shown it to like
my Patreon or something, but like it was, you know,
after a certain point like it, you know, once we
had that like premiere, it was just like I need
to like I can't just post this to YouTube. I
can't like just dump it somewhere or like shelve it.
(11:06):
And what felt right really was like taking the movie
out just to festivals and kind of doing like a
secret screening tour which is what we did. And that
was really exciting and kind of like a jokerfied way
of sort of getting this movie out there. And I
was just surrounded by other filmmakers in the genre community,
and you know who would see the movie at this
(11:27):
festival and be like, you need to just wait. The
person who's going to help you is gonna come.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So for a while the film was making surprise secret
screenings at film festivals across the US and Canada, And
now almost two years later, the queer distribution company Altered
Innocence picked up the film and it's now in movie
theaters in nationwide.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
The thing that's I think is really interesting about this
is sort of the timing of it, because this originally
comes out in twenty twenty two, right, sure it does,
and then it gets on came out by push back
into the closet by the corporate.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Ghouls of this discovery pushes the people's choker back into
the classet. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
But what I think is really interesting about it is
is its position in this sort of arc of queer media.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
I mean, when when I was a kid, there was nothing.
It was like, like the first queer thing I ever
saw in a show was the Cora Sammie kiss at
the end of Legend of Korra, Like there was nothing
and then suddenly it's funny.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I just watched last night, like three of the old
Law and Order SVU trans episodes. Oh god, oh boy,
oh boy, do they have some extremely extremely interesting moments.
I will leave it up to the viewer's imagination.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Yeah, And what's interesting about the Rice You get this
moment that I kind of recognize from you have this
sort of Asian American media too, where like there was
this you know, it was if you go back and
watch something from two thousand and four that has an
Asian person in it, it is it is like like
there are people right now in the US who will
physically attack you for being Asian, and who will say shit,
(13:09):
and who's whose level of verbal racism will be less
than the racism that's just in this movie as a gag.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Sure, and you know, and so you get and eventually.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Like throughout the twenty tens, we sort of got like, oh,
there's like Asian Americans and movies now, And that was
kind of happening with with with sort of you know
and prickoling cartoons, things like Owl House, that was kind
of happening in in media with queer people. And then
there was the sort of the twenty twenties backlash, and
that's like you can you can you know it's it's
in the same way the Huntress Thompson has this line
(13:38):
about like you can see exactly where the standing in Vegas.
You can see the line where the sixties receded, Like
you can see the line where all of the queer
stuff just is like gone. And this forces everyone, you know,
you if you have two options, right, you can fucking
go back into the closet and you can fucking work
on whatever dog shit show that's just going to be
(14:01):
completely SIS set now. Or you can just you can
make the people's choker, just to say you can just
make you just you can just go and do it
and you can make something. And I think there's something
that's very different than a lot than the sort of
wave that have come before. It is that like this
is pece of trans media that is made by trans
(14:22):
people for trans people, and there's some like trapping stuff
for SIS people to sort of like walk them along
a little tiny bit, but.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Like it uses the language of DC comics to handhold
other audiences to understand what's going on.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Yeah, but but at its core, you know, and like
obviously like yeah, there's you know, mix of plicks like
I'm butchering his name.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
No one knows how to say. That's the whole bit,
is that no one knows how to say it. Yeah,
I mean, like you know, so like there there's like
there's like kind of deep.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Cut like comic stuff in there too, because you know,
this is by people who, like, unlike everyone who makes
these fucking movies these days, people who actually genuinely, like
deeply love the source material that they're pulling from, yes,
and thus are willing to just go off the walls
with it and have like Jason Todd t boy swag,
emotional abuser Joker who is any many such cases like
(15:15):
so much more interesting than any iteration of the Joker
I've seen.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Absolutely well. And it also it also pulls on like
the very long history of the Joker being queer coded. Yeah,
I mean, like if you go to like Grant Morrison's
Joker extremely queer, the sixties Batman Show is all very queer,
but like the Joker has always been seen as is
kind of this like having this queer deviant element despite
really only having like heterosexual pairings, but even still in
(15:42):
his relation to Batman, it's always been a very queer
heavy thing, and that's something that DC Comics has definitely
shied away from intentionally and having something that so blatantly
embraces that well, not just like does it for like
fun representation, like actually interrogates like queer relationship through that,
through that extremely like troubling power dynamic is really really fascinating.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
There is no fucking Cis bad, Like there is no
white CIS dude who has gone through enough shit to
make them cruted to the joker like come odd. It's like,
oh damn, I couldn't get on a comedy show and
I became the joker Like wait wait, wait no.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
No, this is insufficient the joker afi Mia. All it
takes is one bad day. I you know, I mean
I guess, I guess. I guess that is like do
you want to know how I got these emotional scars.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
It's really like like every Cisman is okay enough with
violence that they think that they're one bad day for
just murdering everyone around them, and sometimes they.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Snap and it's like true, you know, but also come
on like you want to. Fucking it's seen shit. We've
had a very like in cell embrace of the Joker
ever since he Ledger, of course with the Rocking Phoenix movie,
very in cell coded, both in conversation with that, because
this piece was made as a direct reaction to TODM
(17:03):
Phillips's The Joker movie, but this is always it's in
conversation with that, while highlighting the actual like like very
very inherent queerness to this man who dresses up like
a clown to play with another man who dresses up
like a bat I was lucky enough to catch an
(17:30):
earlier cut of the People's Joker at a Canadian film
festival last year, dressed in one of my many Harley
Quinn costumes. Again, if you know anything about me, you
know I love Batman on Gotham City. I do my
yearly queer Batman returns watch parties where I dress up
like Michelle Fiver's Catwoman. But the social groups I'm often
(17:50):
in can sometimes be a little bit weird about Batman stuff,
because he's like a fascist or whatever. But I've always
thought that Gotham City is really weird as a concept,
and I loved that someone else appeared to share that
opinion and decided to explore Gotham City as an esthetic
zone to operate in as a queer artist. Here's Vera
(18:11):
Drew talking about the connection between her queerness and Batman.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I really am like a lifelong Batman comic fan, and
I've been working on this movie for four years and
I'm somehow still not sick of Batman, which is crazy
to me. Yeah, I mean, I think like the lore
has just kind of always been there in my life,
and it's always just felt very queer to me. I mean,
(18:38):
I guess mostly in like a subtext way, but you
just think back to like all the iterations, Like I mean,
my entry point into Batman was Joel Schumacher Batman, Like
I saw Batman forever when I was six, and I
it was like, literally one of the first times I
realized I was trans was that moment was just seeing
(19:00):
Nicole Kidman. I wanted to look like her. I wanted
to be perceived how she was being perceived. I wanted
someone to look at me the way Batman looks at her.
And that was all very confusing for a six year old,
you know who up until that point was pretty sure
they were a boy. I grew up in the nineties,
so I didn't really have like my representation was the
(19:23):
Jerry Springer Show and Howard Stern. That's where I saw
trans people, and I think like comics were just this
space where I could. I don't know. It just feels
very queer like and it's it's not just subtext. I
mean there is, there's a lot of subtext obviously in
like the Schumacher Batman's like his his Gotham City just
(19:46):
is a like gay neon nightmare of beauty. We're definitely
like taking that aesthetic kind of in the People's Joker
like that was always kind of my vision for Gotham.
But even the sixties Batman despite how absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know, it's it's super conservative, but like it's it's
(20:07):
so colorful and like.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
It's very gay. It's extremely gay.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
It's and it's like, I because somebody actually described it
to me the other day as like you have like
a character like Riddler and like he's just surrounded by
like hot women. Like it's just everybody feels like kind
of like a weird, poly annoying person, you know, which
(20:32):
is me and my friends.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So I feel like Adam West is definitely playing like
a closeted gay man in that show as well, totally
who's like surrounded by much more like flamboyant queers and
he like doesn't know how to deal with it. That's
totally fair. I really appreciated, like, there's so many Batman
Forever jokes in this, Like you even use the Batman
(20:54):
Forever font like constantly throughout the film. There's so many
like little bits. I really appreciate it did. All of
the Alexander Knox jokes throughout the film. I think feel
like that's one of the most underrated characters from the
Tim Burton movies. And then all of like the Grant
Morrison super sanity bits also, I found incredibly funny. When
(21:14):
I was watching it, I felt like a big strong
sense I felt was like, this is what a piece
of art would look like if it was made like
within the DC universe. It feels like something that comes
like from that point and is like somehow like emanated
into our world.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Wow, thank you.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
It was wonderful. There's definitely some like speed racer elements,
a little bit of like David Lynch's Dune, especially like
the mister Mixelplex scenes felt very much like all of
like like the weird Spice visions. It was great seeing
this progress from the cut last year to this one.
It flows a lot. When I was talking with my
(21:52):
co host Mia about the film, we both pointed out
how this movie doesn't just feel like a movie with
gay people in it itself, feels like a piece of
queer art, Like the art itself has a sense of
inherent queerness. I think there's a lot of reasons for that.
The fact that it's a collaborative project from dozens of
queer artists sending in background pieces, characters, voice acting, music,
(22:17):
set design. It all creates a very like DIY queer
zine kind of feel, but in a moving picture. So
I wanted to talk a little bit more about this
difference between just queer representation and queer art. You kind
of touch on something previously, where like the difference between
queer representation and like art that is that like is queer.
(22:39):
These are like two very different things, and the movie
actually is in conversation with this as well, being like
the difference between hiring a trans person to be on
the SNL cast versus a trans person doing their own
comedy show, right and how those are two very different
things with very different politics. And I think this movie
is a large statement against that assimilation is to drive
that a lot of people to fall back on for
(23:01):
like self preservation reasons, self coping reasons, and like financial reasons.
Sure it is extremely critical of that notion and reifize
like this like diy approach towards queer people making our
own art.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Yeah, And that's something I've been thinking about a lot,
because like, you know, like Asian Americans have like we
got there, right like siss and Americans we we we
got our representation, Like what is a representation? It's like, well,
they found a way to make like being East Asian
the thing you can sell to white people by having
it be about food and selling the version of like
a slightly different version of the traditional family. And I
(23:37):
you know, and like and you can you can sort
of ask what good has this done for Asian American people?
And mostly what it's done is that Asian American cinema
there's it's a wasteland, right, like and you know, and
you could you could see like there's a there's a
version of sort of of where the twenty twenties go.
(23:58):
That's different where the assimilation is I've kicks in and
we don't. And this happens to Qunvidia, where it's just
this yeah, nothing, it's just this void of sort of
formless content that gets sold to the sist people.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
I mean, and I think you could even look at
that from a lot of like twenty sixteen to twenty
twenty stylings of queer media that does come off as
very similationist. And now I feel like we are entering
this new age of trans cinema where we have a
lot of people either working with more independent production houses
I'm very excited for I saw the TV Glow coming
out next month, but we have a lot of other
(24:33):
independent trans filmmakers starting out quite young getting into filmmaking
also not quite young, like into their thirties, who are
working to actually produce films and media that don't just
get thrown up on YouTube. That producing art that does
not just become another transgender video essay that floods the site, right,
it's finding other ways to actually engage artistically besides the
(24:53):
very comfortable ways that we've gotten used to you. Whether
that's like you know, what your average trans DJ trans
like electronic music or a trans video essay, which feels
like really the only two ways to make art as
a trans person reliably are making YouTube videos making music,
both of which can be very good. Absolutely, there's of
some fantastic trans musicians. There's a lot of great video
(25:14):
essays out there, but the artistic landscape is so much
bigger than that. And being able to watch people realize
that this YouTube thing is so self limiting and trying
to grow past that is incredibly cool to see. I know,
there's stuff like Nebula, just like this streaming service kind
of built on YouTube but trying to do more of
its own things. That's been interesting to watch grow. But
(25:35):
also a lot of people attempting just to actually like
take movies to film festivals and actually like engage with
this as like art, like having it be recognized as arts.
Like it would have been so easy to turn the
people's choker into like a YouTube fan film, right, yeah,
fucking thousands of fucking Batman fan films on YouTube. That
would have been so easy, But the insistence are like, no,
(25:56):
I'm actually gonna actually going to use like fair use law,
gonna actually do like a legal parody and push this
through film festivals, get it in actual movie theaters. We
are seeing a lot more transfilms at film festivals. We
are seeing this start happening, and I'm very excited to
watch this grow.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Yeah, And I think what's ultimately happening here is that
there's a combination of two things. One is that we
were getting spat out by the traditional media machine, and
two the traditional media machine is rotting from the inside, right,
And it's not good that either of these things are
really happening. But simultaneously, it also means that we're in
this position where, having been spat out, we can go
(26:35):
make the giant media monster. Yeah, we can go stab
it and force a bunch of these like random ciscritics
to be like to try to figure out a tea
for tea relationship, but just blow it.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Something like this would have never been made by Warner Brothers.
That's just like impossible. This art could have never never
been made under Warner Brothers, Right, that's just impossible. And
being able to say no, I'm going to use these
cultural iconography that we keep being told endlessly that this
is this is our culture's version of mythology, of which
is fucking people talk about superheroes like that all the
(27:08):
fucking time, like this, this is our Greek gods, this
is our blah blah blah blah blah. Yet it's just
owned by like two companies who control everything about it
and don't allow the public to actually engage with these
as cultural thinkers and say, no, we actually are going
to find a way to use these characters in relation
to someone's own life as an artist and using it
to talk about queerness and comedy and working in the
(27:30):
comedy industry as a queer person to create a very
unique piece that yeah, literally could have there's no way
wouldever be made. So this is this is a piece
of art that could have never happened any other way.
And now we have it playing in a local theater
near you, and I think that's very cool. Here's Via
Dru again talking about the theatrical run.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
We're playing a lot of cities. We keep adding more.
If you don't see your city, bother the theater in
your town and tell them you want them to play it,
and you know, show them one of the many articles
out this film and maybe they maybe they'll do it,
or reach out to us and let us know the
Peoplesjoker dot com and you can follow me at Vera
Drew twenty two on Twitter, Instagram, and now TikTok. Don't
(28:11):
know how to use it, but we're going to figure
it out together.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Thanks for listening. Again. You can check out The People's
Joker at The People's Joker dot com look for tickets
and showtimes. Hopefully they'll be one in your area. Next week,
there'll be more episodes talking about the making of this movie,
as well as a few other transcomedian art projects that
are currently ongoing. See you on the other side.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. On
this show, we end up talking a lot about the
various ways of politicians, media personalities, and lobbying groups are
constantly trying to make life a living hell for trans people,
between restricting medical care, access to public spaces, as well
as banning and literally burning queer art. Basically a lot
(00:29):
of depressing stuff that's designed to make us trans people
go mad. We live in a transphobic society. All it
takes is one bad day for an aspiring comedian to
fall into a vat of estrogenizing chemicals and emerge a
jokrified harlequin. Filmmaker Vera Dru's new movie, a multimedia queer
(00:50):
fever dream, titled The People's Joker, takes this premise and
depicts what it's like trying to make a living as
an irony poisoned trans person in a Gotham city where
comedy has been made illegal. This isn't just an unauthorized
transgender parody of DC comics, though it is that as well.
The film is a wholly unique collaboration of dozens of
(01:11):
queer artists utilizing fair use to tell a Tran's coming
of age story with the gothic, queer coded imagery of Batman.
If you know anything about my tastes, you probably know
that this is incredibly up my alley. So, in a
departure from this show's usual doom and gloom, I'm putting
together a few episodes on what it means to be
(01:33):
a queer artist in today's political climate. More episodes will
come out next week, but I wanted to get this
one out right now, in time for listeners to catch
the theatrical run of The People's Joker, hopefully in a
theater near you right now or in the near future.
Last week, I was lucky enough to chat with the
clown Princess of Crime herself, Vera Drew, about the making
(01:57):
of The People's Joker.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
My name is Via Drew. I'm the writer, director, and
I also star in The People's Joker. I also did
some of the visual effects too. You can get tickets
online at the People's Joker dot com.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I would like to just start with the origin of
the People's Joker project. Why is there a transgender Joker
and why does that make so much sense?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I'm glad you feel like it makes sense. I mean
it kind of it kind of really started just because
Todd Phillips was like in the news, uh, talking about
like woke culture and how like it was too hard
to make comedy now and stuff, which is really funny
coming from a director who's made millions and millions of
(02:45):
dollars making comedy and like also like made Joker like
the year prior, and that is a comedy. Like it's
a dark comedy, but it's totally a comedy and it
made a billion dollars. But yeah, he was complaining about
woke culture, as is his right. But and my co writer,
(03:06):
the person who ended up becoming my co writer, bri LeRose,
actually just kind of jokingly commissioned me on Twitter to
re edit Todd phillips Joker, and actually venmowed me twelve dollars,
And yeah, I started doing it. Like in Earnest, I
started like actually re editing the movie. And I had
(03:27):
worked at Absolutely Productions for years as an editor and
had kind of come up as an alternative comedy editor.
So you know, at that point it was probably just
going to be like a lot of bart sound effects
and woosh noises and slips and slide whistles. But as
I was working on it and kind of just making
(03:48):
this like big piece of bound footage video art, like
a narrative kind of just like fell into place and
I it kind of just came in an instant, and
I was just like, oh, okay, I think, think I
actually want to make like a coming of age film,
but I want to make like a parody of the
Joker like in that process and kind of just like
(04:10):
tell like a really earnest and super personal autobiographical story
about my life and growing up in the Midwest and
coming out is trans and comedy and you know, my
relationship with my mom and toxic relationship I was in
and stuff, but kind of process and mythologize all of
(04:31):
that through through Batman characters. So that's kind of the
origin of the movie, I guess. I had also kind
of been kicking around an idea for like a body horror,
like a trans body horror movie before that that was
basically like about a drag queen who was physically addicted
(04:54):
to irony and like couldn't like survive without it, but
it was also like destroying her from the inside out.
The two ideas kind of like merged together into this
sort of I guess.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, that definitely comes through. One of my favorite parts
of this movie is that it gets to talk about
so many intimate aspects of trans experience, like trans misogyny,
the intersection of transphobia and misogyny that gets targeted against
transfems in particular, as well as trans for trans relationships
or T four T, and lots of other little things.
(05:26):
It's using the visual language of Batman as a shorthand
to contextualize parts of queerness that just don't often appear
in mass media. I showed my co host Mia the
film last week to get her thoughts on the movie
as a piece of queer art, since her and my
own tastes often greatly differ. What did you think of
the transgender clown it rips.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
One of the things that was the most interesting to
me about it is like, so I'd read some reviews
of it, and because it's, you know, because it's sort
of the submedia works, most of the reviews are by
those people, and it's really fun to see a movie
where you're reading it and you you look at this
and you're going, oh, these people didn't get it. They
much they do not know about T boy swag they
(06:12):
do not know about.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Like all of this stuff that's happening in.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
This And yeah, I mean, I think that's the thing
about it that's really interesting, because you know, transcoming of
age story is like one of the few kind of
stories you're sort of allowed to tell if you're trans,
less so in film more so like in writing, your.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Allowed to do this pecifically. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Yeah, And it's really interesting the way this movie starts
with a you know, for the first maybe ten minutes,
it's okay, this is like a pretty standard coming of
age story, and then it hits the real shit in
a way that doesn't ever show up on this stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Like I first told this movie a year ago, and
I was shocked at the depiction of like T for
tea relationships which you like never you never see, so
being able to look at like emotional abuse within a
T for T relationship being depicted this way, You're like,
oh my god. It's like actually like showing something that
(07:13):
is literally never talked about, like openly, like this is
something that we like people have experiences of, but it's
never really like shown or discussed. I found that to
be incredibly resonant and very like tastefully done.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah, I mean I was just like weeping watching parts
of it. Absolutely, there's a line in there that is,
I have never ever like one of the sort of
most real things that like you as a transwoman experience
is someone who's trans misogyny exempt saying they don't feel
safe around you.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
That being how they kick you, like how you get
ran out, how you get abused. That the fact that
that's in that's in film, and you can see all
of the people, like you can see sis people like
not getting it, like they just they don't they don't
understand what's going on. And that's really incredibly powerful in
(08:04):
a lot of ways, all while in like Jared Letter
Joker makeup.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, like it's it's amazing. They're like getting into all
of this like extremely intense stuff. The gas landing scene
was fucking phenomenal. But it all looks like this fucking
like copy pasted comic art spliced in with like speed
Racer and Return from Oz and it is with all
of these like adult swim aesthetics. Because ver Drew has
(08:29):
been an editor on a lot of like starting with
like Tim and Eric stuff to like Nathan Fielder to
Tim Robinson, very entrenched in this like layered collage, like
adult swim style, So that's present all throughout the movie.
It's extremely visually unique. It's it's kind of like like
it like an It really is like an Internet meme,
like brought to life and like puppeteered by like an
(08:50):
uncanny unseen hand. I think it really embraces the aesthetics
of like an ill fitting Halloween Harley Quinn cosplay costume.
It's like taking that and like deeply interrogating what that
visually represents and looks like and why someone would wear
an ill fitting Harley Quinn costume. It deeply understands all
(09:13):
of like the aesthetic sensibilities behind an image like that.
Extremely extremely fun. I think it's worth talking about, at
least in brief, the trajectory of this movie's release because
(09:35):
it is a very comic book. Joker fed story from
the idea of this film to its premiere at a
film festival, to all of the uncertainty and legal chaos
that came along the way. So an earlier cut of
this movie was originally set to premiere at TIFF, the
Toronto International Film Festival back in twenty twenty two, right
(09:57):
before the first showing water Broa sent a vaguely worded
but threatening letter, which resulted in the People's Joker being
pulled from the festival save for one late night screening
that got rave reviews. With its legal status uncertain, the
movie kind of went into limbo. Here's Vera drew on
(10:19):
what happened after the first tiff, showing.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
I really put all I had into this movie, you know,
like I really I cashed in every favor I had
ever accumulated in Hollywood financially, Like I took out a
huge loan to finish it. And it was just this big,
deeply personal thing that I had made that originally really
was just for me and my friends. Like it was
(10:43):
just kind of a thing that I had just made.
You know, maybe I would have shown it to like
my Patreon or something, but like it was, you know,
after a certain point like it, you know, once we
had that like premiere, it was just like I need
to like I can't just post this to YouTube. I
can't like just dump it somewhere or like shelve it.
(11:06):
And what felt right really was like taking the movie
out just to festivals and kind of doing like a
secret screening tour which is what we did. And that
was really exciting and kind of like a jokerfied way
of sort of getting this movie out there. And I
was just surrounded by other filmmakers in the genre community,
and you know who would see the movie at this
(11:27):
festival and be like, you need to just wait. The
person who's going to help you is gonna come.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So for a while the film was making surprise secret
screenings at film festivals across the US and Canada, And
now almost two years later, the queer distribution company Altered
Innocence picked up the film and it's now in movie
theaters in nationwide.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
The thing that's I think is really interesting about this
is sort of the timing of it, because this originally
comes out in twenty twenty two, right, sure it does,
and then it gets on came out by push back
into the closet by the corporate.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Ghouls of this discovery pushes the people's choker back into
the classet. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
But what I think is really interesting about it is
is its position in this sort of arc of queer media.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
I mean, when when I was a kid, there was nothing.
It was like, like the first queer thing I ever
saw in a show was the Cora Sammie kiss at
the end of Legend of Korra, Like there was nothing
and then suddenly it's funny.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I just watched last night, like three of the old
Law and Order SVU trans episodes. Oh god, oh boy,
oh boy, do they have some extremely extremely interesting moments.
I will leave it up to the viewer's imagination.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Yeah, And what's interesting about the Rice You get this
moment that I kind of recognize from you have this
sort of Asian American media too, where like there was
this you know, it was if you go back and
watch something from two thousand and four that has an
Asian person in it, it is it is like like
there are people right now in the US who will
physically attack you for being Asian, and who will say shit,
(13:09):
and who's whose level of verbal racism will be less
than the racism that's just in this movie as a gag.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Sure, and you know, and so you get and eventually.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Like throughout the twenty tens, we sort of got like, oh,
there's like Asian Americans and movies now, And that was
kind of happening with with with sort of you know
and prickoling cartoons, things like Owl House, that was kind
of happening in in media with queer people. And then
there was the sort of the twenty twenties backlash, and
that's like you can you can you know it's it's
in the same way the Huntress Thompson has this line
(13:38):
about like you can see exactly where the standing in Vegas.
You can see the line where the sixties receded, Like
you can see the line where all of the queer
stuff just is like gone. And this forces everyone, you know,
you if you have two options, right, you can fucking
go back into the closet and you can fucking work
on whatever dog shit show that's just going to be
(14:01):
completely SIS set now. Or you can just you can
make the people's choker, just to say you can just
make you just you can just go and do it
and you can make something. And I think there's something
that's very different than a lot than the sort of
wave that have come before. It is that like this
is pece of trans media that is made by trans
(14:22):
people for trans people, and there's some like trapping stuff
for SIS people to sort of like walk them along
a little tiny bit, but.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Like it uses the language of DC comics to handhold
other audiences to understand what's going on.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Yeah, but but at its core, you know, and like
obviously like yeah, there's you know, mix of plicks like
I'm butchering his name.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
No one knows how to say. That's the whole bit,
is that no one knows how to say it. Yeah,
I mean, like you know, so like there there's like
there's like kind of deep.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Cut like comic stuff in there too, because you know,
this is by people who, like, unlike everyone who makes
these fucking movies these days, people who actually genuinely, like
deeply love the source material that they're pulling from, yes,
and thus are willing to just go off the walls
with it and have like Jason Todd t boy swag,
emotional abuser Joker who is any many such cases like
(15:15):
so much more interesting than any iteration of the Joker
I've seen.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Absolutely well. And it also it also pulls on like
the very long history of the Joker being queer coded. Yeah,
I mean, like if you go to like Grant Morrison's
Joker extremely queer, the sixties Batman Show is all very queer,
but like the Joker has always been seen as is
kind of this like having this queer deviant element despite
really only having like heterosexual pairings, but even still in
(15:42):
his relation to Batman, it's always been a very queer
heavy thing, and that's something that DC Comics has definitely
shied away from intentionally and having something that so blatantly
embraces that well, not just like does it for like
fun representation, like actually interrogates like queer relationship through that,
through that extremely like troubling power dynamic is really really fascinating.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
There is no fucking Cis bad, Like there is no
white CIS dude who has gone through enough shit to
make them cruted to the joker like come odd. It's like,
oh damn, I couldn't get on a comedy show and
I became the joker Like wait wait, wait no.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
No, this is insufficient the joker afi Mia. All it
takes is one bad day. I you know, I mean
I guess, I guess. I guess that is like do
you want to know how I got these emotional scars.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
It's really like like every Cisman is okay enough with
violence that they think that they're one bad day for
just murdering everyone around them, and sometimes they.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Snap and it's like true, you know, but also come
on like you want to. Fucking it's seen shit. We've
had a very like in cell embrace of the Joker
ever since he Ledger, of course with the Rocking Phoenix movie,
very in cell coded, both in conversation with that, because
this piece was made as a direct reaction to TODM
(17:03):
Phillips's The Joker movie, but this is always it's in
conversation with that, while highlighting the actual like like very
very inherent queerness to this man who dresses up like
a clown to play with another man who dresses up
like a bat I was lucky enough to catch an
(17:30):
earlier cut of the People's Joker at a Canadian film
festival last year, dressed in one of my many Harley
Quinn costumes. Again, if you know anything about me, you
know I love Batman on Gotham City. I do my
yearly queer Batman returns watch parties where I dress up
like Michelle Fiver's Catwoman. But the social groups I'm often
(17:50):
in can sometimes be a little bit weird about Batman stuff,
because he's like a fascist or whatever. But I've always
thought that Gotham City is really weird as a concept,
and I loved that someone else appeared to share that
opinion and decided to explore Gotham City as an esthetic
zone to operate in as a queer artist. Here's Vera
(18:11):
Drew talking about the connection between her queerness and Batman.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I really am like a lifelong Batman comic fan, and
I've been working on this movie for four years and
I'm somehow still not sick of Batman, which is crazy
to me. Yeah, I mean, I think like the lore
has just kind of always been there in my life,
and it's always just felt very queer to me. I mean,
(18:38):
I guess mostly in like a subtext way, but you
just think back to like all the iterations, Like I mean,
my entry point into Batman was Joel Schumacher Batman, Like
I saw Batman forever when I was six, and I
it was like, literally one of the first times I
realized I was trans was that moment was just seeing
(19:00):
Nicole Kidman. I wanted to look like her. I wanted
to be perceived how she was being perceived. I wanted
someone to look at me the way Batman looks at her.
And that was all very confusing for a six year old,
you know who up until that point was pretty sure
they were a boy. I grew up in the nineties,
so I didn't really have like my representation was the
(19:23):
Jerry Springer Show and Howard Stern. That's where I saw
trans people, and I think like comics were just this
space where I could. I don't know. It just feels
very queer like and it's it's not just subtext. I
mean there is, there's a lot of subtext obviously in
like the Schumacher Batman's like his his Gotham City just
(19:46):
is a like gay neon nightmare of beauty. We're definitely
like taking that aesthetic kind of in the People's Joker
like that was always kind of my vision for Gotham.
But even the sixties Batman despite how absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know, it's it's super conservative, but like it's it's
(20:07):
so colorful and like.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
It's very gay. It's extremely gay.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
It's and it's like, I because somebody actually described it
to me the other day as like you have like
a character like Riddler and like he's just surrounded by
like hot women. Like it's just everybody feels like kind
of like a weird, poly annoying person, you know, which
(20:32):
is me and my friends.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So I feel like Adam West is definitely playing like
a closeted gay man in that show as well, totally
who's like surrounded by much more like flamboyant queers and
he like doesn't know how to deal with it. That's
totally fair. I really appreciated, like, there's so many Batman
Forever jokes in this, Like you even use the Batman
(20:54):
Forever font like constantly throughout the film. There's so many
like little bits. I really appreciate it did. All of
the Alexander Knox jokes throughout the film. I think feel
like that's one of the most underrated characters from the
Tim Burton movies. And then all of like the Grant
Morrison super sanity bits also, I found incredibly funny. When
(21:14):
I was watching it, I felt like a big strong
sense I felt was like, this is what a piece
of art would look like if it was made like
within the DC universe. It feels like something that comes
like from that point and is like somehow like emanated
into our world.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Wow, thank you.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
It was wonderful. There's definitely some like speed racer elements,
a little bit of like David Lynch's Dune, especially like
the mister Mixelplex scenes felt very much like all of
like like the weird Spice visions. It was great seeing
this progress from the cut last year to this one.
It flows a lot. When I was talking with my
(21:52):
co host Mia about the film, we both pointed out
how this movie doesn't just feel like a movie with
gay people in it itself, feels like a piece of
queer art, Like the art itself has a sense of
inherent queerness. I think there's a lot of reasons for that.
The fact that it's a collaborative project from dozens of
queer artists sending in background pieces, characters, voice acting, music,
(22:17):
set design. It all creates a very like DIY queer
zine kind of feel, but in a moving picture. So
I wanted to talk a little bit more about this
difference between just queer representation and queer art. You kind
of touch on something previously, where like the difference between
queer representation and like art that is that like is queer.
(22:39):
These are like two very different things, and the movie
actually is in conversation with this as well, being like
the difference between hiring a trans person to be on
the SNL cast versus a trans person doing their own
comedy show, right and how those are two very different
things with very different politics. And I think this movie
is a large statement against that assimilation is to drive
that a lot of people to fall back on for
(23:01):
like self preservation reasons, self coping reasons, and like financial reasons.
Sure it is extremely critical of that notion and reifize
like this like diy approach towards queer people making our
own art.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Yeah, And that's something I've been thinking about a lot,
because like, you know, like Asian Americans have like we
got there, right like siss and Americans we we we
got our representation, Like what is a representation? It's like, well,
they found a way to make like being East Asian
the thing you can sell to white people by having
it be about food and selling the version of like
a slightly different version of the traditional family. And I
(23:37):
you know, and like and you can you can sort
of ask what good has this done for Asian American people?
And mostly what it's done is that Asian American cinema
there's it's a wasteland, right, like and you know, and
you could you could see like there's a there's a
version of sort of of where the twenty twenties go.
(23:58):
That's different where the assimilation is I've kicks in and
we don't. And this happens to Qunvidia, where it's just
this yeah, nothing, it's just this void of sort of
formless content that gets sold to the sist people.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
I mean, and I think you could even look at
that from a lot of like twenty sixteen to twenty
twenty stylings of queer media that does come off as
very similationist. And now I feel like we are entering
this new age of trans cinema where we have a
lot of people either working with more independent production houses
I'm very excited for I saw the TV Glow coming
out next month, but we have a lot of other
(24:33):
independent trans filmmakers starting out quite young getting into filmmaking
also not quite young, like into their thirties, who are
working to actually produce films and media that don't just
get thrown up on YouTube. That producing art that does
not just become another transgender video essay that floods the site, right,
it's finding other ways to actually engage artistically besides the
(24:53):
very comfortable ways that we've gotten used to you. Whether
that's like you know, what your average trans DJ trans
like electronic music or a trans video essay, which feels
like really the only two ways to make art as
a trans person reliably are making YouTube videos making music,
both of which can be very good. Absolutely, there's of
some fantastic trans musicians. There's a lot of great video
(25:14):
essays out there, but the artistic landscape is so much
bigger than that. And being able to watch people realize
that this YouTube thing is so self limiting and trying
to grow past that is incredibly cool to see. I know,
there's stuff like Nebula, just like this streaming service kind
of built on YouTube but trying to do more of
its own things. That's been interesting to watch grow. But
(25:35):
also a lot of people attempting just to actually like
take movies to film festivals and actually like engage with
this as like art, like having it be recognized as arts.
Like it would have been so easy to turn the
people's choker into like a YouTube fan film, right, yeah,
fucking thousands of fucking Batman fan films on YouTube. That
would have been so easy, But the insistence are like, no,
(25:56):
I'm actually gonna actually going to use like fair use law,
gonna actually do like a legal parody and push this
through film festivals, get it in actual movie theaters. We
are seeing a lot more transfilms at film festivals. We
are seeing this start happening, and I'm very excited to
watch this grow.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Yeah, And I think what's ultimately happening here is that
there's a combination of two things. One is that we
were getting spat out by the traditional media machine, and
two the traditional media machine is rotting from the inside, right,
And it's not good that either of these things are
really happening. But simultaneously, it also means that we're in
this position where, having been spat out, we can go
(26:35):
make the giant media monster. Yeah, we can go stab
it and force a bunch of these like random ciscritics
to be like to try to figure out a tea
for tea relationship, but just blow it.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Something like this would have never been made by Warner Brothers.
That's just like impossible. This art could have never never
been made under Warner Brothers, Right, that's just impossible. And
being able to say no, I'm going to use these
cultural iconography that we keep being told endlessly that this
is this is our culture's version of mythology, of which
is fucking people talk about superheroes like that all the
(27:08):
fucking time, like this, this is our Greek gods, this
is our blah blah blah blah blah. Yet it's just
owned by like two companies who control everything about it
and don't allow the public to actually engage with these
as cultural thinkers and say, no, we actually are going
to find a way to use these characters in relation
to someone's own life as an artist and using it
to talk about queerness and comedy and working in the
(27:30):
comedy industry as a queer person to create a very
unique piece that yeah, literally could have there's no way
wouldever be made. So this is this is a piece
of art that could have never happened any other way.
And now we have it playing in a local theater
near you, and I think that's very cool. Here's Via
Dru again talking about the theatrical run.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
We're playing a lot of cities. We keep adding more.
If you don't see your city, bother the theater in
your town and tell them you want them to play it,
and you know, show them one of the many articles
out this film and maybe they maybe they'll do it,
or reach out to us and let us know the
Peoplesjoker dot com and you can follow me at Vera
Drew twenty two on Twitter, Instagram, and now TikTok. Don't
(28:11):
know how to use it, but we're going to figure
it out together.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Thanks for listening. Again. You can check out The People's
Joker at The People's Joker dot com look for tickets
and showtimes. Hopefully they'll be one in your area. Next week,
there'll be more episodes talking about the making of this movie,
as well as a few other transcomedian art projects that
are currently ongoing. See you on the other side.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at cool Zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.