Is The People’s Joker finally free? After over three years of production and a nasty run-in with Warner Bros., creator Vera Drew is ready to talk.
The unauthorized superhero parody is an “uncomfortably autobiographical” re-telling of the infamous Batman villain’s origin story.
The movie is a queer coming-of-age story about a transgender comedian forming an illegal underground clown posse in protest of Lorne Michaels and his comedy troupe’s reign on the clowning industry. Portrayed by Drew and Griffin Kramer, the eponymous character is followed from childhood to adulthood and introduces a variety of reimagined D.C. characters.
Through The People’s Joker, Drew tells a story of anarchy, self-expression, and one’s love for themselves and their community. That said, the movie’s likeliness to its source material is evident in both its title and plot; but more notably, the differences between the two are ever-prominent. While sitting across from Drew at a salad shop in Brooklyn called Leaf, I couldn’t help but say, “You know, if Saturday Night Live was doing this, they’d get away with it.”
Without a beat, Drew, who also co-wrote, edited, and directed the movie, responds, “Well, if they were doing it, they would be, somehow, propping up the US military industrial complex or abusers, or something like that.”
During our conversation, we chat about the movie’s premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, her ongoing legal battle with Warner Bros., and some of the lasting effects the backlash has had on her film. Drew also shares the origins of the movie, the collectiveness that was required for it to be completed, and why she’s insistent that her work falls under fair use.
First, let’s address the elephant in the room. What happened at TIFF and why did Drew withdraw her movie from the film festival? The story is well-worn, surprisingly so for a low-budget, indie creation like Drew’s, but there are a few misconceptions.
Last September, The People’s Joker had its world premiere during TIFF’s Midnight Madness and was scheduled for three additional screenings. But prior to the premiere, Drew was pressured by Warner Bros. to pull her movie from the festival. Her team proceeded with the premiere, but canceled all subsequent screenings. Through it all, Drew never believed she was in the wrong and had even met with multiple copyright lawyers before attending the festival.
Instead, she went forth with cancelling the screenings because she was feeling burned out. “I needed to pause because I had just finished the movie,” Drew explains. “I hit export on the computer and got on the plane. I had my producer come over to my house to make sure the film was exported out of Adobe Premiere properly.” The filmmaker describes the premiere as a “beautiful night” that doubled as a “traumatic experience.” She says, “We were in another country being told we needed to pull our screening. I had just done a press day and I was getting a call from Warner Bros. saying we needed to pull our shit.”
Drew adds, “I needed to hit pause and figure out what we were doing.” Following the threats from the studio, Drew’s team pulled all of their future screenings from other film festivals, minus one that had canceled on them. “I understand why they did, Warner Bros. was one of their sponsors,” the creator shares. “We needed to bring it back, wrangle it, and plan for these screenings,” which ultimately birthed the “secret screenings” that are currently underway.
After what went down at TIFF, Drew took to Twitter to be transparent about her next steps and to start the #FreeThePeoplesJoker movement. This opened the floodgates to criticism from D.C. fans (who we all know have a history of being super reasonable) and self-appointed copyright protectors who often posed the question, “How did she think she could do this?”
Drew suspects that these critics misinterpreted her quirky personality (which she describes as being a “recovering edgelord”) for carelessness. “I’m sarcastic, flippant, blunt, and highly-emotional, so I always catch myself saying things like, ‘We got away with it,’ but it wasn’t like that. There was so much intentionality with the legal aspects of this film.” Prior to the screening, she had met with Donaldson Callif Perez, LLP, a law firm that specializes in intellectual property and licensing for documentaries. “We had the best of the best on our side, every step of the way,” she insists.
The battle at TIFF left a greater problem beyond baseless legal threats – a key cast member decided to pull out of the project. Saturday Night Live player Sarah Sherman originally voiced an animated portrayal of Lorne Michaels, but the day after the controversial premiere – when shit hit the fan – she requested to be recast. Drew declined to comment further on the situation, but says, “It was the perfect character to have to recast. The most inconvenient part of it was opening up the sound mix. The movie has a lot going on visually, but our sound mix is fucking insane.” She adds, “It was so worth it,” gushing over Lady Dynamite’s Maria Bamford, who took Sherman’s place. “Maria crushed it. She brought something to the character that was on the page, but I didn’t realize it.”
In addition to those roadblocks, the filmmaker felt as though the movie wasn’t fully finished, stating that some parts needed to be tweaked.
The manner in which The People’s Joker came together was very organic. Drew began working on the movie during the pandemic in March 2020. She says, “I wouldn’t have been able to make my movie if the world didn’t shut down” as it would’ve been a challenge to “wrangle this many people” to bring her vision to life. She was unemployed and in quarantine with Arrested Development co-producer and Lady Dynamite writers assistant Bri LeRose, co-writer of the movie’s script.
At first, Drew was commissioned by LaRose to do a “fart edit” of the 2019 movie Joker in exchange for $12, but as Drew began to dive into the material, she realized that there was a bigger story blossoming. Much of the movie, as mentioned, is autobiographical, drawing inspiration from Drew’s own experience working in comedy in Chicago at a young age, and later, finding herself jaded by the money-hungry scene in Los Angeles. “I was starting to get really burnt out. My experience didn’t really translate. Nobody wants to hear that you’re an improv prodigy,” Drew says about her big move to California. “It felt like starting over in a lot of ways. The mainstream comedy scene in LA is disgusting and I hate it. It’s just perverse and filled with abusers.” She adds that she was also under pressure to spend “1000s of dollars” on training that she already went through.
From here, she started working with a video collective called Highland Park TV and built an impressive portfolio as an editor for the popular comedy shows Alone Together and I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, along with multiple works for Tim Heidecker. Despite her proven skills and experience, when it came to executing her vision, Drew needed LeRose to bring fresh eyes at the material. While speaking about their collaboration, Drew says, “We had similar life experiences and career experiences, but we come at it from very different places. She doesn’t watch genre films at all, there was something about writing this movie with someone who doesn’t watch genre films that was so important to me.” After presenting a first draft to her collaborator, Drew recalls LaRose responding with confusion. She asked, “Who are these characters?”
These various dialogues and collaborations evidently brought the project together, spurring Drew’s whimsical ideas into an “aggressively gay, loud, and colorful” 92-minute work filled with celebrity cameos, including one from America’s Favorite Man, Bob Odenkirk. Looking back at recruiting Odenkirk, Drew lights up and names his involvement as one of the biggest surprises. “He’s one of my idols. I’ve gotten the chance to work with him a couple of times, and he’s just the coolest person. He laughs so loud and obnoxiously, it’s so satisfying,” she says. While Drew had previously worked with Odenkirk, she needed to be reintroduced to him as their interactions were before her transition and “he always got my name wrong anyways.” Therefore, she reached out to Heidecker, who also appears in the film, and cashed in her “last favor.”
Drew remembers that the timing couldn’t be worse because Better Call Saul was gathering press for its back-to-back Emmy nominations and Odenkirk was busy filming other projects. She didn’t expect to hear back from him, but to her surprise, three days later, the comedian emailed asking her to call him. They hopped on a call – which she had prepared for with a bulleted list of notes – and his only request was, “you gotta make me look fucked up or something, fuck up my face.” She gave his animated character a scar and made him look “extra lumpy,” thus successfully landing a “Bob Odenkirk as Bob Lagoon” cameo.
This is just one of the many examples of how the movie came together through collective support within the entertainment industry. “I’ve been surrounded by a lot of talented, genius people who have really gone out of their way to help me and elevate my voice, and employ me,” she shares.
This buzzy movie includes an endless stream of jokes, extreme levels of camp, and references that only the most-dedicated Batman fans would understand, combined with a well-oiled production team and a release filled with so much juicy drama that people are still clamoring over one another to see it – but that doesn’t mean it’s all fun and games. Like the best cult classics, this comedy also tackles a few taboo subjects.
Throughout the movie, Drew’s Joker struggles to come to terms with her gender and sexuality and finds herself acting erratically in response. “If you shut down, if you’re not in touch with yourself, you really can lean on irony and cynicism and darkness to fill that hole, and that’s what comedy was for me for the longest time,” Drew explains, adding that the movie addresses her “experience in drag comedy, abusive relationships, and living in a capitalist hellscape.” In 2020 – “regardless of COVID happening” – Drew felt as though she was “getting Jokerfied” and needed to unpack these things.
This level of self-assessment led to a few “mamabear moments” in the movie, geared towards younger queer people. “LGBTQ+ people are constantly hurting each other because of their own trauma and abuse, and the perpetuation of family systems,” says the filmmaker. “I know so many people who have gone through these deeply intense and beautiful, but ultimately toxic, relationships that a lot of people have in their twenties. I really wanted to do an honest portrayal of it that also wasn’t condescending or preachy.” This gave way to the tumultuous relationship between the lead character and Mr. J (Kane Distler), also a transgender character. Much like their counterparts in other Batman stories, their relationship, while addictive and sexy, proves to be detrimental to both of the characters’ mental health.
With a wider picture of the movie and its loaded history painted, many would think that Drew’s experience would leave her cynical and jaded towards Warner Bros., but instead, she insists that she is not “antagonistic” towards them – and she never has been. And to answer the question, “Why did Drew think she could get away with this?” it is quite simple, Drew says, “copyright law is actually very cut and dry.”
The director continues, “As far as what you can do within the bounds of fair use, it’s pretty cut and dry. When people ask me for updates, I have to say, there are no real updates. I’m facing a big corporation that has a ton of money and legal power.” Nevertheless, Drew claims her movie falls well within the bounds of the law and compares it to documentaries, adding that she has modified her original vision to ensure distribution. She says, “There were things that I wanted to do that we couldn’t do, so I found other ways to do them.”
Drew expresses, “If Warner Bros. feels that The People’s Joker infringes on their brand, that’s how they feel, but it doesn’t mean that it does. This movie would never go to court.” She insists that the autobiographical nature of the movie is “the mechanism by which it is able to exist.” In her initial correspondence with the conglomerate, she claims that they failed to cite a specific copyright case as an example, and instead offered a variety of unrelated ones. “One of the ones they cited was about this fake Dr. Seuss book that was also a Star Trek crossover, but it’s completely different from an autobiographical independent film that’s been a black hole for me, money-wise.” The mentioned case revolved around ComicMix’s book Oh, The Places You’ll Boldly Go! which was dismissed for not being “transformative” enough.
Drew reflects on Batman’s origins to further discredit this battle. “Batman is a character that was created by a community of people,” she says in reference to the comics. “The first iteration of that character [Joker] was completely different from what it became. It became what it became because of this collective thing.” The filmmaker continues, “I’m not antagonistic towards Warner Bros. I never wanted to…” she trails off to collect her thoughts. “I thought they were just going to not pay attention to me because that’s what they did for two years. They asked us for a screener four days before our screening. Harley Quinn writers knew about the movie, multiple executives and their animation and live-action departments knew about the movie. They all thought it was great, they all went, ‘Cool, can’t wait to see it.’”
Drew says she still “loves” Warner Bros. and they “own a lot of IPs” that have inspired her throughout her entire life. “I have made peace with what happened at TIFF. The controversy, or whatever, was great, it changed my life. But it’s not what I wanted. What I wanted was to get the movie out there and to get trans people to see it.” She adds, “It was so important for this movie to be about light and love. I don’t want to take the piss out of characters that I’ve loved my entire life.”
In all, Drew is “grateful” to be screening her movie again and to have the chance to engage with audiences about it. “The movie existed so much in my head for so long, so being able to make it into a conversation and having people talk at me about what it made them feel and think about is so cool.” (And she’s doing exactly that. During the Q&A for the screening I attended, a viewer gave a 6-minute speech about what the movie meant to them.) Contrary to popular belief, the creator is craving the antithesis of what came out of TIFF, which enlightened people – who Drew says “didn’t even watch the movie” – using her project to publish their thinkpieces on copyright law.
As for its distribution, Drew wants it to be “a theatrical experience.” She tells me, “I’m fully aware that the target demographic for this movie is probably people who torrent movies – which more power to you, go for it – but movies are events again and I do think you can treat yourself to a nice night out.” She goes on to say that she wants it to play as a midnight movie and in “DIY spaces”, encouraging these facilitators to reach out to her for “ideas and suggestions moving forward.” She is also open to streaming, stressing that “everybody will be able to watch it at home.” Drew is “hopeful for the future” and recognizes her large fanbase, most of which have yet to see the movie. As a parting message to the impatient fans, she says, “I’m only asking them to wait a little bit longer.”
