Vera Drew's The People's Joker is finally getting a U.S. premiere
After a very brief festival run last year, Drew's "illegal comic book movie" will premiere Stateside at Outfest later this month
Of the god only knows how many superhero movies to come out in theaters over the last few years, none can claim to be quite so strange—or quite so artistically personal—as Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker. A parodic effort to translate the mythos of the Batman films into, in Drew’s words, “some sort of big creative project around gender, comedy, and mom issues,” the film stars Drew as Vera/Harlequin The Joker, who is both a stand-up comic and a sort of supervillain making her way in the Gotham underworld, in ways that may or may not remind you of any other movies that might have the word Joker in their titles. (But which are significantly more influenced by Drew’s long-time work as an editor on shows like On Cinema and Comedy Bang! Bang!)
Although it was completed last year, Drew’s film got about as limited release as you can get, appearing for a single night at the Toronto International Film Festival, around about the same time she reported getting “an angry letter” from “a media conglomerate” pressuring her not to screen her movie. Drew has never said who that conglomerate might be, and neither has Joker copyright holder Warner Bros. Discovery, and so this riddle may just be one for the ages.
Anyway, the upshot is that Drew has never shown The People’s Joker—which includes cameos from Maria Bamford, Scott Aukerman, Tim Heidecker, and other noted comedy oddballs—in the United States. Until now, as Drew announced today that The People’s Joker will get its official U.S. debut later this month, on July 15, as part of Los Angeles’ Outfest. In tweeting out the news, Drew also announced that she’ll be doing a Q&A for the movie with her cast, crew, and co-writer.
The very few people who actually got to see The People’s Joker at TIFF last year described it as both hilarious and bizarre, using the signifiers of comic book movie-making to tell a very personal story about self-love and identity. It also looks completely wild, from the little glimpses we’ve gotten, so here’s to the idea of more people experiencing the ride.