By Nicole Veneto

Whatever else 2024 has in store for queer filmmakers and audiences, there’s likely to be nothing else that’ll put a smile on your face quite like The People’s Joker.

Joker the Harlequin (writer/director/editor/star Vera Drew) in The People’s Joker. Photo: Altered Innocence

As the co-host and co-founding member of the world’s only anti-capeshit/cinematic universe podcast, I’ve watched a lot of superhero slop. While some of these films are mindlessly entertaining, as intended, the vast majority have the consistency of airplane food, possessing all the texture of gruel you’d feed to an orphan in the 1930s. In sharp contrast to the gothic horniness of Burton’s Batman Returns or Raimi’s emotional earnestness in the Spider-Man trilogy, today’s crop of comic book movies is incredibly impoverished. Most are either relying on filmic pastiche to elevate their “silly” source material (Joker, Captain America: The Winter Soldier) or just flat-out mid (most of the MCU’s output since the amusing novelty that was The Avengers). Some barely even qualify as movies (2016’s Suicide Squad) while others constitute an ethical affront to art itself (Joss Whedon’s butchering of Zach Snyder’s Justice League).

There is one bright spot in this barren cinematic landscape. Since its premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, Vera Drew’s “fair use” queer coming-of-age Batman parody The People’s Joker has become something of an internet legend. The day before the film screened as part of the Midnight Madness program, Warner Brothers’ legal team sent Drew a strongly worded (but not, according to Drew, a cease-and-desist) letter voicing their concern over the film’s use of the Dark Knight and his associated IPs. This warning came despite the fact that Drew, a former editor for Adult Swim’s Tim and Eric Show and thus a former WB employee herself, had been open and transparent with the company from the get-go that her pandemic pet-project — re-editing Todd Phillip’s Joker — was evolving into a parody film wherein the titular Joker is reimagined as a trans woman. Drew and the anti-art suits at WB reached a compromise at the 11th hour. The film could be screened once and only once, much to the shock of festival goers and internet cinephiles who were left with no explanation at the time other than that additional screenings were pulled due to “rights issues.” In retrospect, this turned out to be a boon to Drew, who took to the web promoting the hashtag #FreeThePeople’sJoker. This drummed up considerable waves of support against the gatekeeping corporate bigwigs who weren’t down with the (trans) clown.

Drew spent 2023 taking The People’s Joker on a cross-country road trip with secret screenings in several US cities. In December, she struck a deal with queer film distributor Altered Innocence (who also unleashed Bertrand Mandico’s fantastic She Is Conann) to release the film once all the legal red tape was sorted through. Well, most of it, because the very first thing that comes on screen is a lengthy South Park disclaimer proclaiming “[t]his film is a parody and is at present time completely unauthorized by DC Comics [and] Warner Bros. Discovery.” The People’s Joker stars Drew (pulling quadruple duty as director, co-writer, and editor) as Joker the Harlequin, an aspiring — and gender troubled — comic who leaves Smallville for Gotham City in hopes of making it big in the only place comedy is legal under Batman’s fascistic purview: UCB Live. Finding the system predictably rigged, Joker teams up with The Penguin (Nathan Faustyn in DeVito’s prosthetic nose) to start their own questionably legal anti-comedy club, which brings Joker into love and lust with the emotionally manipulative Mr. J Todd (Kane Distler), a trans male iteration of Jared Leto’s hypebeast Joker from Suicide Squad. As Joker struggles to make sense of her identity as a trans woman and a dangerously codependent relationship with Mr. J, she eventually finds she’s the fabled “People’s Joker,” who will help liberate comedy in Gotham under the tutelage of her idol Ra’s al Ghul (Tim and Eric puppeteer David Liebe Hart).

The People’s Joker is a labor of love on the part of Drew, whose mixed-media vision is achieved with the help of over 100 fellow artists contributing everything from hand-drawn and 3D animation to a pair of Suicide Squad Barbie dolls in what I can only take for a nod to Todd Haynes’s equally litigious Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Like Haynes’s debut, The People’s Joker operates in the grand tradition of queer filmmakers thumbing their noses at copyright claims and every filtering mechanism of the establishment. Even the community-made production of the movie speaks to the larger history of queer filmmaking. Queering the Batman allows Drew to balance the franchise’s campy elements with some incredibly heavy topics, such as substance abuse, parental (un)acceptance, emotional manipulation, sexual grooming, and, of course, the trials and tribulations of coming out as trans. You’d never expect a film featuring a naked CGI Lorne Michaels would deal with such heavy themes, yet The People’s Joker isn’t your average movie. Those unversed in the green-screened Adult Swim aesthetic may mistake Drew’s DIY mise-en-scène as tacky and amateurish, but it’s a deliberate stylistic choice stemming from decades of queer art like Ryan Trecartin’s video installations and late-era Derek Jarman.

Joker the Harlequin (writer/director/editor/star Vera Drew) busts a move in The People’s Joker. Photo: Altered Innocence

As the arbiter of her own origin story, Drew’s own story is the lynchpin that holds the narrative together, enriching the empty consumerist signifiers of today’s blockbuster IPs with her own coming out journey. The earliest indicator to Drew that she didn’t identify with her assigned gender was seeing Batman Forever (a moment directly recreated in the film) as a child. She didn’t want to be Val Kilmer’s Bruce Wayne, but Nicole Kidman’s Chase Meridian. This is the genesis of not only Drew’s trans awakening, but The People’s Joker itself. Whatever faults you can find with the movie, her ability to weave personal experience through a franchise as malleable and overexposed as Batman must be admired. I came to adore both Joker the Harlequin and Drew herself by the film’s end, holding profound respect for them as artists mixing-and-matching something new and unique out of pop culture’s scraps. I cannot speak to the experience of being trans, but judging by the ravenous reception from trans audiences, Drew’s movie has struck a chord with the community. That’s something few artists ever achieve, and Drew should be immensely proud of herself for accomplishing it without any compromises.

2024 is shaping up to be something of a landmark year for queer — and especially trans — filmmaking in much the same way the 1992 Sundance Film Festival brought New Queer Cinema into the spotlight. There’s still an impressive slate of films to come: Jane Schoebrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, Alice Maio Mackay’s T Blockers, Theda Hammel’s Stress Positions, etc. Whatever else 2024 has in store for queer filmmakers and audiences, there’s likely to be nothing else that’ll put a smile on your face quite like The People’s Joker.

Nicole Veneto graduated from Brandeis University with an MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, concentrating on feminist media studies. Her writing has been featured in MAI Feminism & Visual Culture, Film Matters Magazine, and Boston University’s Hoochie Reader. She’s the co-host of the podcast Marvelous! Or, the Death of Cinema. You can follow her on Letterboxd and her podcast on Twitter @MarvelousDeath.