Vera Drew | Photo Credit: Sophie Prettyman-Beauchamp

You’ve never seen a movie quite like The People’s Joker.

Actually, we take that back: You have. Sort of… That’s because Vera Drew’s brilliantly bonkers film is part trans coming-of-age narrative, part superhero origin story, one that liberally parodies the wide world of Batman and DC Comics, specifically the crimefighter’s iconic cackling nemesis, The Joker.

Technically, that makes it the queerest Batman movie ever—and if you’ve ever seen late, gay director Joel Schumacher’s campy, kinky Batman Forever or Batman & Robin, you know that’s saying a lot.

When The People’s Joker made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022, Drew shared that a certain “media conglomerate” sent her an angry letter “pressuring” her not to screen the film, despite positive buzz and audience reaction. For a minute there, it almost seemed like the powers that be (whether that was DC Comics or Warner Bros was never disclosed) had managed to squash this scrappy, outlaw indie.

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But, like the Dark Knight himself, The People’s Joker rises, finally receiving its theatrical release this spring. It marks a daring feature directorial debut for Drew, who cut her teeth editing and doing post-production work on comedy projects from Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, Nathan For You, The Eric Andre Show, and more.

Playing small-town (Smallville) dreamer Joker The Harlequin who moves to the big city (Gotham City) to pursue her dreams of performing on the sketch comedy program UCB Live, Drew mashes up her comedy world come-up with the lore of the Batman universe to ultimately tell a personal, poignant, and hopeful story of actualization. In many ways, it’s not just the queer superhero story we deserve, but the one we need right now.

As The People’s Joker continues its rollout in theaters across the country, we invited Drew as the latest guest of our rapid-fire Q&A series, Dishin’ It. In our conversation, the filmmaker opens up about why Nicole Kidman’s Dr. Chase Meridian in Batman Forever was her trans awakening, hero’s journeys, and why it was ultimately important for her to tell as story of a “happy beginning.”

Aside for Batman—which we’ll get into—is there a piece of pop culture that you consider a big part of your own coming-out journey, or that has played an important role in your understanding of queerness?

Yeah, there’s the obvious one, which we do literally recreate in the movie. But when I saw the first Joel Schumacher, Batman Forever, it was definitely one of the first moments I realized I was a trans woman—just seeing how Nicole Kidman moves her way through that world, I guess! I felt represented as a six-year-old boy.

But another one that I was thinking about a lot while I was making The People’s Joker was Hedwig And The Angry Inch, because it’s a great example of the “one person show” format and how that could like exist in a cinematic space, because I think of The People’s Joker as a sort of a one-woman-show as well.

Speaking of Schumacher, The People’s Joker is, in part, dedicated to the director, whose Batman movies really did have a way of speaking to many us before we even knew the language of queerness. Aside from the Nicole Kidman of it all, what is it about those movies that feels queer to you?

It’s definitely not something that I was aware of while watching it as a kid, but I think it’s just how colorful the world is, how operatic it is. It’s very silly, and emotions are very extreme. It’s this performative, larger-than-life thing—like, Jim Carrey is in the movie!—but it still demands you take it seriously. And his movies are designed in a way that is very gay. [Laughs.] I feel like bisexual lighting was invented on the set of Batman & Robin.

As for Nicole Kidman, specifically, she’s not an overtly queer character, per se, but she does make reference to being attracted to black leather and black rubber. And she’s playing a psychiatrist in the movie, she’s not just a damsel in distress like some of the other women in Batman movies. Chase is a career woman but she doesn’t get punished for it in the same way that Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman does. Sure, she’s deeply horny for Bruce Wayne and Batman, but she can also provide clarity about the character. There’s a type of Feminine Mystique to her that feels very queer.

The People’s Joker is both a queer coming-of-age tale and a superhero origin story—could you tell us about threading the needle of those to genres?

When I started transitioning, I really got obsessed with Joseph Campbell [and the “hero’s journey”] in a way that I probably should have in film school—because we were required to read all that sh*t in school, and I certainly was just rolling joints.

But as I was starting to “come of age” into my transness, I really was looking at a lot of myth structure, and how that’s always kind of been reserved for white, cis men. The hero’s journey really is this understanding of patriarchy in a way, so I think it was exciting for me to just composite a trans character into that mode.

The movie started as a sort of meditation on what it was like to come out as a trans woman in the comedy scene I was part of. The original ideas for the movie were really this body horror story about a drag queen who was physically addicted to irony. I always saw it as not only a character coming of age, but coming out of this space of memes and internet detachment and sh*t-posting an edgelord stuff—where it could hold you back, but then how you climb above it and self actualize.

Then, once the Batman of it all got mixed in, it felt even funnier to have The Joker being this Luke Skywalker hero type. But it’s one of those things that almost blinded me from how weird the movie was because, on a script level, it really is a meat-and-potatoes, coming-of-age, Joseph Campbell journey.

There’s also this notion of not necessarily a happy ending but a “happy beginning,” which feels especially profound in an explicitly trans narrative. Why was that an essential part of the story you wanted to tell?

I think it was maybe an ideal that I was trying to move my life towards. I came out just as queer in 2015 and that was because I knew something was up, but I didn’t know what I was. Because I had been assigned male at birth, everybody just immediately perceived me as a gay guy. So I tried to make that work, but I was just so bad at it. I was actually worse at being a gay guy than I was at pretending to be a straight, cis man. [Laughs.]

I was going into coming out as trans already pretty “black-pilled” about how queerness is perceived in society. And that coincided with a lot of really beautiful, emotional changes. The second I started hormones, I was finally able to cry and experience emotion in a way that I never had before. But that was directly counter to the world I live in—one that feels like it keeps me in this space where I can only either be a victim, a villain, a groomer, a freak, or like this beautiful shining, perfect political object that other people can wield and weaponize.

So I wanted to really pick apart all of that and find the actual optimism. Because I think the desperation that I felt when I came out was coming from a place of “yeah, that’s the world we live in.” It’s a world that really doesn’t want people like me to exist, and there’s really no way of sugarcoating it—especially with what’s happening to trans kids right now. It just is genocide.

But I’ve found so much beauty in my life, and I found so much hope, so I wanted to tell a hopeful story that’s both realistic and optimistic. Specifically with Joker The Harlequin’s relationship to her boyfriend in the movie and her mother, this isn’t a fairytale—there aren’t going to be happy endings for all of us. But where can we find those like little cracks and creases of light and love in that kind of broken mosaic of our lives?

Prior to this film, you’ve worked on some of the definitive comedy of the past 15 years—I Think You Should Leave, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories, The Eric Andre Show, Nathan For You, etc…—how did that experience help prepare you to direct your first feature?

I would not have been able to make this movie if I hadn’t “incubated” as an editor, VFX artist and animator at Abso Lutely Productions. It really was coming up in that Tim & Eric, Adult Swim world that, just from a technical standpoint, gave me the ability to do it. Because every single shot in the movie is a VFX shot—and there’s like 1,700 shots or something.

The way those shows are made a lot of the times is it’s kind of figured out in post. I mean, there’s a lot of planning—especially on a show like Nathan For You—but it really is a space where the editors and VFX artists are really empowered to figure out the story in the same way that a director or a writer would be.

And I always knew that The People’s Joker was going to be lo-fi and kind of exist in this mixed media space. That’s the kind of art I had always been making. And I’ve heard people describe [that comedy style] as ironic or detached, but I don’t think that’s the right word for it, because, especially like a creator like Tim Heidecker, he’s approaching his comedy from a place of truth and honesty. So the thing I was consciously trying to do was not not necessarily just embedded with a lot of sincerity, but really lean into the autobiographical nature of it, and the potential for compositing that aesthetic into a genre space. Because it’s a huge superhero story, but it’s an aesthetic that lets you tell a lot and show a lot with very little resources.

As your feature directorial debut, you’ve spent the past few years making The People’s Joker and touring it around the country, but do you have ideas for what you might like to explore next? Joker: Folie à Deux is on the way—maybe there’s a musical sequel to The People’s Joker, too?

I’m working on a few things right now. I have other stories I want to tell—you know, with characters I own [laughs]—so I’ll hopefully be making a movie soon. I don’t really know that I’ll dipping my toes back in the superhero world anytime soon, especially not inside of this sandbox.

I feel confident enough with where we leave Joker The Harlequin at the at the end of the movie, being our own version of this character. So, if I want to, I could revisit her someday and I look forward to that. But this movie was really there for me and helping me understand my life up until I turned 28, so even now when I watch it, it’s really looking backwards. I think, whenever I dive back into this pool, it will really be because I need it, and I need to understand something new about this era of my life. So we’ll see how that how that plays out.

But hopefully a lot more movies! I really want to make a horror movie, so I think my next movie will be one of these things I’m working on—and probably horror.

Who is a queer or trans artist/performer/creator that you think is doing really cool work right now? Why are they someone we should all be paying attention to?

My go-to has been [filmmaker] Alice Maio Mackay, but I’ve shouted her out so much I want to give somebody else a shot.

Ah! Well, I’m a huge fan of Mr. Boop, which is a comic strip that my friend Alec Robbins made, which he describes as “a comic strip he invented about what it’s like to be married to Betty Boop.” Alec is one of those artists where it’s like, the fact that he exists as an artist and the kind of stuff he makes really helps me understand myself more. And I specifically want to shout out Alex’s new graphic novel series, which is called Crime Hot, and he basically describes it as like Lupin III but also Looney Tunes and just the horniest, queerest, most sex positive thing that’s been made in the last couple of years. And it’s specifically about the fear that a lot of us have right now when it comes to algorithms determining taste and stuff. It’s really, really cathartic and I can’t recommend it enough.

The People’s Joker is now playing in select theaters across the country—check out the official film site for a detailed list of where it’s headed next.

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