Before you see a single frame of Vera Drew\u2019s Batman-soaked satire \u201cThe People\u2019s Joker,\u201d you\u2019re greeted with an enormous wall-of-text disclaimer: “This film is a parody and is at present time completely unauthorized by DC Comics, Warner Bros. Discovery, or anyone else claiming ownership of the characters and subjects that it parodies and references,\u201d etc. Then, a smaller, more personal dedication: \u201cTo Mom, and Joel Schumacher.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
This crystallizes the central conflict of \u201cThe People\u2019s Joker\u201d in a nutshell: Emotional freedom versus corporate control, fan reclamation vs. the tyranny of IP. The film has had a long road to wider distribution. Its 2022 TIFF debut was limited exclusively to its Midnight Madness premiere, as threats from Warner Bros. led Drew to pull it from subsequent screenings. Now it\u2019s finally available for non-festival audiences, and we\u2019re damn glad of it.<\/p>\n
For Drew, a New York-based trans comedienne who works as an editor for alt-comedy shows like \u201cI Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson\u201d and \u201cTim and Eric,\u201d \u201cThe People\u2019s Joker\u201d is less a down-the-barrel takedown of the world of the Caped Crusader than it is a Bat-filtered lens through which she channels her life story as a trans woman and underground comic artist. Like any good supervillain, Joker the Harlequin (Drew) has a traumatic origin story of her own: A sheltered Midwestern childhood, an absent father, a judgy, emotionally unavailable mother (Lynn Downey), the creeping specter of gender dysphoria. The only comforts she can find are in Batman comics, in watching Nicole Kidman play with Val Kilmer\u2019s rubber nipples in \u201cBatman Forever,\u201d and in the clownish antics of an \u201cSNL\u201d-like sketch show called \u201cUCB.\u201d \u201cAs far back as I could remember,\u201d she narrates, \u201cI always wanted to be a Joker.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally saving up enough to leave home, Drew packs up and moves to Gotham City to audition for UCB. But when she\u2019s drummed out on Day One, she finds new family with fellow comedy dropout Penguin (Nathan Faustyn), and together they start an \u201canti-comedy\u201d venue with the rest of the city\u2019s villains. Along the way, she discovers her nascent transness\u2014her own Jokerfication, if you will\u2014thanks to a relentless schedule of sketch-comedy burnout and a prototypically toxic relationship with a fellow Joker (a Jared Leto transmasc type played by Kane Distler).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a garish, anarchic gumbo that works because of, not despite, its messiness. Drew whirls us from one scene to another with all the fragmented logic you\u2019d expect from the Clown Prince of Crime. Except this time, she\u2019s the Clown Princess of Comedy, and the Batman trappings feel like a familiar, loving blanket with which she explores her frustrations with (and community found in) the comedy world. There\u2019s the incestuous nature of NY comedy social climbing, the pricey comedy classes, the bleakness of its dating scene (one of Joker\u2019s eventual rules of love she imparts on us: \u201cDon\u2019t date comedians. Ever.\u201d) But it\u2019s all dressed up in a fan-pleasing m\u00e9lange of references from Batman stories across a number of mediums and eras\u2014the \u201860s show\u2019s whirling scene transitions, \u201cBatman Begins\u201d\u2019 ice-sheet swordfight as Comedy 101 training, even \u201cJoker\u201ds revelatory stairway dance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before you see a single frame of Vera Drew\u2019s Batman-soaked satire \u201cThe People\u2019s Joker,\u201d you\u2019re greeted with an enormous wall-of-text disclaimer: “This film is a parody and is at present time completely unauthorized by DC Comics, Warner Bros. Discovery, or anyone else claiming ownership of the characters and subjects that it parodies and references,\u201d etc. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[33,44],"class_list":["post-1295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy-movies","tag-comedy","tag-fantasy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}