Vera Drew: ​‘At least they’re not say­ing ​“banned film­mak­er” anymore’

It’s been a wild two and a half years since Vera Drew’s The People’s Jok­er made a major splash at Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, where it pre­miered to an enthu­si­as­tic mid­night audi­ence only to have any and all of its fol­low-up screen­ings can­celed. There was quite an ongo­ing scan­dal around The People’s Jok­er due to the film’s lib­er­al use of Bat­man char­ac­ters in telling the tale of a trans woman who her­self becomes the Jok­er and brings the ​“anti-com­e­dy” move­ment to Gotham City. That the noto­ri­ous­ly liti­gious DC Comics and Warn­er Bros were ner­vous about Drew’s film is no sur­prise, but they should have had no fear: every­thing about The People’s Jok­er was ground­ed in a love of these comics and characters.

As the fea­ture final­ly makes its way to the UK thanks to Match­box Cine, I catch up with Vera Drew over Zoom – where we chat about the film’s cre­ation and longevi­ty, the tools and col­lab­o­ra­tion that led to it, its place in what some call a new trans canon, the influ­ence of film­mak­ers like David Lynch and Joel Schu­mach­er, and (per­haps most impor­tant­ly) her bid to help reboot Sega’s Ecco the Dolphin.

LWLies: How does it feel still hav­ing The People’s Jok­er going strong and spread­ing fur­ther into the world after two and a half years?

Drew: It feels great. I def­i­nite­ly nev­er could have imag­ined I would still be talk­ing about the movie in this capac­i­ty; it was real­ly some­thing that I thought I was just mak­ing for myself, so even now it’s kind of hard to real­ly even know how I feel. When I ran into you at TIFF years ago, I was still very much in this same state of won­der­ing, ​“How did I end up here?” This is just some­thing I was mak­ing in my house for my friends and I.

Yeah, it’s like you have gone so far beyond the idea of end­ing up a ​“cult film” and becom­ing some­thing that every­one has talked about.

I nev­er want to cor­rect peo­ple when they describe it as a cult clas­sic, it’s eas­i­er to just nod my head. At least they’re not say­ing ​“banned film­mak­er” any­more. When I think of cult clas­sics, I think of things that are a real slow burn as far as inde­pen­dent films go; after that TIFF pre­mière, I found a dis­trib­u­tor less than a year lat­er. I wasn’t even in dis­tri­b­u­tion lim­bo that long! But it’s been pret­ty cool see­ing the reach that it has had, y’know? I even met Eli­jah Wood recent­ly and he was like ​“I’ve heard of you.” Like real­ly? Lord of the Rings is so impor­tant to me. You’ve heard of lit­tle old me? And he’s like, ​“Oh yeah, Warn­er Bros. sued you or what­ev­er.” It’s like no, they didn’t, but it’s always that. [laugh­ing] It’s cool though!

It’s tak­en the pres­sure off what­ev­er I want to do next in a way. I almost feel more embold­ened to do what­ev­er I want as an artist now just because that’s what I was doing on the first one.

I feel like that love and pas­sion you poured into The People’s Jok­er also extends into your col­lab­o­ra­tive nature too. What was it like build­ing this col­lec­tion of human beings who are will­ing to go full force into cre­at­ing this mas­sive vision with you?

I don’t think we’d even be hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion if it hadn’t always been like a DIY art project. When I put out the call for any artists that want­ed to help and built this web­site with Justin Gaynor, who I knew from work­ing on Tim and Eric and On Cin­e­ma, we had this entry form for any­body that want­ed to par­tic­i­pate to come aboard and work on it. I real­ly wasn’t expect­ing that many peo­ple to reply to it, I just thought it was going to be like maybe five or six peo­ple and then that call to action would become part of ​“get­ting the word out” about the movie.

But that end­ed up being the pri­ma­ry rea­son the movie became what it was. Hun­dreds of peo­ple end­ed up say­ing they want­ed to con­tribute in some way and that was what dic­tat­ed the aes­thet­ic too. I had so many dif­fer­ent types of artists and ani­ma­tors and film­mak­ers that just want­ed to get involved, and I remem­ber when that hap­pened, it was like, ​“Okay, I real­ly have to do this now,” because I couldn’t think of any oth­er film­mak­er that had ever had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make some­thing with that many peo­ple, and using the DIY col­lec­tivist approach as a mod­el for film­mak­ing seemed kind of scary and interesting.

I also don’t real­ly sub­scribe to auteur the­o­ry. I would com­mu­ni­cate my ideas to peo­ple, with the qual­i­fi­ca­tion being ​“I want you to lean into your aes­thet­ic”. There wasn’t any micro­manag­ing of styles, per se, and it was so cool because I got to dis­cov­er what the film looked like while we were mak­ing it. And I think that keeps it fresh rather than stick­ing with any sort of rigid vision of what I had in my head. I work bet­ter as some­body who’s dis­cov­er­ing along the way, so I was real­ly propped up by the peo­ple that were work­ing on it with me. That also car­ried over into get­ting the movie out there after the TIFF deba­cle; I just have this com­mu­ni­ty of artists, film­mak­ers, and crit­ics like your­self, to thank for con­tin­u­ing to spread the word about this movie. I would real­ly not have been able to do it on my own and was real­ly propped up by queer cin­e­ma and genre cin­e­ma in this way where peo­ple were like, ​“This movie needs to get out there.”

Now that you bring up being propped up by queer cin­e­ma, our friend and fel­low film­mak­er Louise Weard wrote about how all these film­mak­ers (includ­ing you) are doing dif­fer­ent and unique things but are lumped togeth­er, and I’m won­der­ing how you feel about being thrown into the cur­rent ​“trans cin­e­ma boom” and your place in it.

In the begin­ning, I found any con­ver­sa­tion around it very annoy­ing. I remem­ber in April 2023 I was doing secret screen­ings of The People’s Jok­er, and dur­ing a Q&A in Aus­tralia, some­body asked me what it felt like to be a part of the ​“trans cin­e­ma move­ment” with that exact phras­ing. I was prob­a­bly very rude in how I respond­ed, like ​“What are you talk­ing about? Who?” and I remem­ber them specif­i­cal­ly men­tion­ing Jane [Schoen­brun] and Mia Moore Marchant, who’s in The People’s Jok­er [as Hele­na the Huntress] and she just fin­ished her first fea­ture like months ago. It was just a weird ques­tion to get asked what it was like to be part of a move­ment I was pret­ty sure just didn’t exist. That was my first intro­duc­tion to the idea of some ​“moment” happening.

And I think the stock joke I came up with that night for any time the ques­tion came up was: ​“It’s not real­ly a move­ment. We’re not all hav­ing meet­ings at Jane Schoenbrun’s house about the trans agen­da.” You know, I’ve nev­er met Jane. I’m friends with Louise [Cas­tra­tion Movie and Com­put­er Hearts], I’m friends with Alice Maio Mack­ay [T Block­ers and Satan­ic Pan­ic], I know Hen­ry Han­son [Dog Movie and Bros Before] in Chica­go; I know a hand­ful of trans film­mak­ers and have become friends with them but we’re not all doing some sort of coor­di­nat­ed attack.

It’s fun­ny because Louise’s take is inter­est­ing because she specif­i­cal­ly points out there’s more peo­ple than just ​“Jane and Vera” mak­ing this stuff, which I’ve always appre­ci­at­ed. Louise actu­al­ly made this hour of con­tent with Match­box Cine [Louise Weard: UNSEE] that was kind of a com­pan­ion piece to her Cas­tra­tion Movie, which every­body should see, that is, to me, the trans movie of the decade.

Just look at this past month and every­one shar­ing their expe­ri­ences with David Lynch [after his pass­ing] – we’ve all been shar­ing our feel­ings and I thought your thread was so mov­ing and beau­ti­ful, but com­plete­ly unique to you and your own being.

To me, that’s what gets lost when peo­ple try to describe all the trans film­mak­ers as some sort of mono­lith. Art, in and of itself, and how it’s cre­at­ed and how it’s processed by the view­er, is so per­son­al. I can’t help but think of New Queer Cin­e­ma going on in the 90s; I can under­stand the frus­tra­tion that a lot of those artists had in being lumped togeth­er because a lot of us are com­ing at our art from very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and very dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ics. I didn’t have A24 mon­ey in my movie and Louise, with Cas­tra­tion Movie, is shoot­ing on DV tapes and cash­ing in every favor she can. But I think the thing worth not­ing is that we’re all in a sim­i­lar age range and all kind of reached this point of max­i­mum frus­tra­tion where it’s like, ​“Now’s our time to get in there while Hol­ly­wood is burn­ing down.” I’m so inter­est­ed in see­ing where we all go as artists, espe­cial­ly some­one like Alice, who has already made five or six movies.

Just to jump off this notion of the ​“human­i­ty” of film­mak­ing, there’s been end­less dis­course around AI, specif­i­cal­ly gen­er­a­tive, and I remem­ber you pro­vid­ing this nuanced take on AI tools and mis­un­der­stand­ing around them for The People’s Jok­er a while back. I’d love to hear you talk a lit­tle about work­ing with this kind of thing as a film­mak­er, edi­tor, and per­former, while still being crit­i­cal of gen­er­a­tive AI.

I think gen­er­a­tive AI is uneth­i­cal; the kind of AI that peo­ple are against that mines pre-exist­ing art and is very bad for our envi­ron­ment. I’m obvi­ous­ly against that, but AI assist­ed tools for visu­al effects have exist­ed for decades. And, when it came to doing our green screen removal, I wouldn’t have been able to fin­ish the movie with­out them. It’s tricky to talk about because the term ​“AI” itself has just become such an imme­di­ate red flag for some peo­ple, which I get because there is a lev­el of how it can and has affect­ed labor.

I think the way peo­ple talk about it as this boo­gie man is almost giv­ing it too much pow­er and the con­ver­sa­tion around it should be less about replac­ing artists and should real­ly be about the envi­ron­ment. It’s in the way that these servers require so much water. My city doesn’t have breath­able air right now because of fires and that feels to me like a much big­ger con­cern with AI and not just, ​“Oh no, a human being might not be able to make Blank Pan­ther 6.” I don’t give a shit and I don’t think any­body should.

What mat­ters is that we can even sur­vive to cre­ate anything.

Yeah, and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, advances in tech­nol­o­gy that the user has direct access to should democ­ra­tize cin­e­ma in a way, so I’m hop­ing that’s what things come to, espe­cial­ly if we find more eth­i­cal ways of just cre­at­ing the ener­gy to do this stuff. I think about the con­ver­sa­tions around ​“dig­i­tal ver­sus film” a lot. Just speak­ing of David Lynch, I remem­ber how much shit he got all the time when he said he was done mak­ing stuff on film and talked about how it’s too expen­sive and a waste of mon­ey. And he was right! Inland Empire is gor­geous! There’s so much you can do with dig­i­tal. I don’t know that I would have ever been able to become a film­mak­er with­out it, and I def­i­nite­ly would not have been able to make The People’s Jok­er, so hope­ful­ly more advances in tech just allows DIY to become even more of a thing.

You want peo­ple to dis­cov­er new ways of telling sto­ries through dif­fer­ent medi­ums, that’s what art should be. And since we keep jump­ing back to Lynch, a lot of what I’ve noticed recent­ly is that peo­ple are appre­ci­at­ing his sense of humor and his sin­cer­i­ty. I think The People’s Jok­er knows they exist in tan­dem as well. What is it about those two modes that you’re drawn to in your filmmaking?

I guess I just like camp. And I think the def­i­n­i­tion of camp that most peo­ple have is wrong. Most peo­ple describe it as ​“bad on pur­pose” or ​“so bad it’s good” and to me, camp is the most sin­cere thing there is. It’s lean­ing into the fact that you can tell a sto­ry that’s the whole din­ner; it doesn’t have to be grit­ty and edgy to be telling an emo­tion­al­ly ground­ed sto­ry. I think of Joel Schu­mach­er specif­i­cal­ly; his movies are so oper­at­ic and gay and col­or­ful, but they’re still a real human thing. I wish that peo­ple talked about Schu­mach­er the same way they talk about De Pal­ma or Scors­ese for that rea­son. It’s the same thing of being hyper-styl­ized and kind of sil­ly and camp, but there’s a real emo­tion­al core to it. When you’re cre­at­ing a space where you can do all of those things at once, they only feed off each oth­er in a way that makes the oth­er stronger, where­as if you’re just mak­ing a movie that’s like, ​“here’s my sad movie about being a lit­tle gay weirdo”, you don’t get to cir­cle the truth in a way that’s like you do when you’re learn­ing into all parts of that whole spectrum.

And I know Joel Schu­mach­er is so key for you in mak­ing The People’s Jok­er too. I remem­ber watch­ing a pre-show video col­lage you made for its screen­ing and see­ing the trail­er for The Incred­i­ble Shrink­ing Woman, which caught me off guard. It’s inter­est­ing to see all the dif­fer­ent branch­es you’re pulling from in your influ­ences. Was that pre-show almost like a blue­print col­lage or more borne out of the film?

Kind of both I think. I hadn’t seen The Incred­i­ble Shrink­ing Woman until I was already start­ing to dig into it and right before shoot­ing the movie. When I saw it, I was like ​“this is our col­or palette, this is our aes­thet­ic.” Our aes­thet­ic is the Schu­mach­er Bat­man movies, but also the range of col­or and tex­ture and grain in those ear­ly Schu­mach­er movies were the thing I had my DP and col­orist watch. When I’m work­ing on some­thing, my mood boards are very chaot­ic. One of the next films I’m work­ing on, I’m look­ing at the movie My Girl a lot [laughs], with Dan Ack­royd, but also Stu­art Gor­don movies… like my next movie is just ​“what if Stu­art Gor­don made My Girl.”

[laugh­ing] I can’t tell you how into this I am.

Yeah, I just like a lot of dif­fer­ent things and I don’t know if it’s because I used to do a lot of ket­a­mine, but my brain just con­nects all these dots in this way and that’s how I find my aes­thet­ic. Tour­ma­line [the activist and film­mak­er] actu­al­ly just sent me an arti­cle, which I can’t believe is a sen­tence I can say now [laughs], that appar­ent­ly Sega is poten­tial­ly devel­op­ing some Ecco the Dol­phin con­tent, and Ecco the Dol­phin is like my favorite video game series of all time.

The sec­ond I saw the arti­cle I was tex­ting my fuck­ing agent because I’ve had an Ecco the Dol­phin movie in my head since I was ten and I can only imag­ine what the mood board for that would be because there’s just so much there. I wouldn’t say I’m influ­enced by Stan­ley Kubrick, per se, just because that’s like say­ing you like piz­za or The Bea­t­les, but the thing I do real­ly look up to him as a direc­tor for is how much research he did. He would absorb him­self in the sub­jects he was cir­cling, and it’s why he nev­er end­ed up mak­ing his Holo­caust movie; he was like, ​“I can’t read about this any­more and I can’t sub­ject myself to more of this shit.” But I think about some­thing like The Shin­ing, where he was read­ing stuff about all the geno­cides and going to hotels around the coun­try to take pic­tures, almost build­ing this col­lage of ideas, and then get­ting to a place where ​“this is the movie”, that’s what film­mak­ing is to me. It’s almost like putting togeth­er a con­spir­a­cy corkboard.

More film­mak­ers should have insane inspi­ra­tions! And just to close out by talk­ing about one of your most impor­tant moti­va­tion­al texts, Todd Philips’ Jok­er, I have to ask the ques­tion that’s on everyone’s mind: what are The People’s Joker’s thoughts on Jok­er: Folie a Deux?

I nev­er could have pre­dict­ed that my jour­ney with Todd Phillips and Jok­er would end like this, but I loved Jok­er 2. It was maybe one of my favorite movies last year, just because it was so… it did not need to be like that. There was no rea­son for him to make a movie that was that antag­o­nis­tic against its own audi­ence. When the movie got announced and Lady Gaga was in it, I was actu­al­ly like, ​“Oh shit, it’s going to be like a love sto­ry and like The People’s Jok­er; it’s going to be a big gay musi­cal.” And then it’s not. It’s the most depress­ing two and a half hours, like if a cig­a­rette learned how to sing. And I loved that, I loved all the music in it and that whole sequence where Joaquin Phoenix is just singing ​“Bewitched, Both­ered, and Bewil­dered”; the way his voice is, I lit­er­al­ly get chills talk­ing about it.

All the ren­di­tions of the songs are just so beau­ti­ful, but even all that stuff aside, there’s a sequence where the Jok­er los­es his vir­gin­i­ty to Lady Gaga and he cums in less than four sec­onds. How was I not going to love Jok­er 2? It’s like they made a movie only for me. I’m glad I liked it because it made me feel bet­ter about the fact that The People’s Jok­er didn’t end up on John Waters’ top ten of the year, but Jok­er 2 did. And you know what? I kind of agree with him.