What's the most embarrassing movie to ever make you cry? Up? Barbie? Avengers: Endgame?
Whatever it is, I bet I can beat it.
A freaking parody of Joker (2019) made me cry my little gay heart out.
If you are trans or genderqueer in any way, shape, or form, I suggest that you stop reading and go watch The People's Joker (2022) on Tubi. It is best to go in completely blind. If you need more convincing, feel free to keep reading, but I promise it's best experienced with zero context.
It is a boundary-pushing parody of the critically acclaimed DC film that made headlines when it was pulled from film festivals for copyright issues. While its notoriety is a result of the legal battles surrounding it, the dark comedy still holds an impressive 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Calling The People's Joker a parody doesn't do it justice. It is an autobiographical queer coming-of-age story that uses our familiarity with DC characters to tell a story about transitioning in adulthood. It blends comedy and drama, animation and live action, and a comic book world with the post-COVID entertainment industry. It builds on a long legacy of campy defiance in queer cinema, but it finds a way to put its own modern spin on it.
It follows Joker the Harlequin, a terrible comedian in a twisted version of the DC Universe where Batman is a TV personality and comedy is strictly controlled by an authoritarian regime. She narrates the whole story as it follows Joker from her childhood in "Smallville" to her career in Gotham City to her transition and her relationship with the toxic "Mr. J".
The People's Joker is one of those movies whose genius is easily dismissed. On the surface, it's not a "good" movie. Joker's narration constantly interrupts the storyline, the editing is over-the-top with its non-stop greenscreen, and the art style of the animated sequences changes every scene. However, it is this exact DIY style that makes it such a wonderful piece of trans art.
"Bad" and campy movies are the cornerstone of queer cinema. There's a reason that one of the most famous gay filmmakers, John Waters, is called the "Pope of Trash". Growing up queer in any era, you are constantly told that you are wrong. The things you want are wrong. You are "bad". So when a queer movie is "bad" in the traditional sense, it resonates with you because you are also "bad" in the traditional sense.
The People's Joker embodies this fully. It's sincere and direct. It feels like a DIY attempt to replicate the CGI and green-screen heavy superhero movies in the same way that transitioning can feel like a DIY attempt to appear cisgender.
I strongly recommend it to any trans person, but I think there's something for everyone in the rollercoaster that is The People's Joker.
This was the directorial debut of Vera Drew, an Emmy-nominated editor and comedy writer, and it won her an award for Breakthrough Director at the Gotham Awards and a John Cassavetes Award nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards. Now, her next feature is set to be a found footage horror comedy.
The Transgender Film Center just debuted its first Found Footage Feature Fund in partnership with Duplass Brothers Productions (Creep). It awards a single $25,000 cash grant to fund a feature film, with creative support from Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice, development support from Kevin Nicklaus, and post-production services from Aesthetica Post. Basically, it provides anything you could possibly need to make a feature film. Vera Drew won with her project Trandemic.
As of right now, we don't know much about the project, but Drew has described the project as “cosmic found footage horror-comedy.” I, for one, have nothing but confidence in Drew and look forward to her sophomore project.
