The director of People’s Joker wants her trans villain to shatter expectations

If Warner Bros. Pictures had managed to stop trans filmmaker Vera Drew from releasing her little pop-punk biopic The people’s joker, it might have quietly disappeared: another small, personal indie film looking for an audience in an oversaturated market. Instead, Vera’s hallucinogenic memoir – an energetic, deeply personal trans coming out story based on it Crowdsourcing based digital animation – became international news.

The people’s joker premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022, but a strongly worded letter from Warner Bros. Copyright concerns led Vera and TIFF organizers to cancel further screenings and withdraw the film from the market. Vera retreated to refine the film while also searching for a simpatico distributor who wouldn’t bury it with a direct-to-streaming release. It has since been shown at a few regional festivals, but has largely not been open to the public.

That’s what’s left The people’s joker a fascinating mystery for some potential viewers and a subject of uneasy concern for others. The film explores trans identity as a parallel to Todd Phillips’ villain’s origin story joker, among many other Batman-related films. Vera filters her life through familiar fictionShe subverts and channels beloved characters to show how she deals with abuse, toxic relationships, finding identity through stand-up comedy, and finding happy endings.

Since so many people theorize about the film before they even get to see it, this wording has raised some concerns. With the lives and rights of transsexuals became a political battlefield nationwide and a growing number of legislators Open denigration of transsexualsIs this really the time for a film that pairs a trans woman with a character known as a mentally ill mass murderer?

Vera’s film uses this metaphor in a complex way, portraying the Joker – and equally his sidekick-turned-independent anti-hero Harley Quinn – as a kind of extreme fool who laughs at and upends socially accepted norms. In a detailed interview with Polygon, The people’s jokerWhen Vera hit theaters on April 5, she said she understands any concerns people have about the film — but she hopes that once people see it, they’ll understand why it does, like they do “One of the happiest queer films ever made.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Polygon: There’s a lot of complicated symbolism in this film surrounding Batman and his gallery of villains. But perhaps the most complicated piece of symbolic language is the way the version of you we see in the film is both Joker and Harley Quinn – her stand-up comedy stage name is literally “Joker the Harlequin.” Did this mixture arise from coming to terms with your own gender? From wrestling with different aspects of Joker, and what did you learn and what didn’t you learn? Or something completely different?

Vera Drew: I think it was both – I had to come to terms with the fact that I’ve spent most of my life not knowing who the hell I am, no matter what level. It’s funny to me when I hear shitty transphobic people, TERFs or whatever, talking about snow groomers, or the trans experience of being forced on people because I arrived at my transness by subsuming every single identity under that Tried the sun. That’s what comedy was all about for me. It was a place where I could wear a dress if I wanted because Hey, a man in a dress, isn’t that funny? It was also a place where I could just be anyone I wanted to be. Sometimes to my own detriment – I think one of the things that confused me was the vagueness of who I was.

My experience when I came out – and I think this is a big experience for trans women – I was moving in a direction of I need to be hyper-feminine, I need to really embrace that side of a binary. And that quickly fell apart. Especially in the relationship I’m describing, it fell apart [in the movie]. Because I was there [a trans man] Who did this on the other side of the binary and embodied a whole lot of toxic masculinity? That’s why I wanted to talk about these two aspects: toxic masculinity and toxic femininity.

Early on in this film, I became uncomfortable with the association of impermanence with mental illness or even psychosis. But it is clear that this is an element that you have thought through and are addressing consciously. How do you introduce the role of a trans villain to people who are nervous about this film?

First of all, I just love queer villains. I have always. I’m not a Disney adult, but I grew up watching Disney and I think all those villains – especially Ursula is simply divine from the John Waters canon, and Jafar And scar are two of the gayest villains of all time. I think it’s a motif worth exploring, if only because we often see queer-coded villains. Or not even coded: Scar is just a gay lion who wants to be king and is very spiteful.

But I think it’s our job as queer people to reclaim some of these tropes, just as many marginalized communities have reclaimed tropes. I’m thinking in particular of people like Jordan Peele, who focus on things that make you think: Hoooo, maybe we shouldn’t talk about this? But no, he can talk about that. He should! In the same vein, I live in a country that denigrates transsexuals. I’m called a groomer on Twitter every day.

Even when I made and released this film, I got pushback from pretty transphobic alt-right accounts. The Daily Wire’s pop culture podcast can’t stop talking about this movie. It’s so funny because they keep saying, “It looks so bad, but people are going to accept it just because it was made by a trans person.” What a funny idea that as a transgender I somehow do it for others I’m more attractive to people! It is ridiculous. That’s why this shit doesn’t even hurt me. Because I live in a country where I’m treated like a villain just for walking down the street and being who I am. So why can’t I make a film that deals with this directly?

Were there other aspects of your story that you particularly wanted to focus on because you didn’t see them in other stories about trans coming out journeys?

I didn’t really know it was a thing until I took the film to festivals, but I’ve heard a lot of queer filmmakers say we need to tell stories that aren’t too traumatic; We need to embody queer joy or trans joy or whatever the fuck. To me that just sounds like assimilationist nonsense. Every time I hear it I think: I’m sorry, my life has been pretty traumatic and I want to make honest art! That’s why sometimes I will process my trauma in this art.

And guess what: it can still be happy! I find The people’s joker is one of the most joyful queer films ever made. I know I’m biased, but that’s it. It’s just like that! It’s colorful, it’s vibrant, it’s happy, it’s irreverent.

I think there’s definitely a place for queer films that are more family friendly or down to earth. Aristotle and Dante was one of my favorite films last year and one of the happiest and sweetest gay romance films I’ve ever seen. I love H. I also always want to highlight this film because I think it’s a great film. But there is also room for films like this that explore the nuances and the more “problematic” things about being queer.

Queer art used to be like that. John Waters is one of the dirtiest people of all time. I remember discovering his films quite late in life and thinking: Oh my God, this is it, this is what I needed. I finally feel represented by it. And all of his characters are addicted to whippets and murder.

When you watch a movie like this, where there’s a very clear main character – I’ll hijack your brain for 92 minutes and force you to look into mine. So don’t you want to see someone change and grow? Don’t you want someone to start out as a villain and end up either becoming more of a villain, a hero, or somewhere in between all the time? This is storytelling. This is myth-making. I understand the feeling. Representation is important. But I think the way to properly represent trans people is to treat them like people in the film and not like perfect angels or disgusting perverts. Somewhere inbetween.

The people’s joker hits theaters April 5 and will be released across North America in April and May. You can find the participating theaters here.