"The People’s Joker" was first screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022. It’s since become an elusive yet viral sensation until its recent, wider theatrical release. The film reframes Batman’s best-known enemy as a trans coming-of-age story, all while weaving cultural criticism and obvious, hyperbolic lowbrow superhero genre parody into an absurd and visually wild package.
This crowdsourced movie is heavily based on the director, co-writer and lead actor Vera Drew’s life and relationship with queerness and comedy. It’s co-written by Milwaukee native Bri LeRose and will be screening Thursday, May 9 at the Cactus Club.
According to LeRose, the project first began in 2020 shortly before the pandemic lockdown in response to film director Todd Phillips' commentson comedy and cancel culture. Drew was a fellow comedy writer and coworker at the time, and neither of them agreed with what the filmmaker said.
"I told Vera that the only way I'd watch Joker (2019) was if she did sort of like a 'fart re-edit' of it ... so she started doing that and then quickly realized that she actually wanted to make a whole new Joker movie about her experience as a trans woman in comedy and asked if I would help her write it," says LeRose. "So, we just sort of dove in and then we took the joke too far and here we are."
The People's Joker has been described as a transgressive work of dark comedy, which LeRose says is very Midwestern — having grown up in Racine, Wis. and Drew being from northern Illinois.
"Dark comedy is a very Midwestern sensibility when you think about it, right? Like, 'Oh I can't talk about the hard things so let me joke about them and then no one will look too closely.' ... So we were just both coming from [having] all these decades of trauma as queer people who didn't realize all the ways in which we were queer until much later in life. Let's unpack it and be really sort of rude [about it]," she jokes.
Despite having no knowledge about Batman and not seeing any of the films, co-writing The People's Joker played to LeRose's strengths of writing coming-of-age stories. She also notes that it was a fun experience to write something with someone who has completely different sensibilities.
"It was so fun to work with Vera because Vera has a deep, deep, deep love and a deep knowledge of the Batman universe," says LeRose. "It was really like looking at the essential pieces of the story we were trying to tell and being able to hang the whole story on a very relatable, very universal honestly experience of figuring out who you are and having the courage to live as that. And then Vera was able to go in and find a million touch points in the Batman universe to sort of pepper throughout."
LeRose admits that she didn't think the film would actually be made and it was just going to be a fun project to share among friends.
"A sort of magic happens when you make art just to make it," she says. “From the very beginning, we knew this was just for us, so we did whatever we wanted and we weren’t really having these sort of practical questions that get in the way of a creative process. And that was so freeing and so satisfying and so affirming.”
Part of what made The People's Joker a viral film was because it was so hard for audiences to access. Its future screenings were pulled after their very first showing at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival because it was being challenged by Warner Bros. Discovery.
"The night before we were supposed to premiere, we got a letter from Warner Bros. that was not a formal cease and desist, but was a letter sort of stating that they disagreed that [the film] was covered under fair use and parody law," explains LeRose.
"A sort of magic happens when you make art just to make it."Bri LeRose
She notes that lawyers were consulted in every step of making the film to ensure they were in compliance with parody law, but the letter from Warner Bros. still presented complications that led to them pulling future screenings. LeRose says the year and a half following was spent figuring out next steps while showing the film in secret and festival screenings — leading to its cult hit status as well as a social media hashtag campaign, #FreethePeoplesJoker.
Altered Innocence picked up their film for distribution last year. "[They] took a chance on it ... and [they] also felt it was really important to take a risk and just put it out there so that people can actually see it and find other people in the audience who want to see it. So we owe this very beautiful theatrical run to Frank Jaffe and Altered Innocence," says LeRose.
Despite the rocky release and difficulties the team faced, LeRose says the work that went into this illusive journey is also a badge of honor for The People's Joker. "It's awesome — and it's also like kind of the plot of the movie, which is pretty funny," notes LeRose.
"It's been beautiful to see my friend be able to share something that she poured so much of herself into and to have it received," she adds. "A couple weeks ago, we premiered in Chicago at the Music Box Theater, and we sold out two nights. And those audiences were largely trans and queer audiences, and the feeling of sitting with our community and having this story to share was so incredible."
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