Vera Drew is a woman, she is trans And it is the new Joker. Neither Jack Nicholson, nor Joaquin Phoenix, nor Barry Keoghan. In The People’s Joker She is the one who puts the wig (or wigs) and fight against Batman. Also the one who directs and writes this little movie queer That, he recognizes El País, he never thought they would see “more than five friends in a basement.” And everything has been achieved without the approval of Warner, owner of the Gotham universe, the fictitious city where the stories of Superhero Batman develop. His film is a parody and his legality was always on the tightrope. Even a month before released it, when the company called again. “We made the movie that they would never do,” he explains by videoconference.
Drew (Chicago, 36 years old) discovered his transsexuality, precisely seeing the beatee Batman Forever (1995), by Joel Schumacher, to whom he dedicates his film. While others noticed the superhero, embodied by Val Kilmer, Drew, then with six years, discovered that he wanted to be Nicole Kidman, one of his protagonists. That is one of the stories that recalls The People’s Jokerthat opens in Filmin today after a legal odyssey. The film is a parody that develops in a world of fascist superheroes. However, it is a highly personal film for the filmmaker: “Several people have told me that they went to see a silly comedy of Batman, but that he removed them so much that they were finally prepared to explore their gender.”
“To see The People’s Joker You need to have an open mind. It is not for everyone. But art does not always have to be. Precisely part of the problem of movies mainstream They are trying too much to be attractive to the masses. That is not art. And I think today we all need to find our niche, ”he explains.
His Joker (mix between the clown and his female version, Harley Quinn) is an aspiring humorist in Gotham who struggles to discover his gender identity. It is in a garrito of monologues where his tribe finds (the penguin, enigma and the rest of the villains), fight against the fascism of a Batman that is discovered as a sexual abuser and immerses himself in a toxic relationship with a trans boy, inspired by the Joker of Jared Leto (Suicide squad, 2016).
That personal draft makes its “anarcoiz leftist” comedy never cynical. It is just a reflection of his love for this universe and his characters: “No one should make a parody of something he does not love, and I was obsessed with mythology, and those myths have to be public,” he says from a bedroom that emulates the room of the dream of the series of the series Twin Peaksby David Lynch, with spike soil and a large red curtain surrounding the bed undone: “Laura Palmer (the protagonist of that series) appears to me every night,” he jokes.
After the first projection of the film at the Toronto Festival of 2022, he received a Warner letter in which he prohibited the rest of the passes under the threat of a complaint for legal rights. The following year, one month after the general premiere in the United States, Warner returned to the load and contacted her to ask her to change the title and that the launch in Salas was temporary. “I don’t mind telling it, I am at a point where I don’t want Joker 2 (In 2024), but I realized that they were never going to report me, so I didn’t change anything. They just wanted to intimidate me, ”he has the security of having achieved an international distribution.
Drew adopted his previous name as a last name, and that is another plot of the film. Like his character, before his desired leap to the direction he had his place in the world of comedy: he did monologues and worked as a mounts for humorists like Sacha Baron Cohen or the Alternative Comedy Program Comedy Bang! Bang!. That is why he knows what he speaks when he says in the film that “you never have to go out with a comedian”, in a film that takes place in a world where humor is prohibited.
His revolutionary revenge through comedy attacks even the most iconic humor program in the USA, Saturday Night Live. “I know that pissed many people, but it is part of freedom of expression. mainstream You will always try to do something so that these things are not seen. Having a movie where I can do everything has empowered me, and I like other artists to feel inspired to be transgressors. ”
Crome recorded and decorated with models and toys, the film, very cheap, is an amalgam of references and for its filming different animated styles and puppets were used. The maternal relationship is, for the director, the “foundation” of her work. “It is a love story between Joker and his mother and understanding. I think that’s why it is really quite attached to the ground, talk about finding your family when you are an adult, and perhaps in reconnecting with your childhood and spending the page,” he explains about this mixture in which there is also talk of cultural wars, drugs to calm children, false news, sexual abuse …
But where was such a crazy idea was born? Drew remembers that it was in 2020, seeing statements by Todd Phillips, director of Joker (2019), which enraged it. He said, like so many others before, that “culture woke It does not let us be funny. ”The filmmaker set out to reissue her film with a fart assembly, but in the process she embraced her childhood love for Batman and the discovery of her transsexuality. That made her want to tell a history of self -fiction that, yes, it would laugh at everything. Also of those who say that humor cannot be made, but, instead, they protest when the most conservative United States is questioned.
His message came at the most necessary moment. “It is shit to go back in the rights achieved, because we were bad before. The argument of ‘We have too much diversity’ is so wrong! These films are almost impossible to do, there is still without the opportunities that are for a man for a man cishetero. I had to have something very bright, silly, colorful, unpleasant and legally questionable to have a voice, ”he explains, although he recognizes that in the times that are easy to prostrate and be afraid:“ USA has always been a fascist empire founded on racism and colonization. Simply, now it is being revealed. We see how someone like Trump uses the advances of marginalized cultures to get back. ”
Despite her opposition and her fear of seeing her, curiously Drew loved Joker 2 Because of his bravery by breaking with what he liked of the first and not wanting to content the viewer: “I moved, and I understood why I liked superhero movies: because they were rare. I don’t know if it’s real, but I really think they modified some joke for my movie, for not stepping in parodies.” So much fascinated that he believes that Todd Phillips against whom his work was born would like The People’s Joker: “We are smoking the same shit.”