Vera Drew swears she’s only looking to sell tickets when she says the new edition of The People’s Joker, which hits theaters April 5, is “a completely different movie” than the one that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival two years ago.
“Legal baggage aside, the TIFF cut was a new paint job,” Drew told the Daily Beast’s Obsessed in a recent interview. “It was still my favorite screening of all time, simply because it was the first time I had been allowed to see it in a crowd, but the film wasn’t finished yet. “
The People’s Joker had its world premiere at the 2022 festival, but was pulled from the bill after just one screening, thanks to what she calls an “angry letter” from Warner Bros. , which Drew clarified is not a ceasefire. From there, the film’s path to the big screen has been a long and enlightening odyssey, exemplifying precisely the point that Drew’s hallucinogenic film aims to convey. When big business co-opts our fashion myths, it’s us, “the people,” who pay a premium price.
From the very first scenes of Smallville, it’s evident that The People’s Joker is a parody. The coming-of-age film, co-written by Drew and Bri Lerose, picks up on the old Batman story to illustrate Drew’s adventure as a trans woman. Its sardonic protagonist, an aspiring actress who adopts the nickname Joker the Harlequin, is presented as a combination of the Joker and Harley Quinn. Their pronouns are “he” and “ha. ” Since writing his script 4 years ago, Drew has had “numerous conversations with attorneys” to verify that the incorporation of Batman characters and curtains is legally “fair use” of the curtains. But apparently, Warner didn Bros. no get the joke.
Despite the aforementioned letter, Drew said the studio didn’t bother to spend money on litigation and never followed up on any comments to satisfy him. Instead, the tweaks he’s made to his film since its debut have mostly focused on music rights and filmmaking even closer to his tastes.
“I grew up with really raw movies,” Drew said. I guess I’m like a recovering Edgelord. I’m a big fan of John Waters. I’m constantly copying Kenneth Anger and I love Bruce LaBruce. I’ve thought queer cinema was meant to be subversive.
Growing up, Drew watched Jerry Springer’s show a lot because it was one of the few places he could see women like her. Members of his older family circle still think he leads an “alternative” life. So why do his films try to be compatible? In a kind of cis-heteronormative patriarchal box?The anti-capitalist sentiment that underpins The People’s Joker is intrinsically connected to its queer character; The film is a rallying cry opposed to all the interconnected forces that stand in the way of other marginalized people (and artists of all faiths) and of total and general self-realization and expression.
“I didn’t want, very consciously, to do anything that sounded, ‘I’m like all women, this is my story,'” Drew said. I identify my trans character with the Joker because I literally live in a society. That vilifies me and other people who look like me. So why wouldn’t I make my art out of it?»
Vera Drew
As busy as she is with The People’s Joker, Drew is already hard at work on another coming-of-age story: a “cult-framed horror comedy” that she describes as Evil Dead II from People’s Joker’s Evil Dead. More often, however, he is on the hunt for the release of his first film, which he worked so hard to get.
“The industry is bleak right now, I’m sure you see it when you interview other people, but I don’t feel it,” Drew said. “Because I just enjoyed this lovely experience of seeing how much other people I still care about videos like this. “
The demanding situations Drew has faced over the past two years are a testament to the radicality of his film. This visual collage with a touch of swap comedy features animations by more than a hundred artists, whose paintings Drew contributed during the pandemic. The story is autobiographical, but it also delves into examining how a cultural fixation on binaries—male and female, hero and villain, tasteful and sordid—inherently harms us all.
As a writer, Drew draws dense, neon parallels between her reports on the dysphoria and villainy of old Batman characters. The unnerving smile of her character’s Joker comes from a fictional drug called Smylex, which a healer prescribed to her as a child to mask her gender dysphoria. . When Drew’s Joker arrives in Gotham to continue the comedy, he discovers that things are much better in the big city. Comedy was forbidden, unless it was in a club run by Lorne Michaels. At UBC (here, the United Clown Bureau instead of the Upright Citizens Brigade), quotas are expensive and men can become comedians while women have to play sexualized harlequins.
After failing the government-sanctioned comedy show, Joker the Harlequin discovers his identity by starting an illegal comedy club together with Penguin (Nathan Faustyn). She falls into a poisonous but enlightening date with Joker, Mr. J (Kane Distler, Jared Leto). of Suicide Squad) and soon discovers that Batman, Gotham’s autocratic dark knight, is also a pedophile hairdresser.
Throughout the film, Drew emphasizes what we lose when hardcore establishments (such as government and big business) co-opt our art, and by extension, our means of expression, for monetary gain. What does it mean to cede our fashionable myths to those that are fashionable?Who has a vested interest in promoting an overly simplistic, black-and-white edition of the global for their own benefit?
Although the studio never followed up on his letter, Drew said that “Warner Brothers’ perceived baggage” still created some hurdles that his Joker had to overcome. Before the TIFF uproar, he said, The People’s Joker had attracted interest from a few major distributors. After the letter, all of that failed. Similarly, Drew found that “every music publisher in the business” was reluctant to work with her, which meant she only had a few months to revamp her soundtrack and resync it. all for compatibility. If the process is exhausting, it’s because it was.
“But that’s the task,” Drew said. I mean, the movie looks a lot like a very unlikely movie that’s ever been made. “
And so, like many DC villains before her, the director was forced to pass for a rogue. He timidly began selling his film through secret screenings at film festivals, while talking to lawyers and waiting for the film to be released in earnest at a giant. scale. ” “I was pretty devastated at first,” Drew said, “but temporarily it’s become really liberating, because maybe I’ll start to complete the movie again. . . I knew that the path to where we are today was just to clean it up again.
Although Drew’s agent wasn’t expecting her to start screening the film after what happened at TIFF, the secret direction of the screening seemed like a safe direction.
“If a film festival said on its show ‘secret screening tonight’ and the plot was ‘a transgender clown who isn’t funny comes of age and faces a cape crusader’. . . [people who know] would assume he’s the town’s Joker. “Drew said. ” And if they didn’t, they’d say, ‘That sounds crazy,'” and they’d still need to see it.
The secret screening excursion took Drew all over the world, from Australia to White River Junction, Vermont, a small unincorporated town with its own festival.
“It’s literally a city block, a fitness station, and a haunted hotel,” Drew recalls of the White River Independent Film Festival. “And then, his theater. “
Regional occasions like these have been instrumental to Drew’s success, and his appreciation for the protection and validation they have provided is palpable. During the White River Festival, he said, “Everyone in the state of Vermont knew about this film showed up for this screening. It was lovely and I got to know this amazing network of queer artists. As grueling as this procedure has been, Drew said, it has also given him a renewed confidence in creating art.
“I just did [The People’s Joker] for myself, when I was thirteen, which is probably my original peak,” Drew said. Each time she screened the film, she felt more deeply connected not only to herself but also to queerness. community.
“Maybe I never would have imagined all the conversations I had with other people after the screenings,” Drew said. So far, the reaction to his film has been like a beautiful dream: “other people are crying, hyperventilating, and having an unforgettable experience. “time. “
Parents of other trans people continually approached her with the same look on their faces, Drew said, “as if they’d been hit with a two-by-four. “At the same time, he observed, “there is peace” in their reactions. A mother came up to me and said, ‘Thank you for doing this. Now I know how to communicate with my daughter. Maybe I would never have imagined receiving this reaction from other people, from this film. . . That’s because we actually portray homosexuality in this honest, optimistic but ambitious way.
After all, The People’s Joker found its distributor in Altered Innocence, a company committed to the distribution and preservation of LGBTQ cinema. Drew hoped to pair his film with a gender-sensitive queer distributor who would have also “gotten” the art film. , and that company ticked all the boxes. ” It’s been a very long road,” Drew said, “but it turns out that’s what it was meant to be. “
Since Warner Bros. no provided any comment on the content of The People’s Joker, Drew’s biggest challenge in preparing the film for wide release came from the soundtrack. The original cut danced to various covers that Drew may not have done. erase due to reluctant music studies. Thankfully, some of those songs, adding a wonderful parody of Prince, stuck around because they were “classic” fair use cases. Still, most had to leave. When Drew went back to the artists he had worked with and asked if he could use some of their original songs from the versions they had recorded, they were all thrilled to have the opportunity to showcase their own work.
As disappointing and stressful as it would have been to revamp its soundtrack to the max in just a few months, Drew is even happier than before with the final result. “It flows better,” he says. I feel like it suits my voice, the voices of the characters, and the voice of the network that made it so much better overall. For a film that’s obviously a parody. . . I think the music literally makes it feel like it’s original.
While the return of Drew’s (anti)hero to the big screen has lasted, there’s something fitting about The People’s Joker debuting in 2024, a year in which trans cinema flourished. Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair sequel, I Saw the TV Glow, was one of the premieres at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, as were Theda Hammel’s comedy John Early, Stress Positions and Will Ferrell-Harper Steele Road.
The People’s Joker
Although Drew doesn’t think her film deserves to be a style for other filmmakers — “especially if you’re a first-time filmmaker, don’t rush into making The People’s Star Wars or whatever,” she said — she hopes her film The Homework can be a call to arms for gay people to make more fun genre movies.
‘We can do it!'” says Drew. We can communicate our trauma to them; We can communicate genuine things to them and our families, and they can have all the characteristics of queer cinema. But we can make funny genre movies, and you can make them at home. . . If I can do that in my backyard, I think everyone can do it.
When asked if a streaming release could be on the horizon, Drew seemed hopeful. There will also “probably” be a physical release at some point. At the same time, he noted that The People’s Joker is most productively noticeable on the big screen. “He’s meant to be seen with his circle of relatives of choice at a theater after he’s had dinner and had a drink or two, or a cigarette or two,” he said with a smile. I need this theatrical excursion to last forever. I need it to be a midnight movie. I need it to continue after I die, 150 years from now. “
Hopefully, it will. If there’s a clown who can cause a move, it’s Joker the Harlequin.
Senior Entertainment Journalist
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