Speaker 1: Oh it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People say, good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want clod sodas,
Speaker 3: hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 1: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: A Gotham city is nothing but neon biker gangs, leather
Speaker 4: freaks and cross dressers.
Speaker 5: Is that what you want?
Speaker 4: Come home?
Speaker 1: No, I won't. Mom, I'm gonna be a comedian. When
Speaker 1: I look back at my life.
Speaker 3: We're going jokem into harlequin, so to speak. I wasn't
Speaker 3: even sure I existed. It's like blurry cracks mosaic of
Speaker 3: all these gender revelations. You mean she'sus he.
Speaker 1: And I'm trans.
Speaker 3: Oh, well, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Well I'm not sorry. I was fairly certain I was
Speaker 1: in love, and I was so afraid of that feeling
Speaker 1: going away.
Speaker 2: Ah, but you should be afraid.
Speaker 1: It's just wo my happy little boy back. I just
Speaker 1: don't feel like a boy.
Speaker 2: You're not a boy. I've developed an experimental treatment.
Speaker 4: Mama's Happy Little also comes in Rainbow for Pride.
Speaker 1: It was foretold that Sunday a clown would rise. Sounds pretentious.
Speaker 3: It is whatever you say, mister Jayna no, you must
Speaker 3: journeying shy Trichelle.
Speaker 1: I'm not a hero, but I'm not a villain either,
Speaker 1: So who are you?
Speaker 4: I'm a woman.
Speaker 1: In my word, I got clowns were supposed to be funny.
Speaker 2: I Hey, folks, welcome to you a very special episode
Speaker 2: of The Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White. On
Speaker 2: this episode, I'm talking to it Vera drew All about
Speaker 2: her twenty twenty two film, The People's Joker. It is
Speaker 2: now available on streaming as well as home video. Definitely
Speaker 2: check it out and I hope you enjoyed this interview. Vira,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really
Speaker 2: excited to talk with you about The People's Joker, but
Speaker 2: I would really love to know a little bit more
Speaker 2: about you and how you got into show business because
Speaker 2: you've been doing a lot of things for a lot
Speaker 2: of years.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on. I love attention, so I
Speaker 1: love doing podcasts. I wanted to be in show business
Speaker 1: at a very early age. I knew I wanted to
Speaker 1: make movies from the time I was like six years old.
Speaker 1: With growing up, it's like crazy, just because I think
Speaker 1: I'm not that old. I'm only thirty five, But like
Speaker 1: people like even just like slightly younger than me, don't
Speaker 1: really realize just how different it was like when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, Like it it comes to making movies
Speaker 1: and stuff like YouTube didn't exist. Digital video was around.
Speaker 1: But I remember telling people when I was a kid
Speaker 1: that I wanted to be a filmmaker and them just
Speaker 1: looking like, what is a hobby? And yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't even really know how I arrived at wanting
Speaker 1: to do it. I know it was like tied to
Speaker 1: seeing back to the future. At a very early age,
Speaker 1: I was just really obsessed with it. I think it
Speaker 1: might have been like the first movie I saw that
Speaker 1: helped me understand that you could build these worlds and
Speaker 1: tell a visual story like that, and the distinction between
Speaker 1: reality and storytelling and stuff was just so fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like how do you get into it? In
Speaker 1: the early nineties, so I really focused on theater. I
Speaker 1: was like a total drama dorc and started doing comedy
Speaker 1: really young. Grew up in the South suburbs of Chicago,
Speaker 1: so I would travel with the city every weekend, and
Speaker 1: I took him pross classes at Second City. I was
Speaker 1: like a part of this like very early version of
Speaker 1: a youth program that I think they have now and
Speaker 1: a lot of people do, but I was like part
Speaker 1: of the first wave of it, so I really got
Speaker 1: a lot of like before of its experience as a
Speaker 1: kid and pretty early on in my life and then
Speaker 1: always knew I wanted to go to film school, and
Speaker 1: I don't know in film school, like I really just
Speaker 1: wanted to, Like I got jaded a little bit, I
Speaker 1: think just by like where movies were at, like I was.
Speaker 1: I really got into experimental film and got really obsessed
Speaker 1: with specifically like Kenneth Anger. I was really I wanted
Speaker 1: to be the next Kindeth Anger for some reason. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know I was queer, but I just knew
Speaker 1: I was apeak kind of angered and yeah, And it
Speaker 1: was like right around the time that like Tim and
Speaker 1: Eric started making awesome show for Adult Swim, and I
Speaker 1: remember like my first time watching it, like I understand
Speaker 1: do it as like a comedy show, but I really
Speaker 1: saw it as like this amazing piece of like experimental cinema.
Speaker 1: Like it really I think those guys hate it when
Speaker 1: people talk about it that way, so they definitely get
Speaker 1: annoyed by me sometimes when I talk about it like that,
Speaker 1: but it's still the only way that I could, I
Speaker 1: was ever able to really think of it is it's
Speaker 1: tyfically its attention to media formats and editing as this
Speaker 1: form of expression. I had never seen anything like that before,
Speaker 1: Like maybe the closest I had seen was just in
Speaker 1: like Kenneth Anger and William Wagman stuff, the kind of
Speaker 1: more just experimental stuff. So like that really blew my mind,
Speaker 1: and I was, Okay, so I don't need to be
Speaker 1: a broke experimental filmmaker. I can be a broke alternative
Speaker 1: comedy filmmaker. And like pretty much like right as I
Speaker 1: was about to graduate, I got an internship at Tim
Speaker 1: and Eric and I just called their studio and was like,
Speaker 1: do you guys see interns? And they were like sure,
Speaker 1: And they had just finished their movie Billion Dollar Movie,
Speaker 1: and had just been starting to shoot season one of
Speaker 1: The Eric Andre Show and season one of Comedy Bang Bangs.
Speaker 1: So I got in there with the boom of like
Speaker 1: alternative comedy becoming a bigger thing. It had been a
Speaker 1: thing since they were nineties, like with Mister Show and stuff,
Speaker 1: which I had loved growing up, but became cool and
Speaker 1: like more. There was just a lot of that kind
Speaker 1: of production happening, and I got in right at this
Speaker 1: perfect time. And I don't know, I've made this joke
Speaker 1: a billion times, so I probably shouldn't make it anymore.
Speaker 1: But maybe this will be the last time. I really
Speaker 1: am the like Transforest Gump of alt comedy, just because
Speaker 1: I got to work on every single cool Adult Swim show,
Speaker 1: and like I was on Eric Andre Show and Nathan
Speaker 1: for You and Comedy Bang and Bedtime Stories check it
Speaker 1: Out with Steve Brule, Like I got this really amazing
Speaker 1: hands on experience and just got to incubate around all
Speaker 1: these like creative geniuses, which was perfect for me because
Speaker 1: I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker and a director,
Speaker 1: but wasn't really quite sure the pathway for me, or
Speaker 1: like really even what stories I wanted to tell.
Speaker 2: I think right, because The People's Joker is not your
Speaker 2: first directing job. You've directed quite a few things before.
Speaker 1: This, mostly with under the Absolutely Productions Umbrella, I directed
Speaker 1: and produced and wrote a handful of shows for Adultswim
Speaker 1: dot Com. One of what was a show called I
Speaker 1: Love David that's like a docu series about David Leebahart
Speaker 1: and that was honestly making that was one of the
Speaker 1: best experiences of my life and really helped me. I
Speaker 1: don't know, because for me, like there was always this
Speaker 1: and I think like the conversation around that kind of
Speaker 1: humor was always like, oh, it's like ironic, like how
Speaker 1: can it be sincere or whatever? And when I was
Speaker 1: working on I Love David, it was just like, I
Speaker 1: want to try to do both at the same time,
Speaker 1: really want to walk this line of yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a goof and we're really like we made this whole
Speaker 1: alternate reality for David Leebahart's life when fake archival pictures
Speaker 1: of him with Robin Williams and his family members and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And it also had the first episode
Speaker 1: has this beautiful song that he wrote about his mother.
Speaker 1: It's called I'm Sad that my Mama died, Like really
Speaker 1: had just this beautiful intersection of that like alt comedy
Speaker 1: like shit post thing and then this like deep sincerity
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of intentionality to that as we
Speaker 1: were starting to put it together, and I think that
Speaker 1: kind of carried through a lot of this stuff that
Speaker 1: I ended up doing with Tim and Eric. I also
Speaker 1: produced and directed and co wrote some of Tim and
Speaker 1: Eric's Beef House, which was definitely a lot more silly
Speaker 1: and outlandish as a show, but I think I brought
Speaker 1: a lot of that sincere already and grounded emotion to
Speaker 1: it as well. I really liked playing with both of
Speaker 1: those things, and I think the People's Joker was like
Speaker 1: the pure heroin version of that or something like I
Speaker 1: really just seemed to see and I wanted you to
Speaker 1: cry or laugh or be upset or annoyed or whatever.
Speaker 2: So how did the People's Joker? How did you come
Speaker 2: up with that?
Speaker 1: It was towards the end of twenty nineteen, like I'd
Speaker 1: had a handful of directing gigs and writing and producing gigs.
Speaker 1: It really was like wanting to make my own stuff
Speaker 1: and it couldn't. I was pitching a lot and it
Speaker 1: just didn't really just wasn't really happening for me. And
Speaker 1: I don't really know why that is. I've definitely in
Speaker 1: the past I've blamed it on the fact that I'm
Speaker 1: a trans woman, but I think it's just that was
Speaker 1: when Hollywood was really starting to just get a little
Speaker 1: bit like the whole like bleakness that you hear about
Speaker 1: in terms of like production and stuff. I think it
Speaker 1: really started in like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, and I'm
Speaker 1: not really too sure why. I think part of it's
Speaker 1: like all the mergers that were happening just politically where
Speaker 1: the country was at and all that stuff, and I
Speaker 1: was really feeling that I was just even having a
Speaker 1: tough time getting people to read my stuff, which was
Speaker 1: so frustrating, just because I had all this experience and
Speaker 1: it's built this I think, pretty impressive career and I
Speaker 1: could do a lot, like I was an editor and
Speaker 1: a director and a writer producer. So there was this
Speaker 1: building frustration and I was just finally at a point
Speaker 1: where I was like, I need to just write a
Speaker 1: movie and make it. And the initial ideas that I
Speaker 1: was having were because I, like I said before, I
Speaker 1: didn't really ever know like what kind of stories I
Speaker 1: wanted to tell. It was just Okay, the easiest thing
Speaker 1: is just talking about my life. So I'll just process
Speaker 1: the experience of what it was like coming out as
Speaker 1: a trans woman in those comedy spaces and talk about
Speaker 1: this era of comedy and filmmaking. And the initial idea
Speaker 1: was body horror movie about a drag clean who was
Speaker 1: like physically addicted to irony and like it was like
Speaker 1: killing her from the inside, but it was also something
Speaker 1: she like needed to survive. I never really got that
Speaker 1: far into it, but uh, that was really I think
Speaker 1: where the a lot of the like initial ideas for
Speaker 1: the people's Joker came from, and it really became like
Speaker 1: something else when you know, around the time that the
Speaker 1: pandemic was starting, Todd Phillips, God bless his soul, was
Speaker 1: in the news talking about woke culture, as is his
Speaker 1: right as a cis white guy, and he was basically
Speaker 1: complaining about how like hard it is to make comedy
Speaker 1: now or whatever because of sensitivity, and on some of
Speaker 1: them I agree with him. I I get canceled on
Speaker 1: Twitter like all the time, usually over nothing. Somebody got
Speaker 1: mad at me the other day because I jokingly said
Speaker 1: I was the main spokesperson for the trans community, like
Speaker 1: all irony is gone and how people appreciate things. So
Speaker 1: I kind of get where that conversation comes from. But
Speaker 1: it's exceptionally funny coming from the director of a movie
Speaker 1: that made a billion dollars and is a comedy. Joker
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen is a comedy. I get it. It's a
Speaker 1: serious meditation on mental illness or whatever. It's also got
Speaker 1: jokes at it, like it's a fucking movie about a clown.
Speaker 1: It's a ridiculous comic book movie. So I think that
Speaker 1: idea that he was complaining about it was just very
Speaker 1: fascinating to me and my co writer Brie L. Rose.
Speaker 1: I think also just from this perspective of we're both
Speaker 1: queer people and we're very rude. We love a quote
Speaker 1: unquote offensive comedy. Like this idea that queer people and
Speaker 1: trans people and people of color can't take a joke
Speaker 1: is just so weird to me. It's just not my
Speaker 1: experience in interacting with every marginalized group has to have
Speaker 1: a sense of humor, especially think about early comedy in
Speaker 1: vaudeville and like how important comedy it was to Jewish
Speaker 1: people and stuff too, and that terms of expression, it's
Speaker 1: just always been there as this thing to process the
Speaker 1: fact that we're all other by societies. When that was happening,
Speaker 1: Brie originally commissioned me to just re edit Todd Phillips Joker,
Speaker 1: and I actually did start doing that. I started making
Speaker 1: this kind of big feature length piece of video r
Speaker 1: and as I was doing that, I was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: I think I just actually want to make a joker parody.
Speaker 1: And I brought those ideas about the irony poisoned drag
Speaker 1: Queen to it and really just started looking at my
Speaker 1: life and breathe through her life through this sort of
Speaker 1: like comic book movie lens and the movie just like
Speaker 1: really like we wrote the script pretty quick, Like it
Speaker 1: really came together fast. I think, you know, like most
Speaker 1: good ideas, it almost feels like it's something that already
Speaker 1: exists and you're just channeling it or something.
Speaker 2: How close is the people show to you versus how
Speaker 2: close is it to Bree as far as your actual
Speaker 2: real life.
Speaker 1: Before I used to say it was fifty fifty and
Speaker 1: that was partially to protect my family, But they've seen
Speaker 1: it now, so what's the point in line? It really
Speaker 1: is very much my life. And I think the thing
Speaker 1: that was cool about it it was like, as we
Speaker 1: were writing it and I barely knew each other. We
Speaker 1: knew each other from working at Absolutely and we just
Speaker 1: we didn't even really work on any of the same shows.
Speaker 1: Like she would be in a writer's room for something
Speaker 1: and then I'd be editing something else, Like upstairs and
Speaker 1: we would just hang out at lunch and I just
Speaker 1: thought she was hilarious and we were just the only
Speaker 1: two queers really at this company at that point, so
Speaker 1: I think we really just enjoyed making each other laugh
Speaker 1: and had always wanted to work together, and as we
Speaker 1: were we really got to know each other and connect.
Speaker 1: Very similar upbringings. We were both from the Midwest, we
Speaker 1: both came out pretty late in life, so there was
Speaker 1: a lot of similarities there the main beats. And it
Speaker 1: was a real gift working with herby because very early
Speaker 1: in the process she said to me, I want to
Speaker 1: work on this, I want to write this with you,
Speaker 1: but this is your story. It's your face on screen too,
Speaker 1: Like we're giving Joker your dead name. This is your thing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, whatever people describe the movie as like semi autobiographical,
Speaker 1: it frustrates me because I'm just like, it's just so
Speaker 1: auto biographical. The only difference is I'm not actually the Joker.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not just saying that for legal reasons.
Speaker 1: It's pretty close to just what the first twenty eight
Speaker 1: years of my life.
Speaker 2: Were like and how big of a DC fan were you?
Speaker 2: Because I can see a lot of references, and I
Speaker 2: can hear a lot of references, even all the way
Speaker 2: back to Batman eighty nine.
Speaker 1: I think I've seen more Batman than anything else. I
Speaker 1: think the only movie that I've probably seen more is
Speaker 1: Back to the Future, Like I could quote that movie
Speaker 1: in my sleep. I grew up reading comics. That's funny
Speaker 1: because much of my life I had a learning disability
Speaker 1: and couldn't really read that well. But I hit it
Speaker 1: really well. I cheated all throughout school. I was an
Speaker 1: honors classes. School was so easy because I was a
Speaker 1: great cheater, a great little liar, and a little kiss
Speaker 1: ass too, so I think the teachers really happy. Reading
Speaker 1: was a challenge for me up until my twenties or so,
Speaker 1: and comics were always this space where it was like
Speaker 1: I found this cheat code to getting to just read
Speaker 1: picture books. For most of my life, Batman was always
Speaker 1: the one. The art was just so beautiful to me,
Speaker 1: especially like the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Batman's just gorgeous, gothic,
Speaker 1: and even when it's hoppy, I don't know. I loved
Speaker 1: the movies. The first PG thirteen movie I ever saw
Speaker 1: in a theater was Batman Forever, and I was six
Speaker 1: years old and my dad took me to go see it. Honestly,
Speaker 1: seeing the movie was an early moment and me realizing
Speaker 1: I was trans I'm not really entirely sure why, but
Speaker 1: it was something about Nicole Kidman's character, and I think
Speaker 1: just like I was already so in love with Batman
Speaker 1: at that point, and like watching just the romance between
Speaker 1: her and Batman, and it like I just wanted I
Speaker 1: not only wanted to look like her, I wanted somebody
Speaker 1: to look at me the way he looked at her.
Speaker 1: But that was a memory that had resurfaced while we
Speaker 1: were writing The People's Joker, so we actually put this
Speaker 1: scene in the movie that's basically that with young Joker
Speaker 1: going to see this Batman movie. These characters are just
Speaker 1: so in there for me, and I don't think I
Speaker 1: really was aware of it until those ideas started to come.
Speaker 1: I still read the comics. It's awesome when people give
Speaker 1: me Batman comics. Now it's screenings and it's just, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this makes the whole journey of making this
Speaker 1: movie worth it, because now I just get free comics.
Speaker 1: Fucking rules. There's been a lot of like bad ai
Speaker 1: art and stuff that you could see pop up in
Speaker 1: some of these comics now and stuff. But thankfully there's
Speaker 1: a whole backlog of books. I could spend the rest
Speaker 1: of my life collecting comics and I still will not
Speaker 1: be able to read every single Batman comic. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try, but it would not happen, I don't think. So.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the actual making of the film. Did
Speaker 2: you do this during the pandemic?
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much. And I actually started like working on
Speaker 1: the It's funny because like the way people talk about
Speaker 1: the movie is being this kind of like groundbreaking thing
Speaker 1: or like a like having a really non traditional style,
Speaker 1: Like I really tried to make it like how those
Speaker 1: comic book movies are. Like we really wrote a script
Speaker 1: that was based around set pieces, and that was because
Speaker 1: I wanted the set pieces to be impressive, Like I
Speaker 1: wanted our batmobile chase to be visually interesting and be
Speaker 1: like something that was like a batmobile chase you hadn't
Speaker 1: seen before. And there's this whole like fight scene at
Speaker 1: the end of the movie that's done in like the
Speaker 1: Batman the animated series Bruce tim style. Like I was
Speaker 1: like using it as this opportunity to just make movies
Speaker 1: and that really the way studio make movies now, but
Speaker 1: that like Zamechis Bielberg way, where they like come up with, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a time machine and there it'll be
Speaker 1: like this is a nuclear explosion. No it's a refrigerator.
Speaker 1: No it's a laurreent. Like really just finding that and
Speaker 1: starting from this sort of visual place I think was
Speaker 1: really important to me. So as Brie and I were
Speaker 1: like working on the script, I put out this call
Speaker 1: on Twitter. It's really the only good thing that I
Speaker 1: think has ever happened on Twitter was the formation of
Speaker 1: all the people that like worked on this film. And
Speaker 1: I just threw it out there if any artists or
Speaker 1: animators or editors wanted to come aboard write to us that.
Speaker 1: I wasn't really expecting that many people to come out
Speaker 1: of the woodwork, and it was just hundreds. So many
Speaker 1: people wanted to just see this movie, let alone work
Speaker 1: on it. Before we even had a script done, we
Speaker 1: had this kind of crew of this team that was
Speaker 1: ready to start getting to work, so we started doing
Speaker 1: character designs. I think in May of twenty twenty, we
Speaker 1: were barely done outlining the script, and I don't know
Speaker 1: it's like how I want to work for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. It's driving everybody I'm working with right
Speaker 1: now completely crazy because I got like a few things
Speaker 1: in development and they're just like, why are you like
Speaker 1: talking about soundtrack and it's stup right down. It's just
Speaker 1: a way to do it. I do think like the
Speaker 1: script is most important, but it's a visual medium and
Speaker 1: it's a sonic medium too, so we really need to
Speaker 1: For me as a filmmaker and as a viewer, I
Speaker 1: like to be thinking of those things like at a
Speaker 1: script stage. And with that process in mind, I was
Speaker 1: able to build an animatic of the movie before we
Speaker 1: even got to set. I tried to think of the
Speaker 1: movie almost as like an animated film, so it was
Speaker 1: very storyboard driven, and even though there were these scenes
Speaker 1: where it's very dialogue heavy movie, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: that classic kind of indie movie way, like a lot
Speaker 1: of very heavy conversational scenes and stuff. But even with that,
Speaker 1: it was like getting those storyboards it out just so
Speaker 1: we could figure out the pace and sort of the
Speaker 1: music of the movie before we ever even got to set.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was cool. It was really like, I'm
Speaker 1: really lucky that I got to just have this huge
Speaker 1: community of DIY artists helping me make this thing. That
Speaker 1: privilege was never lost on me, Like from second one
Speaker 1: of just like watching the team form, it was the
Speaker 1: motivating factor just to even keep working on the movie.
Speaker 1: It was just like, I don't know any filmmaker that
Speaker 1: has ever or will ever again have this many people
Speaker 1: that wants to help them make her first movie.
Speaker 2: When do you actually shoot it? Are people so in lockdown?
Speaker 2: Do you have to get into each other's bubbles and
Speaker 2: all that fun stuff that we had to deal with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean originally I wanted to shoot the whole
Speaker 1: thing remotely, was the scope of it started getting really
Speaker 1: big and we were just like writing things like bat
Speaker 1: caves and stuff like in fight scenes and scenes and stuff.
Speaker 1: It was like, Okay, I think we're gonna probably need
Speaker 1: to do some in person shooting. So I really figured
Speaker 1: out what's the core cast here? And yeah, it was
Speaker 1: prevas COVID. It's funny to think about. I think so
Speaker 1: much of that year is just like a blank spot
Speaker 1: in my memory, but I really do remember prepping for
Speaker 1: that shoot and we all got tested and it's a
Speaker 1: very small crew, like it was me and my DP,
Speaker 1: one camera assistant, a sound guy, my partner was there
Speaker 1: as a PA, and my producer Joey, and then my
Speaker 1: friend Ember Night as well, just to help like with
Speaker 1: some of the directing, and we shot in five days.
Speaker 1: Just crazy. Nobody ever believes it, but we did. I
Speaker 1: think it was partially because I had storyboarded and animated
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Cleared up the line of communication for
Speaker 1: my DP and I, like we I just pulled something
Speaker 1: up on his creed and you would immediately know like
Speaker 1: how it needed to be lit, how it needed to
Speaker 1: be framed. I was also working with people who, like
Speaker 1: I really knew could work in that sort of fast
Speaker 1: paced environment, like specifically Nate Fauston, who plays the penguin
Speaker 1: that characters written for him and is based on him.
Speaker 1: It's his and my relationship that were mythologizing there. We
Speaker 1: shot his stuff all in two days. He's one of
Speaker 1: the main characters. And yeah, it was crazy, Like I
Speaker 1: remember being nervous about shooting in pre vaccine COVID, but
Speaker 1: it was really it was that thing again too, where
Speaker 1: I crowdfunded all this money and I wanted to put
Speaker 1: all that money on camera, like and into the production
Speaker 1: which I shot myself in the foot because I didn't
Speaker 1: end up saving any of it for posts and thefts
Speaker 1: and stuff, so like I had to end up taking
Speaker 1: out a huge loan to finish the movie. But I
Speaker 1: was glad we did it just because it really allowed
Speaker 1: us to have a safe production and a production that
Speaker 1: was like, like it was lit correctly. And I get
Speaker 1: the movie's been described as being held together by tape
Speaker 1: and the green screen compositing and stuff is scrappy, but
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think it's a very beautiful movie
Speaker 1: like way it's shot, Like we really shot it in
Speaker 1: this way where the lighting was very specific and our
Speaker 1: choreography was very specific and stuff. And you know, I
Speaker 1: was working with really the best team of actors that
Speaker 1: anybody could work with at this point in their career.
Speaker 2: I really hate to even get into this stuff, but
Speaker 2: I have to. At any point while you were making this,
Speaker 2: did you think, oh, this might tread on people's copyright?
Speaker 1: Pretty much right in the beginning, I was never worried
Speaker 1: about it because I was talking to lawyers that may
Speaker 1: like that the second we started. Because when I put
Speaker 1: out that call on Twitter to see who wanted to
Speaker 1: join in, most of the people that responded were natives,
Speaker 1: but I got a few lawyers that like were like,
Speaker 1: we should talk before you get too deep into this,
Speaker 1: and I did. I had these like series of sort
Speaker 1: of guidelines and precedents that were there that I should
Speaker 1: follow specifically for the parody law aspects of it, and
Speaker 1: the main the primary one being like pretty much every design,
Speaker 1: every character design in it is our own. I think
Speaker 1: the version of the Joker that I play in it
Speaker 1: is there's a little bit of Jack Nicholson in the wardrobe.
Speaker 1: But my bigger reference for it was like anime and
Speaker 1: wrestling and stuff like pro wrestling, Like we really and
Speaker 1: we did that with all the characters. We really had
Speaker 1: to make our own character designs in our own style
Speaker 1: sheets for pretty much every single one. We did that.
Speaker 1: It also needed to for the because it's also protected
Speaker 1: by the fair use defense, which is the same legal
Speaker 1: defense that allows documentary filmmakers to play with trademarks that
Speaker 1: they don't own. I always like Cite and it's never
Speaker 1: to be giving him shit. I really love his films.
Speaker 1: But that Room two three seven is a documentary where
Speaker 1: they show most of Stanley Kubrick's filmography In that and
Speaker 1: the reason he's able to do that is because he's
Speaker 1: talking about it and he's providing commentary on it and colaborating,
Speaker 1: and very specifically is providing a commentary that only he
Speaker 1: and his subjects that he's interviewing can provide, which is
Speaker 1: really the most important thing about fair use. It has
Speaker 1: to be a perspective that only the creator can be
Speaker 1: bringing to the table. And so the even bigger guideline
Speaker 1: for me to follow was just like it had to
Speaker 1: be my story, Like it really had to be my
Speaker 1: life story. So I think that was the thing that
Speaker 1: I was more nervous about, was just like pulling out
Speaker 1: all my dirty laundry for people to see while I'm
Speaker 1: playing with Batman toys basically, And but that was the
Speaker 1: way we were to do it. And like the obvious
Speaker 1: sort of caveat or I guess not really an exception,
Speaker 1: but we do have a Jared Leto Joker in the movie.
Speaker 1: But the reason we were able to do that is
Speaker 1: it's a parody version of him, just from the mere
Speaker 1: fact that it's not Jared Letto. It's a commentary kind
Speaker 1: of on Jared Leto's Joker as this sort of toxic
Speaker 1: leftist comedian guy. And also it was funny, but it's
Speaker 1: just as like another thing that I had talked about
Speaker 1: with my lawyers very early on was the fact that
Speaker 1: we were casting a trans man as a Jared Leto
Speaker 1: joker when Jared Leto had played a trans woman in
Speaker 1: something also really brought this other like meta text steel
Speaker 1: layer to it. So yet it's funny because like I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people when they hear about the movie,
Speaker 1: they just assume that I just said fuck it, and
Speaker 1: I really didn't, Like I really went out of my
Speaker 1: way and out of pocket to really like legally figure
Speaker 1: out how we did it. And I always try to
Speaker 1: make a point of talking about thank you for asking
Speaker 1: about it, because it's something that I feel is important
Speaker 1: to talk about. Especially I think a lot of like
Speaker 1: younger filmmakers look up to me and like this film
Speaker 1: and stuff, and I don't want them just you can't
Speaker 1: just go off and make the people's Harry Potter like
Speaker 1: you got to like really protect yourself and educate yourself
Speaker 1: on where parody laws at. The good news is, I
Speaker 1: think this movie does set a new precedent for what
Speaker 1: you can do with these ips.
Speaker 2: When did you have your premiere.
Speaker 1: We had our premiere at TIF twenty twenty two, which
Speaker 1: is still a sentence that I can't believe I get
Speaker 1: to say. But it was almost four years ago now,
Speaker 1: and the night before our screening, Warner Brothers sent me
Speaker 1: an angry letter. It was devastating. It was the most
Speaker 1: traumatic night of my life. But thankfully Tiff really just
Speaker 1: went to bat for me and was like, no, we're
Speaker 1: going to screen this movie, like we've already announced that
Speaker 1: we're playing it. If we don't. I can't speak for
Speaker 1: them because I don't really know what conversations they had
Speaker 1: with Warren, but I know they basically said, we already
Speaker 1: are doing this, like there's tickets sold. Be a major
Speaker 1: pain in the ass. You waited till the night before
Speaker 1: do this, And they did that because they wanted to
Speaker 1: intimidate me, and they really did. They really intimidated me.
Speaker 1: They intimidated that everybody, all my agents and stuff like,
Speaker 1: really jumped ship to that twenty four hour period. But
Speaker 1: thankfully Tiff really went to bat for us, and we
Speaker 1: got to have that premiere and it was really like
Speaker 1: probably my favorite. It's weird saying that it's my favorite
Speaker 1: screening of the movie. Because like it's I don't even
Speaker 1: really remember it. It was such a blur and it
Speaker 1: was so surreal because we were like playing this movie
Speaker 1: that I had made in my bedroom that I really
Speaker 1: was like originally making just for me and my friends.
Speaker 1: I didn't think of it as as like a thing
Speaker 1: that would I didn't know how big of a film
Speaker 1: festival Tiff even was. Like I'd never been to a
Speaker 1: film festival before, and like my first day at TIFF,
Speaker 1: like I was in the same elevator as like Werner
Speaker 1: Herdzog was like it was really crazy, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is a whole other thing now to like an
Speaker 1: audience seven hundred people, and it was like the oldest
Speaker 1: operational theater in North America. Like it just felt it
Speaker 1: felt the earthshake, I think that night. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: I ended up pulling the movie from other film festivals,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people thought that was like for
Speaker 1: legal reasons, and there was a little bit of that,
Speaker 1: like to some degree it was me needing to like
Speaker 1: go back and arm myself a little bit more because
Speaker 1: I didn't have a litigator at that point. I had
Speaker 1: only had legal opinions and legal counsel that I had
Speaker 1: been speaking to. I needed to find somebody who would
Speaker 1: be willing to represent me in case I did need
Speaker 1: to go to court. And I also was very conscious
Speaker 1: that the movie could leak and I didn't want that.
Speaker 1: I really wanted to hold out for some form of distribution.
Speaker 1: And God, I've never gotten this honest about it, but
Speaker 1: fuck it, we're here. Like I really had a mental
Speaker 1: health crisis after TIFFs. It shattered my reality. I didn't understand.
Speaker 1: It was so crazy because I had this experience of
Speaker 1: getting all these everybody in town wanted to beat with me.
Speaker 1: I had a meeting with Sony the day I got
Speaker 1: back after Tiff, and it was one of the bigger
Speaker 1: meetings that I've ever had in my life. And it
Speaker 1: was just insane because I was sitting there and realizing, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm getting all this attention because people see me as
Speaker 1: a band filmmaker and I have just spent four years
Speaker 1: of my life making a movie that I really thought
Speaker 1: I could just get out there pretty easily, because that
Speaker 1: was what my lawyers and my team had said. So
Speaker 1: it was just a lot of things going on. So
Speaker 1: I needed to hit pause. And the Tiff cut also
Speaker 1: was just a really fresh paint job, but there are
Speaker 1: a lot of mistakes. I needed to recast somebody, I
Speaker 1: needed to finish a lot of our VSX and stuff.
Speaker 1: It really wasn't done yet, so I hit pause and
Speaker 1: also wanted to strategize what our pathway to District You
Speaker 1: Should was going to look like. And I was introduced
Speaker 1: to the concept of secret screenings, which was fascinating to
Speaker 1: me because I just was like, why would you go
Speaker 1: see a movie if you don't know what it is?
Speaker 1: Like I go and see movies that like I know
Speaker 1: what they're gonna be, and sometimes I don't like them.
Speaker 1: But it really worked for us because like the we
Speaker 1: could like plant rumors around town, like whatever film festival
Speaker 1: we were at, Oh, I think there's gonna be this
Speaker 1: clown movie playing. And we took this whole secret after
Speaker 1: we had like our festival cut completed. It was an
Speaker 1: April of twenty twenty three. God, so only a year.
Speaker 1: It like a little over a year ago, but it
Speaker 1: feels like a decade. It's been such a time work
Speaker 1: for me, Like time really just doesn't exist for me anymore.
Speaker 1: It's either why you should or shouldn't make a movie.
Speaker 1: The a chaos magic but anyway, we did this whole
Speaker 1: tour in Australia last April, on April twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: That was like just all secret screenings, and the way
Speaker 1: we would promote it's just by putting in these film
Speaker 1: festival programs an untitled queer coming of age, perfectly legal
Speaker 1: clown movie or whatever, and then the description of the
Speaker 1: movie would be like a transclown comes of age in
Speaker 1: a gothic city and faces off against a crusader with
Speaker 1: a tape. So like if people knew what the movie was,
Speaker 1: or if they had heard about it, they'd see that
Speaker 1: in the program and they go, I think this is
Speaker 1: the people's joker. I think we should go see it,
Speaker 1: or they would read it and be like this sounds
Speaker 1: fucking weird. Let's go see the Smithee. And that really
Speaker 1: worked for us, like we really we sold out most
Speaker 1: of those screenings, and so it really set this like
Speaker 1: model for us, and then we did a couple more
Speaker 1: secret screenings and special events like in the US after that,
Speaker 1: and eventually had our first public facing premiere. Our US
Speaker 1: premiere was at outfests last year in July or June.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Okay, how was it getting distribution? On
Speaker 2: DVD and Blu Ray.
Speaker 1: Well that was really that only came about God, you know,
Speaker 1: like it was it was so crazy, like holding out
Speaker 1: every day. I had some anarchist on social media like
Speaker 1: saying like, why don't you just post it on Google Drive?
Speaker 1: We want to see it, which is what I'd be
Speaker 1: doing too. But it really always stressed me out. It's
Speaker 1: like I couldn't explain to everybody, even my friends, like
Speaker 1: didn't really understand, like why are you like basically shelving
Speaker 1: this movie, And it's cause it's fucking it's a movie
Speaker 1: that you're supposed to watch in a theater, like I
Speaker 1: need at least a short theatrical run in order to
Speaker 1: feel justified. And how much energy I'd spent making it
Speaker 1: in the team behind it too, Like it just felt
Speaker 1: only right to really try to get traditional distribution. So
Speaker 1: it was when we got that public screening at Outfest
Speaker 1: that we were finally able to get intra again because
Speaker 1: I had some interest at TIS, like there were a
Speaker 1: couple of big distributors I won't say their names, but
Speaker 1: people could guess that were interested in the movie, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure they would have done a great job, but
Speaker 1: they all got pretty scared off, I think, and also
Speaker 1: the movie wasn't done, and to be quite honest, none
Speaker 1: of them were offering money to finish the movie or
Speaker 1: license the music that we were using. Like it was
Speaker 1: really this crash course and how crazy it is to
Speaker 1: try to sell a movie nowadays. It's not like it
Speaker 1: was in the nineties. Kids like I'm sorry, don't get
Speaker 1: your hopes up like I did. It's not all Kevin Smith,
Speaker 1: you know, selling clerks anymore. But thankfully Outfest put up
Speaker 1: this bat signal for Frank Jaffy at Altered Innocence, who
Speaker 1: is my distribution partner, and he emailed me two days
Speaker 1: after Outfest and was just like, hey, let's get breakfast.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about your movie. When I got
Speaker 1: the message, I started crying. And it wasn't because I
Speaker 1: was happy. It was because I was basically telling myself
Speaker 1: not to get my hopes up again. I was also
Speaker 1: a huge fan of his catalog and I heard such
Speaker 1: great things about him from other queer filmmakers, So I
Speaker 1: really went into this meeting as just like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is just somebody I need to know because apparently I'm
Speaker 1: a trans filmmaker and I consider myself a genre filmmaker,
Speaker 1: but I happened to be a trans woman, so I
Speaker 1: felt like it was important to established connection with a
Speaker 1: weird distributor, and we met up for breakfast. He had
Speaker 1: a stack of DVDs that he was giving me, which
Speaker 1: is definitely a way to win over my heart. I
Speaker 1: love free shit, free comics, free DVDs. I don't care
Speaker 1: if there are even stuff that I like, just give
Speaker 1: them to me. I'm such a fetishist for physical media.
Speaker 1: Pretty Much instantly into that breakfast, he was just like,
Speaker 1: I think we could do this. I want to distribute
Speaker 1: this movie. And I was like, are you sure. I've
Speaker 1: been so beaten down at that point. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. And thankfully he was also willing to
Speaker 1: like help pay for some of the finishing costs, just
Speaker 1: because I was so in the hole and like I
Speaker 1: needed to like still fix some of the animation, like
Speaker 1: the soundtrack needed to really be finalized, and he altered innocence.
Speaker 1: His company is just him, so that was like the
Speaker 1: thing that was really appealing to me was like this
Speaker 1: was a movie that like only could work I think
Speaker 1: with kind of this home grown DIY distributor, just because
Speaker 1: that's how it was made. As much as I would
Speaker 1: have loved to have had the movie play in like
Speaker 1: AMC theaters or something, I just don't know that was
Speaker 1: ever gonna happen, just because of the baggage along with it.
Speaker 1: And so I finished the movie, and our theatrical run
Speaker 1: is technically not over, Like we were gonna keep screening
Speaker 1: this movie in theaters as long as people want to
Speaker 1: play it in theaters, and I think it probably will
Speaker 1: be a midnight movie shortly. There's a lot of interest
Speaker 1: all over the country and all over the world for
Speaker 1: it to be that. But I think selling point of
Speaker 1: working with Frank was just these the physical media side
Speaker 1: of things, because the way he packages his films is
Speaker 1: just so beautiful. I think physical media is just so important,
Speaker 1: like the fact that we're really leaving film preservation up
Speaker 1: to these media conglomerates and streaming platforms. When streaming, if
Speaker 1: you watch a movie on a stream the quad, like
Speaker 1: you might as well be watching a movie on your phone, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: David Lynch's fucking phone. Y'all think you saw a movie
Speaker 1: but you didn't like it's the sound quality sucks. It's
Speaker 1: all compressed and stuff. Blu ray even you know, regular DVD.
Speaker 1: It's just like being able to physically hold something. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, like I grew up like loving special features.
Speaker 1: That was before film school. That was how I learned
Speaker 1: what a director was like listening to John Hughes, like
Speaker 1: his commentary track on Ferris Bueler's Day Off. I remember,
Speaker 1: like at thirteen or whatever, like I would watch that
Speaker 1: every I'd watch it more than the movie, and I
Speaker 1: really thought that was something that needed to be a
Speaker 1: part of this movie story just because of how close
Speaker 1: it came to not coming out. It felt like it
Speaker 1: really needed to be something that existed in a physical
Speaker 1: media space. So yeah, it's available on Blu Ray. It's
Speaker 1: available on regular DVD two, but our Blu ray is
Speaker 1: really gorgeous. It's just the best the movie's ever looked.
Speaker 1: And also comes with this I really wanted to make
Speaker 1: like a zine just because we had so much art
Speaker 1: that we could include. So it comes with this sort
Speaker 1: of booklet that includes like a lot of concept art
Speaker 1: and a big long essay about the making of the
Speaker 1: movie and all that stuff. And we also have it
Speaker 1: on DHS, which is like VHS is like my favorite
Speaker 1: format of how to watch stuff like it's what I
Speaker 1: grew up watching and The People's Joker itself, like just aesthetically,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of visual like VFX are a lot
Speaker 1: of DHS art and artifacting in it. Like the sort
Speaker 1: of narrative voice and the sort of like cross dimensional
Speaker 1: stuff is very in this kind of like analogue VHSE
Speaker 1: space and it's a format that I've always liked playing
Speaker 1: with as an artist. So yeah, we have a VHS
Speaker 1: version two that I panned and scanned myself. It's beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never thought that i'd get the chance to pan
Speaker 1: and stand a movie like it was a dream that
Speaker 1: I didn't know I had until I was doing it.
Speaker 2: What's going on presently or what are you working on next?
Speaker 2: It sounds like you've got a lot of projects that
Speaker 2: you're thinking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy, Like I've got a few working on.
Speaker 1: I've got two scripts. One of them is a cosmic
Speaker 1: horror movie called Dead Name. The producers on it like
Speaker 1: when they heard the concept, they were like, this almost
Speaker 1: feels like a spiritual sequel to the People's Joker in
Speaker 1: a way, like it's it doesn't have those characters in it,
Speaker 1: but I think it is a movie that where I'm
Speaker 1: processing the last five years of my life now it's
Speaker 1: about chaos, magic and doppelgangers and stuff. And then I
Speaker 1: got this other thing that was this heist horror movie
Speaker 1: that I just love. I don't know if I can
Speaker 1: really say the title of it or too much about
Speaker 1: what it's about, but it's It was a script that
Speaker 1: was just in development for a very long time, and
Speaker 1: I don't know. I got sent so many scripts in
Speaker 1: the last year, and most of them were just not
Speaker 1: right for me, and this was the first one that
Speaker 1: I read that I was like, I could really bring
Speaker 1: something to this. So hopefully whatever I guess make next
Speaker 1: will be one of those things. But I have a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff that I'm developing too, Like I really
Speaker 1: like after It's funny, because I've said it multiple times
Speaker 1: on this podcast. I spent so much of my life
Speaker 1: not knowing what kind of stories I wanted to tell.
Speaker 1: But the second I started making The People's Joker, all
Speaker 1: these other ideas started coming. It's like I had to
Speaker 1: make this movie to free up something in my head
Speaker 1: to where I could start writing other stuff. So I've
Speaker 1: just been writing like crazy. It's just all year, and
Speaker 1: I don't know if people need their via dru fix though.
Speaker 1: I just edited a Christmas slasher movie called Carnage for
Speaker 1: Christmas that is directed by my favorite living director, Alice
Speaker 1: Mayo McKay. She's an Australian filmmaker, just my sister and
Speaker 1: trans genre of cinema and I got to edit this movie.
Speaker 1: I think that'll be coming out later this year on Shutter,
Speaker 1: I believe, and it's so fucked up, like she really
Speaker 1: let me do whatever I wanted, like in terms of
Speaker 1: like post production and visual effects. I love Alice so
Speaker 1: much and we're working on something else right now too,
Speaker 1: so yeah, hopefully there's more. I don't know. It's funny because,
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, people are so bleak about the
Speaker 1: industry right now, so I can't really go online anymore.
Speaker 1: Like I'm so sick of like film Twitter and how
Speaker 1: they talk about movies is dying and stuff because it's
Speaker 1: just not my experience. I've been going to festivals for
Speaker 1: two years now. Genre filmmaking is the best it's ever been.
Speaker 1: There's so many fucking movies and there's production happening all
Speaker 1: over the country. I got to act in Mickey Reese's
Speaker 1: new movie. We shot that in Oklahoma, and when I'd
Speaker 1: walk around the street telling people that I was there
Speaker 1: shooting a movie, they were not impressed because they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: people shoot stuff here all the time, and that's just everywhere.
Speaker 1: So I again put that out there in case anybody
Speaker 1: is listening who is trying to break in or make stuff.
Speaker 1: It's definitely the hardest it's ever been, I think, to
Speaker 1: break in. But once, once you've made something and you've
Speaker 1: told your story. And I think the thing people can
Speaker 1: take away from my film is like, just do it.
Speaker 1: Just do it at all costs. Just if you have
Speaker 1: to burn down your life, do it. If you're destined
Speaker 1: to make a movie, just do it. Stop waiting for
Speaker 1: the green light. I've used this comparison before, but it's
Speaker 1: like downhill skiing. If you're looking at the trees, you're
Speaker 1: gonna run right into a tree. So you got to
Speaker 1: look for the spaces in between the trees. And right now,
Speaker 1: the film industry, all the rich people are asleep at
Speaker 1: the wheel, and the punks really have a lot of
Speaker 1: power to tell their stories and do what they want.
Speaker 1: I think it's a really beautiful time to be alive
Speaker 1: if you love movies or if you want to make movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Vierra, thank you so much for your time. This
Speaker 2: was so great talking with you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I feel like I talked at you a lot, but
Speaker 1: I'm very caffinated today, so thank you for thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. This was so wonderful. Mike, you know,
Speaker 1: get b.
Speaker 5: Yes fucking way reading face, never see the water, my
Speaker 5: leg like upon a leg, No breas but by people said,
Speaker 5: it's about it. You want a party, no pictures.
Speaker 1: I find I round the house.
Speaker 5: I'm run eastern south in the west. Stay on.
Speaker 4: You what Oh we're trying to talk.
Speaker 5: It's none but a moment. Can't not about you and
Speaker 5: I not yallis I don't come now breaks.
Speaker 1: That's not put of.
Speaker 5: Writing books. No, you know, gave around that about he
Speaker 5: lule tringon Towe