Thursday, February 13, 2025

Chasing the Gold Interview: Vera Drew on ‘The People’s Joker’ and Turning Up as the Woman You Want to Be

Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker is semi-miraculous. Having survived lawsuits from WB because they didn’t understand the notion of parody and secretly screening in festivals as the ‘film that dare not speak its name’ [in reality ‘Untitled Queer Coming of Age Parody Film’] the work is finally fully unleashed. Made by hundreds of artists and voice talents working together from around the world, The People’s Joker has become more than a cult film – it’s a runaway success.

Nadine Whitney had a long and freeform conversation with Vera about her deeply personal film which uses the framework of a young kid living in Smallville who heads to Gotham City to find herself and realizes Batman is a groomer who wants to go into politics, Perry White is Alex Jones, and comedy is controlled by the United Clown Bureau.

Nadine Whitney: I wanted to ask you about a couple of lines that you wrote, and because they resonated with me a great deal. They’re not the funny funny lines, although the funny lines got me howling, but the lines: [paraphrasing] “Life is not a comic book. We are heroes and villains we it just depends on who we turn up as. Politicians are comedians and comedians are arbiters of morals.”

Vera Drew: They were really coming from this place of frustration with, you know…

Look, there’s a lot of things that are annoying about being trans, but I think the one that gets me the most is how much our identities are politicized both ways. The way people talk, in general, about morality right now is this black or white thing. It feels pretty destructive to me, and I don’t like that. By being a queer person, by being a trans woman, my identity is read as inherently political activism, just my existence is. I’m aware of that, but it’s a form of activism that that I didn’t have any say in. The idea that walking down the street is somehow me being brave.

I think about one time where I was in sweatpants, sneakers and a hoodie. I was eating at a Taco Bell, and somebody came up to me and said, “You’re so brave, you’re and you’re so beautiful and brave.” I felt like, “Thank you, but no. Right now, I’m not. I’m in my sweats and I’m eating garbage.”

As it relates just to personal storytelling, this is a movie that is processing my relationship to my mother, my relationship to relationships that I had early in my queer journey that were very toxic and stuff. I made a kind of a statement saying the people that hurt us aren’t necessarily always bad people. Especially in a romantic relationship setting. I wanted to make a movie that was about how the most toxic relationship in the world could still be the one that helps you figure out who you are.

I don’t think of the guy that that Mr. J is based on as a villain. We were both just in our twenties, and we were fucked up. My mom isn’t a villain either. She just didn’t know how to raise a trans kid, because it was the 90s, and the only trans representation there was included people like Howard Stern and Jerry Springer doing ‘freak shows.’

Nadine Whitney: Or Jim Carrey making jokes in Ace Ventura, or a Dick Wolf ‘Dun Dun’ “She’s a he!”

Vera Drew: “But she has a penis!” Yes, exactly.

I think that’s the thing too, that I wanted to bring to the movie in general: the question of is Joker the Harlequin a good role model of what a trans woman’s supposed to be? There are multiple points in the story where she’s definitely not. She’s a drug addict. She literally betrays her friends. I wanted to portray a trans person, finally, as a human and as somebody with both the beautiful parts and the ugly parts. To also show that we can be funny at our own expense, very consciously.

The real intention was also to make a beautiful queer coming of age story that would inspire and help me sort of process my life. Yet, I wanted it to be very irreverent and rude, because I feel like that kind of comedy has really been stolen by the wrong kind of people.

That kind of comedy has its earliest roots in queer cinema like John Waters. I want to see more trans artists getting the chance to tell messy, funny queer stories.

Nadine Whitney: There’s always this pressure on queer people, and on minorities of any kind to “Speak for the block.” Individuals must be representative of everyone in the community. You can’t just be yourself. You have to be the sterling example. If you’re not the sterling example, then you’ve let somebody down. Because there’s a presumed monolith.

We see it all the time, where people get so furious about “good representation” and “bad representation” from people who are part of the minority groups. They’re not always talking about people from outside whatever community it is making a piece of art, but rather people inside of it. There is a difference between people who are representing themselves and people who are being represented and I think the pressure on creators is becoming untenable.

I noted a lot of subversions in The People’s Joker for example Penguin. He’s wearing comedy legend T-shirts like George Carlin or Bill Hicks. Comedians who have now been taken up by some people who think it’s funny just to be cruel. Oswald is the nicest guy, but he’s the one that you would expect would be telling the bad jokes. But he’s the one who pulls Joker in with the Treblinka joke (which I laughed at because it was so audacious).

Vera Drew: There a very few scenes that I like really watching with an audience anymore, but it’s one that I will still pop my head in the theater while it’s happening, because it’s just such a mix of, like, groans, genuine laughs just the level of discomfort that some people have. Because it’s a joke that that she tells, that is not her joke to tell.

I’m coming from alternative comedy and the generation of comedy that I grew up watching had people do the ironic racism thing. Like Sarah Silverman wearing black face and stuff on her show in the early 2000s. That was the kind of comedy we were surrounded by. I’m [they were] doing this thing that I know is wrong to like, I guess, comment on it. I personally wanted to talk about that, because it feels like irony poisoning to me. It feels like a real detachment from actual thing you’re saying and the actual intention of trying to talk about systemic racism or whatever. That is a space where I think a lot of straight white cis dudes are mostly kind still stuck in.

With Penguin specifically I wanted to take a schlubby Seth Rogen type. You know the jorts wearing comedy t-shirt guy and kind of portray it in a more realistic way.

When I came out as trans I was working for Tim and Eric, and I was surrounded by mostly men with unkempt beards in T-shirts and with marijuana tucked behind their ear. Oftentimes they didn’t necessarily understand where I was coming from in my experience, but there was this real earnest, earnest care that was applied.

I think there’s something so beautiful about the way cis people show up for trans people when they don’t quite get it. I really wanted to talk about that in a way that was honest and true.

One of my favorite parts in the movie is when Joker basically tells Penguin what her new name is. And he’s just like, okay, sure, like, whatever. And that’s it. There’s no big applause. There’s no like, “Oh my god, congrats!” It’s just, “All right, cool, whatever.”

I’m just gonna go back to thinking about myself. In so many ways that’s the best you could ask for from a cis ally. I just love Nate Faustyn so much who plays Penguin. That character was written for him. It’s very much based on our friendship. We’ve been doing comedy together for over a decade now. The only thing we have in common is we both come from the Midwest, and our comic sensibilities are very similar. But we both have just been such cheerleaders for each other in leaning into our artistic voices.

I wanted to capture the dynamic because I think a lot of trans people have that, especially trans women. When you’re a trans lesbian, trans gay women are usually kind of coming at their gender experience surrounded by cis men. It’s the ones who show up for us without white knighting who allowed me to be brave and navigate the comedy world and the art world.

Nadine Whitney: I just want to point out a bit of irony for you. Okay, Robert Wuhl who you have in the Cameo at the end. His two most recent roles are his Cameo and then Dave Wilson in Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night.

Vera Drew: [laughing] I had no idea! I had no idea he was in that movie! That’s so wild.

I made The People’s Joker while doing a lot of chaos magic. So, there was a lot of reality bending happening at the time. We screened the movie with Robert Wuhl’s Cameo video because it’s an actual Cameo video that I sent him however much money it was get him to do a Cameo. He delivered this beautiful message while also saying I can’t be in your movie. I can’t play Alexander Knox (from Tim Burton’s Batman) in your movie. I just put the Cameo in the movie.

I screened it a few times like that, and then felt really bad about it, and had to go back to him and say, “Look, this is my favorite part in the movie. Now, like, having you in this. An actor who I saw in so many movies growing up being one of the good ones and saying, “You go girl!” about the film.”

I really wanted to use this it in the movie and he was pretty accommodating about it. I ended up talking to his manager, who was definitely a little more apprehensive than Robert. It was on that call that I realized this manager is now one of the co-owners of UCB, the Upright Citizens Brigade, which is the Comedy Theater that we are kind of like shit posting on. in one of the comedy theaters where we’re sort of making fun of so it was just another one of these weird little moments where it’s a like portal to the universe that was opened when we made the movie.

I think it’s sort of just speaks to when I find coincidences and things because that’s how you know you’re in the right place at the right time. It’s so funny too that there were two movies out this year that had Lorne Michaels as a fictional character, and one of them was my movie where he’s the primary villain in a Batman movie. The other one is Saturday Night, where he’s the up-and-coming punk rock comedy artist. Two very different sides of the coin.

Nadine Whitney: It is and Jason Reitman is going to have a very different take on SNL because of the fact he grew up with these people.

Speaking of magic, let’s talk about the fifth dimension. When you get through to fifth dimension with Mx Mxy it’s like the egg has finally cracked and you are in a new world. It’s just an incredible sequence. Can you tell me about just how you put that together?

Vera Drew: Yeah, it’s so interesting that you describe it as an egg. I never, I never thought of that. It was always this abstract idea of like mirrors and reflection and questioning time itself as it relates to identity. But yeah, it does really look like an egg. That whole sequence is so interesting because the actual specifics of what happens in it was a three-year process of figuring out what it was like when we wrote the script.

We knew Joker would transcend time and space somehow; she would get so high on Smylex that she would pop and go through this sort of like Stargate sequence. I was describing it as like a cosmic car wash or something. What those images looked like? We didn’t really know in the beginning. As lot of it was working with the artist who actually fabricated those pieces who is just brilliant, honestly, one of my favorite collaborators of all time. He comes from an experimental film background. He isn’t a stop motion artist, but he does stop motion in his work but he’s of coming at it more from a Stan Brakhage abstract place.

We had a lot of conversations around the birth that happens; maybe she pops out of the world, and then we made this clay world. Originally there was an extended sequence where we see Joker go to hell and has to face off against her demons. It was inspired by a Harley Quinn comic where she gets kicked out of hell for being too annoying. But I’m at a point in my life where Hell is something I lived through.

It was fun to play in this abstract space when much of the movie is abstract and cartoony but grounded emotionally. I saw somebody criticize the movie once as saying that it had multiple endings, or too many endings. The movie does kind of end with that speech that she gives at the end. But there’s this last piece that we haven’t quite figured out yet, which is how is she going feel good about her childhood and where she’s at as a woman. How she relates to her mother because that’s an internal experience that a lot of us end up having.

It’s something you have to really arrive at. For some people it’s psychedelics and meditation and alcohol. It certainly was those things for me. So how do we show that in an abstract manner? It was cool to kind of play in this space of both experimental film 1970s Sid and Marty Croft stuff. I really loved the mixture of all that at once. It seemed like the way to sort of process that part of the coming-of-age experience.

Nadine Whitney: I think it was gorgeous and transcendental, and all the things that it needed to be. And the one happy moment, the one happy memory, was stunning. Joker’s childhood is clouded by the antidepressant-anti psychotic, whatever Smylex is and dissociation. Memories get lost in that kind of trauma. So having that memory pulled out is wonderful.

Vera Drew: It’s one of the most autobiographical pieces of the movie, really, and that specific thing didn’t really come together again until we were in the process. I don’t even really know if that moment was in our shooting script, per se. I think it was something we kind of figured out, because I had this memory resurface from when I was a kid. My mom is an artist. She’s the reason I create. The one thing my parents really did right while I was growing up was to encourage me to be a weird artist. She was always singing when I was a kid. I had this memory resurface of just being in the back of the car and her, like, singing yacht rock songs and there’s a beautiful, happy memory.

I’m a person who’s in recovery from drugs and alcohol and when you have this painful, sort of fraught past with people, the healing is so much just up to me. Kind of letting shit go, and that’s really hard, especially when there are legitimate things that I can point to that sucked. But when I really look for the light, I can find it.

I really wanted, to make a movie that showed that parent child relationship in a realistic way that was also optimistic. Like, those are two people that don’t really understand each other, but hopefully can find some common ground.

I think if I ever do make like a sequel to the movie, it’ll be interesting to revisit Joker and her mom’s relationship. There is a transcendence that I experienced from the process of making this movie, dedicating it to my mom and having her watch it, like, that’s been so beautiful. It’s one of the many priceless things I got out of making it.

Nadine Whitney: I think that The People’s Joker speaks to many people of their own experiences; queer, cis, trans, straight – whatever. For example, when you break down the five signs of a narcissistic relationship. When you’re in the car with Mr. J and remind people his actions are not romantic. You don’t point to him as a villain per se, just as a person who was fucked up, because he was young. And, and he saw you. He gave you a gift. He gave you the beginning.

Vera Drew: Now, when I watch, when I do watch the movie, and I watch the early scenes of Joker and Mr. J together, I am like, rooting for them in this weird way. “Oh, they’re so cute. Look at, look at these two, like queer clowns holding hands on a boardwalk!”

I think those relationships are so important too, and it’s something that I think also scares a lot of like queer people when they watch it. They question should there actually exist in a piece of art how much we hurt each other just inside the community itself; especially in the T for T community. But for me it was a beautiful experience that I like wanted to capture and one I also needed healing from. I needed to forgive that guy and kind of return to this place of admitting that relationship really sped things up. It really got me this place where I saw I had to get some hormones in my body so I could cry.

Nadine Whitney: And even in comic books, trans healthcare is not affordable, so just jump into a vat of hormones.

Vera Drew: Exactly, exactly.

Nadine Whitney: Let’s talk about some of the jokes. I was wheezing with laughter at the “John Lasseter is a walking boundary violation.” When Ra’s character is talking about clownfish.

Vera Drew: The Pixar thing is so funny because it’s one of the many things that when I watch the movie now, I think, “God, I was so much angrier about mainstream film and comedy when I was making this than I am now.” But it seemed like this sort of bomb to throw. We don’t talk about the fact that these sorts of saccharin cartoons are spoken about as art which is deeply human thing. And so much of it was just made by another abuser. Another weird, inappropriate, drunk. It’s time to make those people accountable. John Lasseter is still on Disney’s payroll. He’s not creatively involved anymore, but he owns all that shit. So, he still gets money. He’s still getting that Hawaiian shirt fund filled.

Nadine Whitney: On the inverse you have a lot of outsider comedians working in the film, such as David Liebe Hart who plays Ra’s al Ghul.

Vera Drew: He’s the best. I love David Liebe Hart. He was such a necessary component to the movie because he is the most punk rock artist that I’ve ever met in my life. Like that dude has not had a real job in like, 70 years. He’s been a groovy puppeteer and musician and like actor for forever. The relationship that people see in that movie of like him being this Yoda-like figure to Joker, is just like what he and I have always had. David has always been a real source of spiritual inspiration to me. Whenever we hang out, we talk about the nature of existence and the privilege that we have as artists, getting to make stuff.

It was another thing too we found organically. I think we had the character figured out before it finally clicked for me, I’d been writing the part for Liebe Hart. I loved giving him the chance to be both funny in something, but also really sincere and sweet, because he’s got such a softness to him that he doesn’t really get to show in the stuff that he acts in. Normally he’s yelling and being goofy. It seemed fun to give him the chance to shine in that way.

Nadine Whitney: Another joke – when Joker the Harlequin wants to hack UCB she says to Penguin “Incels and trans people, one of them definitely did computer science in high school.”

Vera Drew: I think the whole movie is circling an idea that it’s such a thin line between the 4-chan edgelord and the trans shit poster. They come from the same planet. Like, it doesn’t just stop at coding. There’s a real Venn diagram there.

Nadine Whitney: Penguin’s ACAB and all billionaires are fascists t-shirts.

Vera Drew: With Penguin, or Batguin we’ll see what happens with this new role he’s taken on if there is a sequel. He’s really gotten into S&M and seems to also have taken up the mantle of working for streaming platforms. So, it might be a story of living long enough to become the villain, unfortunately.

Nadine Whitney: RuPaul’s fracking range exploded!

Vera Drew: Oh, god, yeah! That’s a line that I can’t take credit for. That was all Bri LeRose, my co-writer. I don’t know if RuPaul has ever been made aware of The People’s Joker, but if he has, I want him to know that line was written with a lot of love. I saw RuPaul at the Emmys six years ago, and I impulsively said, “Mama Ru!” It was so weird that it came out of my mouth, and I couldn’t stop it because it’s in my queer programming. but, yeah, it’s a real sign of progress that we have. One of the most prominent drag queens ever is involved in fracking. Like, to me, that’s a sign that queer people aren’t in as bad a state as we thought! (Laughing).

Nadine Whitney: Okay, so the UCB run essentially as a pyramid scheme-slash-reeducation program-Scientology model.

Vera Drew: It absolutely is. I don’t think anybody’s ever asked me the Scientology thing. That was coming from this place of going to these comedy theaters and UCB specifically. Their classes are so expensive. You would need to basically be a trust fund kid to take these classes because they were many thousands of dollars, and that was always the pathway to getting on stage at that theater. It is just like a pyramid scheme. And it’s funny too, because UCB in Los Angeles is right across the street from a Scientology Center. It feels so on the nose. It’s tragic to me that comedy, which really should belong to the freaks and poor people, is reserved for rich kids.

Nadine Whitney: Quick quiz – your favorite DC/Gotham characters.

Vera Drew: Well, Joker is the top. I love the fact that, just it’s a character that has so many different portrayals and I’m very drawn to the like, the Grant Morrison super sanity Joker; just the kind of Joker that’s closer to Freddy Krueger and is a dark Bugs Bunny character.

Mxyzptlk, I love. I specifically adore the Penguin and Riddler as they appear in the Gotham TV series. It’s one of the most like queer baiting relationships of all time.

Nadine Whitney: And Corey Michael Smith (Riddler) is in Saturday Night.

Vera Drew: Oh my god! So funny. So, you could have a conspiracy cork board of all the overlaps. But I love their story.

Jason Todd is one of the most interesting literary characters of all time. When you think of how the intersection of fan reactions, the fact that he is a character that was murdered because adult fans of Batman voted for it to happen. That’s so crazy. It changed the course of comics, too. The era of Batman that I grew up reading when I was thirteen and really, really into comics. I was buying them every week and it was the whole Bat Family and Batman needing to grapple with the fact that he literally killed a Robin, and now he was surrounded by a dysfunctional family of vigilantes that he sort of created. I don’t know if The People’s Joker would exist without that era, specifically, of comics. I love how of messy it all is.

Carrie Kelley too. I just did a college Q&A, and a person came up to me afterwards and asked, “Why did you make Carrie Kelley also Jason Todd?” It was because I wanted to give them both more of an arc. Because I love Carrie Kelley so much in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, but what an underused Robin. She ends up diminished to being Batman fan girl. So, I was sort of giving her a third act and deciding she was like a butch. He/him lesbian that realized that he was a trans guy and now is Jason Todd. And then also giving Jason Todd, like this third act as like, as a Joker who’s dealing with whatever he went through with Batman. He became this like gun toting leftist edgelord. It just seemed like a really fitting end to this character that that was really, in my mind, kind of unjustly murdered by the Joker. I mean, granted, these are all fictional characters, but there’s something so disturbing to me about like the early 90s and killing off that Robin!

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