The Todd Phillips Quote That Inspired Vera Drew to Become ‘The People’s Joker’
While doing press for “Joker,” Todd Phillips talked about why he stopped making comedy movies like “The Hangover” trilogy. The director told Vanity Fair, “Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture,” said Phillips “There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore — I’ll tell you why, because all the fucking funny guys are like, ‘Fuck this shit, because I don’t want to offend you.’”
The quote, which got a great deal of play in the media and social media, ticked off a number of people, including comedy writer and director Bri LeRose (“Lady Dynamite,” “Arrested Development”), who tweeted, “I will only watch this coward’s joker movie if Vera Drew re-edits it.”
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“Bri then Venmo’d me 12 dollars,” said Drew, when she was a guest on an upcoming episode of the Toolkit podcast discussing the origin of her new film “The People’s Joker.” “I’m not saying that every autistic person would do this, but with my autism I don’t understand sarcasm or irony. I saw that as my first artistic commission.”
At the time Drew was one of the biggest television editors in alt-comedy world, having spent the better of the last decade sitting in in editing bays with everyone from Sascha Baron Cohen (“Who Is America?”) to Nathan Fielder (“Nathan for You”), to Eric Andre, to Tim Heidecker & Eric Wareheim, whose office she used to shoot “The People’s Joker” in just five days. So loading a copy of Phillip’s “Joker” into her AVID and doing her “Soderbergh thing with it” (a reference to the “Ocean 11” director’s noted hobby of re-editing of classics like “Indiana Jones” and “2001”) was second nature.
Drew, unlike her friend LeRose, wasn’t even that mad at what Phillips has said, instead finding irony in his comment.
“I understand that reaction on some level from people just because we do really live in reactive times,” said Drew, acknowledging some of the flack she’s caught on Twitter. “It’s such a funny thing though coming from a guy who made a comedy movie, because I think ‘Joker’ 2019 is a really funny movie. It’s super dark but really funny, let alone somebody who just, like, made a billion-dollar comedy movie.”
As Drew played with the movie, adding fart noises and making the dark comedy even funnier, her appreciation of Phillip’s work also grew.
“That movie inspired me when I saw it,” said Drew. “It talked about class struggle, it talked about the mental health crisis, here was a character whose entire family system was failing him, and he just wanted to make people laugh, and people were just exploiting him every turn, and, you know, as the ‘transgender Forrest Gump of the alt-comedy post-production world,’ (Drew’s ironic knick name for herself) I really resonated with that, because yeah, this is what it’s like trying to be a weirdo making stuff in America.”
Unlike LeRose (“she just watches stuff like ‘The Whale Rider’ and hates superhero movies”), Drew loves the DC Universe, comic books, and describes her aesthetic as “very older brother dorm room vibes,” and points to the “Chappie” t-shirt she was wearing during interview as proof. Not only did this extra time with Phillip’s Joker make her start to see herself in Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar-winning portrayal, it made her think back about what an impact director Joel Schumacher’s 1990s “Batman” films had on her growing up.
“I remembered the experience of seeing ‘Batman Forever’ in theaters and being like that was when I figured out I was trans just seeing Nicole Kidman,” said Drew.
Soon these experiences re-editing “Joker” — combined with the onset of unemployment, career panic, and isolation of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic — spurred Drew to start turning her re-edit into more of very personal found footage narrative, where her own origin story as trans woman in the comedy world started to merge with that of the Joker’s. Eventually, the found footage remix narrative grew into more of a live-action scripted narrative, which she recruited LeRose to co-write with her, saying, “You’re the one who got me into this.”
Asked if she knows if Phillips has seen her film, or even knows about its existence, Drew said she no clue, adding, “I hope he sees the movie someday, and I hope they don’t get asked too much about it during their press cycle [for the upcoming ‘Joker 2’ sequel].”
Look out for IndieWire’s “Toolkit” episode with Vera Drew on podcast platforms April 11.
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