Speaker 1: Cool media.
Speaker 2: This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis, and
Speaker 2: once again it does continue to be happening here as
Speaker 2: a massive wave of police repression is levied against students
Speaker 2: protesting the ongoing Palestinian genocide. Since it's been so busy
Speaker 2: and hectic, I thought to end this week on a
Speaker 2: bit of a lighter note. Last week I did an
Speaker 2: episode on a new movie titled The People's Joker, an
Speaker 2: unauthorized Batman parody through the lens of a surprisingly genuine
Speaker 2: queer coming of age story by transgender filmmaker Vera Drew.
Speaker 2: If you want to hear me geek out about that
Speaker 2: movie and gay Batman stuff, you can listen to that
Speaker 2: episode from last week. But this episode is going to
Speaker 2: delve more into the diy nature of this movie, some
Speaker 2: behind the scenes, and how you go from an idea
Speaker 2: to a piece of wacky queer art playing in a
Speaker 2: movie theater or a TV show on your local cable
Speaker 2: access TV station. So I talked to two trans women
Speaker 2: who are currently making independent queer media. The aforementioned Vera Drew,
Speaker 2: as well as Ella Yeerman, host of the late night
Speaker 2: comedy show Late Stage Live. Transgender and a comedian, the
Speaker 2: two most persecuted classes. So I've been keeping up with
Speaker 2: Ella's indie transgender gen Z comedy project since it first
Speaker 2: got announced earlier this year. I have kind of a
Speaker 2: love hate relationship with the late night comedy news format,
Speaker 2: and I myself have thrown around the idea of playing
Speaker 2: with that format. So when I first heard about Ella's
Speaker 2: new show, Late Stage Live, my first thought was, damn it.
Speaker 2: That's such a good title for a show, and now
Speaker 2: I can't use it. Just this immense sense of jealousy
Speaker 2: washed over me, and I've had to watch everything She's
Speaker 2: put out since then.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 3: I'm Ella Yeerman. My pronouns are she Her. I am
Speaker 3: a comedian, journalist, writer living in Brooklyn. I host Late
Speaker 3: Stage Live, which is a queer gen Z public access
Speaker 3: late night show on Brooklyn Public Access and YouTube. And
Speaker 3: I also host T for T Comedy, which is Brooklyn's
Speaker 3: premiere all trans stand.
Speaker 4: Up comedy show. We film in a Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: Public Access studio called brick Bric in front of a
Speaker 3: live studio audience, and the vaguest pitch I give to
Speaker 3: people who have no idea what the show is is
Speaker 3: that it's what if the Daily Show was hosted by
Speaker 3: a transgender woman, and we draw a lot of comparisons
Speaker 3: to The Daily Show by virtue of sort of similar formats.
Speaker 3: But myself and my writers are really interested in sort of,
Speaker 3: for lack of a better term, queering the late night
Speaker 3: format and sort of exploring what late night can do
Speaker 3: for a younger, more radical political audience. The Daily Show
Speaker 3: was like a really big radicalizing force, I think for
Speaker 3: a certain generation of people. Really, John Stewart took that
Speaker 3: show and turned it into a really powerful tool for
Speaker 3: getting people engaged and aware of things that they might
Speaker 3: not have otherwise been aware of. But the culture has
Speaker 3: really shifted in terms of politics, in terms of media
Speaker 3: consumption since John started The Daily Show in the nineties.
Speaker 3: We have shows like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
Speaker 3: We have shows like My Coworkers and Bosses at some
Speaker 3: More News and when we have like all of the
Speaker 3: alternative media sphere ranging from like Tucker Carlson and Alex
Speaker 3: Jones to the Young Turks to everybody and their mom
Speaker 3: on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Now, kids these days don't really watch the news. I
Speaker 2: don't know anyone my age who's tuning into MSNBC A
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two statistica survey of gen Z reported sixty
Speaker 2: percent of respondents never go to local or national papers
Speaker 2: for news, and only a respect of five percent checked
Speaker 2: their local or national papers for news daily, weekly, or
Speaker 2: once a month, but fifty percent of gen Z check
Speaker 2: social media daily for news, with seventy five percent reporting
Speaker 2: they check at least once a week. TikTok reigns supreme
Speaker 2: for information dissemination. Over one third of adults under the
Speaker 2: age of thirty regularly scroll the app for news, often
Speaker 2: treating it like a search engine, with the rest of
Speaker 2: the youths and young adults going to YouTube as well
Speaker 2: as other social media apps to fill in the information gaps,
Speaker 2: as well as podcasts such as this.
Speaker 3: My writers and I especially read Pope. My headwriter and
Speaker 3: I talk a lot about just like where our generation
Speaker 3: is getting its information from and where it's consuming media,
Speaker 3: and how ideas and political ideas are being disseminated, especially
Speaker 3: in the age of short form content. With TikTok and
Speaker 3: the democratization of information. We did a whole episode about
Speaker 3: sort of misinformation and the democratization of information a few
Speaker 3: months ago, where there's like, obviously all of these benefits
Speaker 3: to the lack of centralization of media consumption. We're seeing
Speaker 3: a lot of that with the Palasine stuff right now.
Speaker 3: People don't have to rely on the New York Times,
Speaker 3: people don't have to rely on these big media institutions
Speaker 3: with their obvious biases to get information. But it also
Speaker 3: sort of engenders this, I think, this very specific attitude
Speaker 3: towards intellectually engaging with information. The platforms and the systems
Speaker 3: that we use really encourage very quick opinions and fast
Speaker 3: reactions and picking up your phone and talking immediately about
Speaker 3: something as quickly as possible hot take political environments, and
Speaker 3: we were really interested in looking at a format that
Speaker 3: has historically been more about a team of people with
Speaker 3: multiple perspectives coming together to create one piece of analysis
Speaker 3: and taking longer to look at those pieces of analysis
Speaker 3: and being able to really dig into data. And then
Speaker 3: what putting that into a late night format means. We
Speaker 3: have a live audience, which a lot of like stuff
Speaker 3: on YouTube doesn't have, and we have a lot of
Speaker 3: the trappings of like og late night. We have like sketches,
Speaker 3: and we have correspondents, and we have a theme song,
Speaker 3: and a lot of that has sort of gone away
Speaker 3: as we've moved more into like a YouTube media sphere,
Speaker 3: so it's been exciting to both bring that back for
Speaker 3: like esthetic and nostalgia's sake, and then also to sort
Speaker 3: of see what and I think the shows in early stages.
Speaker 3: So I am excited to keep playing with this but
Speaker 3: finding out like what exactly the package does for the content.
Speaker 3: We talk a lot about like form follows function and
Speaker 3: vice versa, but I think there's like intentionality behind presenting
Speaker 3: it as a late night show. It's not just like
Speaker 3: for aesthetic value.
Speaker 2: Speaking of late night televised comedy, The People's Joker follows
Speaker 2: an aspiring comedian who goes by Joker the Harlequin as
Speaker 2: she attempts to host a Lauren Michael's TV show legally
Speaker 2: distinct from snl Oh, and on her way, she transits
Speaker 2: her gender and fights Batman. The project started a few
Speaker 2: years ago because a friend of filmmaker Vera Drew jokingly
Speaker 2: commissioned her for twelve dollars to make a re edit
Speaker 2: of Todd Phillips's Joker movie. Phillips had been in the
Speaker 2: news cycle complaining that quote unquote, woke culture was making
Speaker 2: it too hard to make comedy, which is interesting coming
Speaker 2: from a guy who's continually made some of the most
Speaker 2: successful comedies in the past twenty years. But I digress.
Speaker 2: Here's Vera Drew talking about how The People's Joker ballooned
Speaker 2: from an ironic re edit of the in Cell Joker
Speaker 2: movie into a whole new piece of queer cinema.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I started doing it, like in earnest. I started
Speaker 5: like actually re editing the movie. And I had worked
Speaker 5: at Absolutely Productions for years as an editor and had
Speaker 5: kind of come up as an alternative comedy editor, So
Speaker 5: you know, at that point it was probably just going
Speaker 5: to be like a lot of bart sound effects and
Speaker 5: woosh noises and slips and slide whistles. But as I
Speaker 5: was working on it and kind of just making this
Speaker 5: like big piece of like bound footage video art, like
Speaker 5: a narrative kind of just like fell into place, and
Speaker 5: I it kind of just came in an instant and
Speaker 5: I was just like, oh, okay, I think I actually
Speaker 5: want to make like a coming of age film, but
Speaker 5: I want to make like a parody of The Joker,
Speaker 5: like in that process and kind of just like tell
Speaker 5: like a really earnest and super personal autobiographical story about
Speaker 5: my life and growing up in the Midwest and coming
Speaker 5: out as trans and comedy and you know, my relationship
Speaker 5: with my mom and toxic relationship I was in and stuff,
Speaker 5: but kind of process and mythologize all of that through
Speaker 5: Batman characters. So that's kind of the origin of the movie.
Speaker 5: I guess I had also kind of been kicking around
Speaker 5: an idea for like a body horror, like a transpot
Speaker 5: horror movie before that that was basically like about a
Speaker 5: drag queen who was physically addicted to irony and like
Speaker 5: couldn't like survive without it, but it was also like
Speaker 5: destroying her from the inside out, and the two ideas
Speaker 5: kind of like merged together into this sort of I guess,
Speaker 5: like ver Drew, I watched a lot of Batman growing up,
Speaker 5: but from a weirdly young age, I was also always
Speaker 5: weirdly fascinated by late night TV. My parents never watched
Speaker 5: the news, but they watched late night. They got their
Speaker 5: news from Stephen Colbert, they got their news from, at
Speaker 5: least at a certain point, Jimmy Fallon, although that fell
Speaker 5: off quite quickly. But I've just always been incredibly fascinated
Speaker 5: by the whole late night format as a cultural source
Speaker 5: for news. At a certain point around twenty seventeen, YouTube
Speaker 5: started pushing late night clips into everyone's feeds, and everyone
Speaker 5: just got so inundated with this style of political comedy.
Speaker 3: I also grew up on The Daily Show and Colbert.
Speaker 3: My parents are both journalists, so I probably am a
Speaker 3: little biased towards being someone who did read the paper
Speaker 3: growing up, who did like watch CNN growing up. But
Speaker 3: I recognized there's this huge chunk of America who gets
Speaker 3: their news from yeah, Colbert's monologue, from Letterman's monologue, from
Speaker 3: the Colbert Report, which is such a.
Speaker 4: Crazy, very very scary.
Speaker 2: I had so many like conservative family members who did
Speaker 2: not realize the Colbert Rapport was satire, took it as
Speaker 2: a legitimate news source.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: I mean when Trevor Noah took over The Daily Show,
Speaker 3: they tried to do like their version of the Colbert
Speaker 3: Rapport with Jordan Klepper's The Opposition, And I think there
Speaker 3: are a number of reasons that didn't work out, but
Speaker 3: one of them being that the like the Colbert Rapport
Speaker 3: was parodying the other Fox News guy. Yeah, I was
Speaker 3: pairting that whole realm of people and the Opposition was
Speaker 3: partying info wars, which is almost an unparitable thing. So
Speaker 3: like the like the right wing media ecosystem has shifted
Speaker 3: so far that that you can't really get a Colbert
Speaker 3: Report now, it just doesn't work. But yeah, like there's
Speaker 3: so many people who get their information directly from that.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot about like the creator responsibility,
Speaker 3: like which is a word that gets start or a
Speaker 3: lot around in social media spaces. But it's interesting to
Speaker 3: think that Colbert now and Stuart and even like Seth
Speaker 3: Meyers have this responsibility as like informants to their audience
Speaker 3: in some sorts of the sole source of news for
Speaker 3: those people. When we were writing our misinformation piece, we
Speaker 3: did talk about how in twenty fifteen, there was a
Speaker 3: poll that came out that said that like the majority
Speaker 3: of liberals, like the highest percentage of rules got their
Speaker 3: news from The.
Speaker 4: Daily Show with John Stewart.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot about the excuse John used
Speaker 3: to give to conservatives at the time who would criticize
Speaker 3: him for not doing his due diligence on any given subject.
Speaker 4: He would often say, well, we're a comedy show.
Speaker 3: The show that comes on after us is Pupp's making
Speaker 3: prank phone calls, and he would sort of like deflect
Speaker 3: that responsibility by saying, I'm an entertainer first. And I
Speaker 3: think that one of the big things that has changed
Speaker 3: in the last twenty years or however long, is that
Speaker 3: the line between entertainer and journalist has totally blurred. With
Speaker 3: like the rise of like video essays on YouTube, and
Speaker 3: just like again like the democratization of information and content creation,
Speaker 3: everyone is sort of an entertainer, everyone is sort of
Speaker 3: a journalist. There is like a responsibility that comes with
Speaker 3: having a platform, and so obviously, like our show takes
Speaker 3: a great deal of care to make sure that the
Speaker 3: information we're presenting is is accurate and correct, and that
Speaker 3: the analysis we're doing is as empathetic and thoughtful as
Speaker 3: we can.
Speaker 2: I do think there is real value in going after
Speaker 2: late night as a specific culturally impactful mode that isn't
Speaker 2: just comedy, isn'to just to the news, and in its
Speaker 2: quest to be a little bit of both, it becomes
Speaker 2: its own thing. I've always been interested to see what
Speaker 2: a late night show with my politics would look like,
Speaker 2: and I think to some degree, you can look at
Speaker 2: John Stewart in the twoth and I've been watching Stuart's
Speaker 2: new stuff on the Daily Show every Monday, mostly just
Speaker 2: to see how he's going to handle this landscape, which
Speaker 2: is very different from when he left in twenty fifteen. Nowadays,
Speaker 2: I think you can look to John Oliver as being
Speaker 2: probably slightly more radical, but even still there's a decent gap.
Speaker 2: Certainly some YouTube shows try to fill in that gap,
Speaker 2: but I've really enjoyed watching the Late Stage team apply
Speaker 2: classic late night stylings to a more radical queer form
Speaker 2: of politics, including like Ella mentioned, correspondence segments as well
Speaker 2: as actual reporting. Late Stage Live did a recent piece
Speaker 2: on the effects of Libs of TikTok. It was a
Speaker 2: really good look at something that I oddly hadn't seen
Speaker 2: anyone else really interrogate before, actually looking at the people
Speaker 2: that Libs of TikTok has targeted and how that has
Speaker 2: literally affected their lives.
Speaker 3: Obviously, we are still like growing and trying new things.
Speaker 3: I was really proud of the Libs of TikTok piece.
Speaker 3: It was the first time we'd done like firsthand recording
Speaker 3: on the show, and it's like something I want to
Speaker 3: keep exploring. One of my favorite parts of the Daily
Speaker 3: Show is the more serious like field pieces they end
Speaker 3: up doing that obviously also have comedic games applied to.
Speaker 4: Them, but also are like real journalism that.
Speaker 3: Maybe mainstream news institutions don't cover, and that's really exciting
Speaker 3: and obviously coming from like a specifically queer perspective. There's
Speaker 3: not a ton of specifically queer news. There's a few magazines,
Speaker 3: but there's nothing huge.
Speaker 2: It could happen here, will return after these messages we
Speaker 2: now returned to. It could happen here. Something I noticed
Speaker 2: about both Late Stage Lives and The People's Joker is
Speaker 2: that they're not just made by queer people, but the
Speaker 2: work itself feels queer. I think part of the reason
Speaker 2: why is that both carry this spirit of patchwork and
Speaker 2: collect aberration, proudly featuring a sense of punkish outside noess
Speaker 2: that's uninterested in being tamed for a sis straight audience.
Speaker 2: The end result is one holy reflective of the community
Speaker 2: that has fostered the arts creation. To extrapolate on this,
Speaker 2: let's return to my interview with Vera Drew. I know
Speaker 2: for a while you were getting people to send in
Speaker 2: to like send in stuff to get put in the film.
Speaker 2: There was kind of it was like a very collaborative
Speaker 2: start to this project, and I am I am interested
Speaker 2: in that aspect of like how this is like both
Speaker 2: like a collage multimedia piece, but also it's not like
Speaker 2: the work of like one singular artist. It's like a
Speaker 2: very like queer community made thing. And it definitely feels
Speaker 2: that way, especially with all of like all like the sets,
Speaker 2: all of like the art. It's so many different styles
Speaker 2: mashed together into like this beautiful mosaic. And I'm interested
Speaker 2: in like your decision to have it be that collaborative
Speaker 2: thing and how that kind of came together.
Speaker 5: Thank you for asking, because yeah, I don't really get
Speaker 5: to talk about that that much. And it's it's definitely
Speaker 5: like a part of this that really, I think is
Speaker 5: why the movie just feels inherently queer. You know, we
Speaker 5: had just this incredible team of people working on it
Speaker 5: because you know, like I said, like I did cash
Speaker 5: in like every favor I had, you know, to cash in.
Speaker 5: But you know, the movie started as this like video
Speaker 5: remix thing, and then I think as we were writing
Speaker 5: the script and it became more narrative driven. It was
Speaker 5: just like we were always writing this script that was
Speaker 5: very impossible to film. Uh, you know, just a very
Speaker 5: like there's Batmobile and like, yeah, you know, fuck are
Speaker 5: you gonna do that? But we weren't really thinking about
Speaker 5: that as much. We were just like, let's just write
Speaker 5: this movie, and let's just write it as like a
Speaker 5: comic book movie, like let's have the tropes of a
Speaker 5: comic book movie and a queer coming of age film
Speaker 5: and and just fully execute those. And you know, I
Speaker 5: think the idea of it becoming sort of this mixed
Speaker 5: media piece was was very gradual. I think like it
Speaker 5: was one of the many things about this This movie
Speaker 5: was very intuitively like I never had a budget. Really,
Speaker 5: I would never make a movie like this again. It
Speaker 5: was it was very like kind of figuring it out
Speaker 5: as you go in a lot of ways, especially just
Speaker 5: on the like business side of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has that kind of Inland Empire uncanniness a
Speaker 2: little bit totally.
Speaker 5: There's definitely that. It's definitely I'm working backwards this, this
Speaker 5: is my Inland Empire and you know, like twenty years
Speaker 5: I'll have my eraser head finally. Yes, yes, But it
Speaker 5: really just kind of followed that like sort of intuitive path.
Speaker 5: And I kind of announced what I was doing and
Speaker 5: I said, you know, my friend and I are making
Speaker 5: this queer joker parody and anybody who wants to help us,
Speaker 5: like you know right here, and I kind of at
Speaker 5: that point it still was in this kind of like
Speaker 5: loose space of what is this really? But just so
Speaker 5: many artists came forward, and most of them artists who
Speaker 5: had never worked on film or TV. So it was
Speaker 5: a lot of just like fine artists and painters and
Speaker 5: illustrators and visual artists. And then like a lot of
Speaker 5: people too, just that I had seen for years on
Speaker 5: trans Twitter or like like featured in like very like
Speaker 5: fringe like zines and shit like that. So it's just like,
Speaker 5: holy shit, like we could really make this movie that
Speaker 5: looks like nothing you've ever seen before, and and we
Speaker 5: can do it too in a way that like we're
Speaker 5: creating original art, you know, like all the art in
Speaker 5: it is original. I mean, like we recreate a lot
Speaker 5: of sets and stuff from famous comic book movies, but
Speaker 5: like it was painstakingly created, and every character had its
Speaker 5: own character design, you know, original character design. Like we
Speaker 5: couldn't just take mister mix auplick and put them in
Speaker 5: the movie, Like we had to go, okay, like how
Speaker 5: can we clear mister mix alepla like, Okay, we'll make
Speaker 5: a mix mixy and they'll be like a weird like
Speaker 5: floating like Hanna Barbera cartoon type, but it's kind of
Speaker 5: more hr puff and stuff. Was the vibe we went
Speaker 5: for there, very sit in marty Croft, even with a
Speaker 5: community of queer artists. How does one go from the
Speaker 5: idea stage of say, hey, let's make a more queer
Speaker 5: and radically oriented late night comedy show to having it
Speaker 5: actually be filmed and then broadcast. So I asked Ella
Speaker 5: what allowed her to get this project off the ground
Speaker 5: and what her process was like going from an idea
Speaker 5: to something that's now on air.
Speaker 3: So, like I said, I've been writing for Some More
Speaker 3: News for three years and I love that job and
Speaker 3: I love my coworkers there, but they are doing one thing,
Speaker 3: and I, over the last year or so, sort of
Speaker 3: started to realize that I also wanted to be doing
Speaker 3: this other thing. I wanted the live studio audience. I
Speaker 3: wanted a very queer focused show. I wanted an in
Speaker 3: person writer's room ultimately, or like a local writer's room.
Speaker 3: Because everyone else had Some More News is La based
Speaker 3: as far as I'm aware, and I'm the only East
Speaker 3: Coaster out here, and I just wanted the whole bunch
Speaker 3: of things that Somewhere News wasn't doing. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I guess I have to do that myself because there's
Speaker 3: no one else doing it that hire me. But I
Speaker 3: grateful that I had my experience with Somewhere News and
Speaker 3: continue to have my experience with them, because I structured
Speaker 3: our writer's room very similarly to them, and I took
Speaker 3: a lot of inspiration from their early stages in terms
Speaker 3: of like the creative side of things and then in
Speaker 3: terms of like finding people and making it happen. Something
Speaker 3: I've learned my whole life as a creative is that
Speaker 3: you just sort of have to fucking do it. I've
Speaker 3: been like self producing work since I was eighteen. When
Speaker 3: I was eighteen, my community theater in my hometown had
Speaker 3: a big all hands meeting where they were like, hey,
Speaker 3: we're out of money.
Speaker 4: What do we do?
Speaker 3: And I said, you should do a Shakespeare play because
Speaker 3: you don't have to pay for the royalties for that,
Speaker 3: and they were like, well, we don't have anyone who
Speaker 3: wants to direct a Shakespeare play. And I said, okay,
Speaker 3: then I'll do it, and they were like, okay, then
Speaker 3: you do it, and I sort of had to just
Speaker 3: do it. And I did it, and it was messy
Speaker 3: and pretty amateurish, and then I did it again the
Speaker 3: next year, and I got better, and I did it
Speaker 3: again the next year. It got better after that, and
Speaker 3: then after I graduated college, I started doing stand up again.
Speaker 3: I just stand up a little bit pre transition, and
Speaker 3: it was terrible, and so I started to become a
Speaker 3: girl and I started doing stand up again, and I
Speaker 3: realized there wasn't a ton of spaces in the stand
Speaker 3: up scene for trans people, and I.
Speaker 4: Said, okay, so let's host a trans show.
Speaker 3: And I found a bar and I got in touch
Speaker 3: with the bar, and then I just started dming comics
Speaker 3: and I said, hey, I don't really know any of
Speaker 3: you because I'm not really integrated into this comedy scene,
Speaker 3: but please, and the show solely grew and I started
Speaker 3: to meet more people, and then by the time I
Speaker 3: had the idea to do late stage, I had been
Speaker 3: doing my show for about a year and a half
Speaker 3: and I was pretty integrated into the comedy scene, so
Speaker 3: I was never worried about finding writers in terms of quantity.
Speaker 3: I reached out to my headwriter Read Pope last April
Speaker 3: after seeing a similarly live show by my friend Kay
Speaker 3: Loggins called Knight Live that she does every so often,
Speaker 3: and I helped her with the production day on that
Speaker 3: It was a thirteen hour production day, and I just
Speaker 3: remember having so much fun realizing that you could find
Speaker 3: people in the artistic community like enough people who were
Speaker 3: willing to do it. So yeah, I reached out to
Speaker 3: Read in April and I said, Hey, I have this idea,
Speaker 3: and they said, cool, here's a list of people I
Speaker 3: think would be fun to work with. And we reached
Speaker 3: out to a small handful of writers and some of
Speaker 3: them got back to us and some of them didn't,
Speaker 3: and we slowly found our team of people who were
Speaker 3: able to commit to a first monthly and now weekly
Speaker 3: writers meeting.
Speaker 2: After the writing team was assembled, they still needed to
Speaker 2: find a place to record the show. The director and
Speaker 2: executive producer Octavia helped find the public access station in
Speaker 2: Brooklyn that Late Stage now shoots at, which is open
Speaker 2: to the public.
Speaker 3: Do you have to take a five week course there
Speaker 3: where you get certified in all of the equipment and
Speaker 3: then you just get to sort of reserve their space
Speaker 3: and do whatever you want there, and over the course
Speaker 3: of those five weeks, Read, Octavia and I would take
Speaker 3: this like bi weekly class and afterwards we'd go and
Speaker 3: get food and we would just talk about what the
Speaker 3: show needed and where it was. Every time a roll
Speaker 3: popped up in discussion that we didn't have yet, Octavia
Speaker 3: or Read or I would say, oh, I know someone,
Speaker 3: and we'd pick up the phone and call them immediately.
Speaker 3: And so it was a very organic growth in terms
Speaker 3: of production team at first, and that just comes from
Speaker 3: like working within your own community and like finding an
Speaker 3: artistic community. I don't think I could be doing this
Speaker 3: two years ago, Like I'm really grateful for having hosted
Speaker 3: a stand up show for many years first to integrate
Speaker 3: myself into that community and knowing a lot of like hardworking,
Speaker 3: multifaceted artists.
Speaker 2: Once again, the ability to make friends both in your
Speaker 2: local community and even online remains one of the best
Speaker 2: ways to get shit done. The collaborative multi media collage
Speaker 2: aspect not only in views a project with a sense
Speaker 2: of DIY queerness, it also makes tackling a project as
Speaker 2: gargantuan as The People's Joker a bit more feasible.
Speaker 5: We'd have these like artists with like you know, like
Speaker 5: Matty Forrest makes beautiful puppets and just beautiful arts. So
Speaker 5: it's like, okay, like obviously we're an ad. Maddie asked
Speaker 5: Maddie to make the mixele Plick puppet and like it'll
Speaker 5: be like a Sid Mardi Kroft puppet. And like one
Speaker 5: of the other artists that came through was Salem Hughes,
Speaker 5: who makes these like three D like Low Holly three
Speaker 5: D models, And at that point it was like, okay,
Speaker 5: well that obviously has to be like our bat cave,
Speaker 5: Like we'll make it look like a like a Doom
Speaker 5: like N sixty four video game or something, and the
Speaker 5: batmobile too. So it's just kind of like figuring, like
Speaker 5: breaking up everybody's role into these individual pieces and like
Speaker 5: kind of going by like both physical locations, like reserving
Speaker 5: one artist for each physical location that we'd see pop
Speaker 5: up in things. You know, like Paul McBride did all
Speaker 5: of the Joker Apartment shots and we recreated Woking Phoenix's
Speaker 5: Joker apartment, but you know, change the color and the
Speaker 5: wallpaper and blah blah blah, and Paul again like another
Speaker 5: person who just like Paul, just makes three D models
Speaker 5: just to like relax. I guess, like he just makes
Speaker 5: these beautiful interiors, and it was like, okay, cool, we'll
Speaker 5: make like a beautiful, like hyper realistic interior. I never
Speaker 5: really forced my aesthetic on anybody. I really just allowed
Speaker 5: people to just kind of like lean into they're aesthetic
Speaker 5: and just do what they wanted and kind of like
Speaker 5: just run wild and be like, okay, so you make
Speaker 5: low polyart, like we'll do just do that in this case,
Speaker 5: and our amusement park set was made by this artist
Speaker 5: at GRAT and he just makes beautiful DMT like psychedelic imagery.
Speaker 5: So it was like we got this you know, hyper
Speaker 5: crazy like weird perspective amusement park from him, and we
Speaker 5: turned that into a three D model, you know, rather
Speaker 5: than going like.
Speaker 4: How are we going to make this work?
Speaker 5: You know, like this is a this is a flat painting,
Speaker 5: you know, like it's a location we keep seeing in
Speaker 5: the movie, like how are we going to make it work?
Speaker 5: But it was just like just kind of saying yes
Speaker 5: and to everything and really allowing everybody to just play
Speaker 5: to their best strengths. And I knew that like my
Speaker 5: voice and my vision were always going to be there,
Speaker 5: like my face was going to be on screen for
Speaker 5: most of the movie, and like it's my story. Like
Speaker 5: I was never really worried about losing myself or disappearing
Speaker 5: in the art at all, and instinctually, I just kind
Speaker 5: of knew it would make the movie feel very clear,
Speaker 5: and that's really just what it was.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 5: It was really just this big kind of DIY community
Speaker 5: art project, and it was a big task for me
Speaker 5: to kind of like find the unified aesthetic. But thankfully,
Speaker 5: you know, like I've done VFX, I had a lot
Speaker 5: of other VFX artists helping me work on the film,
Speaker 5: and we were able to kind of find a through
Speaker 5: line in the way like all filmmakers have to. You know,
Speaker 5: you just stick to a color scheme, you stick to
Speaker 5: a very certain type of pacing, and you know, and
Speaker 5: musically too, like I think we really like were able
Speaker 5: to like bridge a lot of the things together just
Speaker 5: by like having constant music playing. And you know, I
Speaker 5: think I was really influenced by Natural Born Killers and
Speaker 5: Pink Floyd's The Wall and also Headwig in The Angry Inch.
Speaker 5: I think we're like kind of the Big Three, and
Speaker 5: also returned to Oz. Those are the Big four and
Speaker 5: just to round it out to five then Batman forever,
Speaker 5: of course. But I think like a movie's never really
Speaker 5: been made. I think plenty of movies are made like
Speaker 5: this all the time, like where these like little communities
Speaker 5: of people get together, but like this was like an
Speaker 5: intercontinental kind of community project and it was beautiful, Like
Speaker 5: I'm so glad we did it, and it was it
Speaker 5: was an opportunity to really hopefully like get a lot
Speaker 5: of artists visibility in spaces that they normally wouldn't be visible,
Speaker 5: and an opportunity to to like work with a lot
Speaker 5: of really talented people and allow them and make them
Speaker 5: feel valued.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I just worked on so many things where it's like
Speaker 5: you get art back from somebody and then you're like
Speaker 5: we got to send this back or you're fired or
Speaker 5: you know whatever, And this is like I never wanted
Speaker 5: to be that. It was very much like this is
Speaker 5: kind of all of our movie in a way. And
Speaker 5: now that the movie's out there too, I really think
Speaker 5: of it. It's like it's just it's got its own life,
Speaker 5: like it's kind of no longer mine, and it kind
Speaker 5: of never really was. It was always like ours. It
Speaker 5: was always mine and my friends and you know, all
Speaker 5: the people that worked on it with me, And I
Speaker 5: think that is just really cool, And thanks for giving
Speaker 5: me the opportunity to talk about it, because I think
Speaker 5: it's one of the things that kind of gets lost
Speaker 5: about this project a lot, just because of how personal
Speaker 5: it is and because of our legal stuff. But like
Speaker 5: I would have never been able to make this if
Speaker 5: it wasn't for the team we will return to.
Speaker 2: It could happen here after these messages we now return to.
Speaker 2: It could happen here. What I find most inspiring about
Speaker 2: projects like The People's Joker and some of the other
Speaker 2: indie no budget transfilms by filmmakers like Alice Mayo, Mackay
Speaker 2: and Mia Moore, as well as projects like Late Stage Live,
Speaker 2: is that they demonstrate that we don't need to rely
Speaker 2: on big studios or big production companies to green light
Speaker 2: things in order to make our own stuff.
Speaker 4: You can just make it.
Speaker 2: Which is not to say that it's easy, but the
Speaker 2: biggest drive to getting something done is literally just getting
Speaker 2: it done. Is just doing it. And if people see
Speaker 2: you doing a cool thing, oddly enough, some of them
Speaker 2: will want to help you, which is kind of a
Speaker 2: bizarre notion, but it does end up being true.
Speaker 3: The core thing I've learned about producing work over the
Speaker 3: last many years is people are willing to do stuff
Speaker 3: if you do it first. If you prove to them
Speaker 3: that you're committed to something and have a cool idea,
Speaker 3: people will jump on board. Yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 3: been proven by how excited our audience has been for
Speaker 3: the show, how willing people have been to jump on
Speaker 3: and our entire crew and writing stuff is volunteer. Right now,
Speaker 3: We're making a little bit of money on Patreon, but
Speaker 3: certainly not enough to pay the twenty plus person team
Speaker 3: that ends up working with us every month, although that
Speaker 3: is the goal down the line. But yeah, people are
Speaker 3: willing to do a cool thing and volunteer their time.
Speaker 3: Artists want to be making stuff, and so it's just
Speaker 3: about doing it and then just doing it again. When
Speaker 3: I first started hosting my State up show, we did
Speaker 3: it the first time, and I spent months like came
Speaker 3: about it, and after the first month, I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, that was so hard. How am I
Speaker 3: going to find enough transcomics to you at a second time?
Speaker 3: How am I going to have the energy to do
Speaker 3: a second time? And my boyfriend at the time said,
Speaker 3: if you want it to be a monthly show, you
Speaker 3: just have to do it every month for a while,
Speaker 3: even if it sucks, and then eventually it will suck less.
Speaker 3: And he's right. He's still right, and I'm still doing
Speaker 3: that show two years later. And we did late Stage
Speaker 3: the first time, and it was several months push to
Speaker 3: get the first script out, and we got the first
Speaker 3: episode out and we were like, oh my god, Okay,
Speaker 3: let's do this again in one month.
Speaker 4: Can we do it?
Speaker 3: And we did it a second time and it was
Speaker 3: also fun and good, and then you just like figure
Speaker 3: out how to make it easier each time. And I
Speaker 3: will not deny that it is hard work. We are
Speaker 3: all slowly killing ourselves to make this show. I work
Speaker 3: a forty hour food service day job that I came
Speaker 3: directly from to do this interview. Everyone else on my
Speaker 3: show is either working full time on top of the show,
Speaker 3: or unemployed and slowly losing money. At various stage people
Speaker 3: would like to fire queer people. So every few weeks
Speaker 3: someone comes into a writer's meeting is.
Speaker 4: Like, guys, I lost my job. Hah. So I will
Speaker 4: not deny that it's hard, and I don't want to.
Speaker 3: I don't ever want someone to think of me saying
Speaker 3: just do it is like it's easy because it's a
Speaker 3: lot of work, and all of my team is like
Speaker 3: incredibly talented and has years of experience doing things. Everyone
Speaker 3: in the comedy scene in Brooklyn talks about like wanting
Speaker 3: to get staffed on a late night show, which is awesome,
Speaker 3: and I would love to get staffed on a late edge,
Speaker 3: Like though, that's the coveted job at the end of
Speaker 3: the line for the stand up community, but like, you
Speaker 3: don't have to wait for that. You can just make
Speaker 3: the work you're doing. And I've had conversations with my
Speaker 3: writers where they've all been like, this has been a
Speaker 3: really cool opportunity because at the very least I've sort
Speaker 3: of found out if I would actually want to write
Speaker 3: on a late night show. We talk about that as
Speaker 3: a coveted job, but maybe I don't want to do that.
Speaker 3: It's a very different skill than stand up and that's
Speaker 3: been a fun learning curve as well as hiring a
Speaker 3: bunch of stand ups. To write long form political analysis,
Speaker 3: you sort of have to herd cats to some degree.
Speaker 2: Even with a supportive community, so work can be really grueling,
Speaker 2: and the road from a finished movie to being on
Speaker 2: the big screen can be a monumental challenge. The People's
Speaker 2: Joker is slightly unique in this way because of its
Speaker 2: peculiar copyright status of being a fair use superhero parody
Speaker 2: using some of our culture's most recognizable iconography to tell
Speaker 2: a very personal story. Right before the movie was set
Speaker 2: to premiere at TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival back
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two, Warner Brothers sent a vaguely worded
Speaker 2: but threatening letter which resulted in the People's Joker of
Speaker 2: being pulled from the festival save for one late night screening.
Speaker 2: Yet throughout the legal chaos, Vera dru remained to steadfast
Speaker 2: to ensure the movie would be released the right way,
Speaker 2: on the big screen where it belongs. This film has had,
Speaker 2: like a I guess, a troubled history, some might say,
Speaker 2: and how are you able to stick with this project
Speaker 2: after encountering like hurdles and problems, like because a certain
Speaker 2: point it's like, is this like a some cost fallacy
Speaker 2: or something like how did you decide to like actually
Speaker 2: stick with this and like really fight for this as
Speaker 2: a as a piece of like expressive art.
Speaker 5: Gosh, you know, I mean I think I feel like
Speaker 5: I just didn't have like a choice really, Like I
Speaker 5: think when with the movie done and with how well
Speaker 5: just our first screening at Tiff went, like it was
Speaker 5: just like I was kind of at a point where
Speaker 5: I could shelve it, like cause that was really the
Speaker 5: other option, you know, put it just away for a
Speaker 5: few years and come back and maybe like you know,
Speaker 5: and public domain is a little bit more, you know,
Speaker 5: it's it falls under public domain because it will and
Speaker 5: like I mean, at least uh Joker and Batman will
Speaker 5: be in public domain in ten or fifteen years. So
Speaker 5: like that was like an idea. I guess that was
Speaker 5: floated to me a few times. Whro It's just like
Speaker 5: I don't I didn't want to wait that long, and
Speaker 5: I just I really put all I had into this movie,
Speaker 5: you know, like I can in every favor I had
Speaker 5: ever accumulated in Hollywood financially, Like I took out a
Speaker 5: huge loan to finish it, and it was just this big,
Speaker 5: deeply personal thing that I had made that originally really
Speaker 5: was just for me and my friends. Like it was
Speaker 5: just kind of a thing that I had just made,
Speaker 5: you know, maybe I would have shown it to like
Speaker 5: my Patreon or something. But like after a certain point,
Speaker 5: like it, you know, once we had that like premiere,
Speaker 5: it was just like like I can't just post this
Speaker 5: to YouTube. I can't like just dump it somewhere or
Speaker 5: like shelve it all my agents and stuff. I have
Speaker 5: way too many agents now, and they all were like
Speaker 5: telling me to that basically like it's it's it's okay
Speaker 5: that it's not coming out. We can basically just use
Speaker 5: this to get the next project going. But I mean
Speaker 5: I quickly realized in that process, like this movie is
Speaker 5: like a fucking like you don't show this movie to
Speaker 5: a studio executive and then they immediately are like, yeah,
Speaker 5: let's let's hire this person. They just want to like
Speaker 5: have lunch with this crazy bitch who made the Joker movie,
Speaker 5: you know. Like so it was like it just quickly
Speaker 5: became clear, like where like kind of just the people
Speaker 5: around me who had the best interest of the movie
Speaker 5: at heart, and also like just what felt bad and
Speaker 5: what felt right and what felt right really was like
Speaker 5: taking the movie out just to festivals and kind of
Speaker 5: doing like a secret screening tour, which is what we did,
Speaker 5: and that was really exciting and kind of like a
Speaker 5: jokerfied way of sort of getting this movie out there.
Speaker 5: And that was really just on an emotional and like
Speaker 5: personal level, really what carried me through.
Speaker 2: I was lucky enough to be in attendance at one
Speaker 2: of the Secret Festival screenings a few years back, and
Speaker 2: I was delighted to hear that nearly two years after
Speaker 2: it initially premiered at Tiff, the People's Joker was able
Speaker 2: to secure a distribution partner to put the movie in
Speaker 2: theaters nationwide. So once again I was fortunate enough to
Speaker 2: rewatch a piece of queer Batman art that otherwise would
Speaker 2: never been made under Warner Brothers Thumb and I think
Speaker 2: this is also the case with Late Stage Live and
Speaker 2: many of these new independent queer projects. They most likely
Speaker 2: would not be produced by one of the massive media
Speaker 2: conglomerates that controls almost everything. You see. The small, independent
Speaker 2: nature of these productions actually gives them an opportunity to
Speaker 2: be much more queer and politically radical than what would
Speaker 2: be allowed under Disney, Universal, Sony, Paramount, Warner Media Incorporated.
Speaker 3: We're like, obviously far more radical politically than any other
Speaker 3: late night show on the air right now. And it's
Speaker 3: something we've been thinking about as we attempt to scale
Speaker 3: and try to find people who are going to fund us,
Speaker 3: is that there are certainly people who could give us
Speaker 3: a lot of money who would also then really want
Speaker 3: to like limit the kind of speech we can make
Speaker 3: and the kind of opinions we can have, And so
Speaker 3: there's obviously a balance as we look for funding and
Speaker 3: growth opportunities. But Brick the Public Access Network is their
Speaker 3: whole thing is free speech, and so part of working
Speaker 3: with them is their commit to free speech and radical programming.
Speaker 2: I'm really interested in the choice to have it also
Speaker 2: be on cable access. I find that to be oddly
Speaker 2: compelling in an interesting way, and I wonder, like what
Speaker 2: led you to that decision.
Speaker 3: So part of that is like rules and regulations at
Speaker 3: Brick the Studio. So you take one hundred dollars five
Speaker 3: week class with them to learn how to use their stuff,
Speaker 3: and they offer a lot of other classes too. You
Speaker 3: can take a podcasting class to use their podcasting studio,
Speaker 3: or a field class to be able to rent out
Speaker 3: equipment and go do stuff in the field. A lot
Speaker 3: of people make documentaries with their equipment. It's a very
Speaker 3: cool team if you're in Brooklyn, you should go work
Speaker 3: with Brick.
Speaker 4: They're awesome.
Speaker 3: But on one of the contingencies of working in their
Speaker 3: space is that when you film something with them, you
Speaker 3: do eventually owe them a product that they air on
Speaker 3: their network, and that for us is the show. We're
Speaker 3: not doing a ton of other stuff right now, although
Speaker 3: you know, with infinite money and time, we would love
Speaker 3: to be doing many other things. But Brick is awesome
Speaker 3: and really values like free speech and creator freedom, and
Speaker 3: so even though we owe them a product, we get
Speaker 3: retain full ownership of our stuff. And so the way
Speaker 3: it is in this zany Internet landscape is that YouTube
Speaker 3: is the place to.
Speaker 4: Get eyes on a project.
Speaker 3: Like if I thought that public access TV was going
Speaker 3: to be the place to to like blow up, I
Speaker 3: maybe would be like focusing much harder on promoting that
Speaker 3: end of distribution. But I think for what we're making
Speaker 3: and what we're doing, YouTube and the Internet is like
Speaker 3: how to build an audience. But it's it does lend
Speaker 3: it like an interesting credibility to be on public access
Speaker 3: and esthetically we really like leaning into sort of like
Speaker 3: the nineties public access vibes. Part of that is the
Speaker 3: equipment we're using. Our cameras are not the most modern,
Speaker 3: so you get a slightly grainy vibe. You get. The
Speaker 3: backdrop is like string and papers sprung together. We're filming
Speaker 3: in four to three, which is a really strong decision. Well,
Speaker 3: actually we film in sixty nine, we export in four three, whatever,
Speaker 3: but it gives us a very distinct visual look.
Speaker 2: I think next episode we'll talk more about how so
Speaker 2: much queer video art feels like it's forced to be
Speaker 2: on YouTube and attempts to break out of that bubble.
Speaker 2: When The People's Joker was stuck in legal limbo, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of pressure just to put the film
Speaker 2: up online for free, and as much as Patients is painful,
Speaker 2: resisting that urge and waiting for the right distribution partner
Speaker 2: to come along really paid off in the long run.
Speaker 5: I was just surrounded by other filmmakers in the genre community,
Speaker 5: and you know who would see the movie at this
Speaker 5: festival and be like, you need to just wait, like
Speaker 5: the person who's going to help you is gonna come,
Speaker 5: and if that doesn't happen, like you can self distribute,
Speaker 5: which I did not want to do. Like at a
Speaker 5: certain point, it was just like I had spent so
Speaker 5: much money finishing it. I just I would have ruined
Speaker 5: my life. I think if I self distributed it, like
Speaker 5: I just couldn't. I didn't have the bandwidth. And I
Speaker 5: want to make films. I don't want to distribute them
Speaker 5: at this point, like maybe someday, but like right now,
Speaker 5: I just like want to tell as many stories as
Speaker 5: I can. I had a lot of support around me,
Speaker 5: and there was just so much enthusiasm from you know,
Speaker 5: people like you who saw it at festivals last year,
Speaker 5: who like we're basically like holy shit, and just all
Speaker 5: the kind of responses we're seeing now to it.
Speaker 4: Like it was.
Speaker 5: I got little like micronoses of that last year, which
Speaker 5: literally was I mean, I it's probably fucking tacky to say,
Speaker 5: but it was just the darkest year of my life.
Speaker 5: I was really just an anxious mess the entire time.
Speaker 5: But I really did make this movie to like not
Speaker 5: only understand myself and sort of mythologize my life and
Speaker 5: my friends' lives and stuff like that, but like I
Speaker 5: made it to like get better, Like I made it
Speaker 5: to kind of heal not only my relationship with like
Speaker 5: my gender, but my family and my art and like
Speaker 5: how I want to make stuff, and I think, what's
Speaker 5: really beautiful what happened in that like dark period and
Speaker 5: up up until now and even right now, this movie
Speaker 5: does really require me to take care of myself emotionally
Speaker 5: and mentally in ways that are or what I've always needed.
Speaker 5: So it's been it's been a cool kind of just
Speaker 5: like really expensive therapy. Ultimately, even though a lot of
Speaker 5: it's been really grueling.
Speaker 2: That does it for this week at It Could Happen Here.
Speaker 2: In the next episode after the weekend, I'll conclude my
Speaker 2: conversation with Vera Drew and Ella Yerman talking about the
Speaker 2: pitfalls of representation, moving beyond the YouTube bubble, and the
Speaker 2: future of queer filmmaking. You can go to the Peoplesjoker
Speaker 2: dot com for information on tickets and showtimes, and you
Speaker 2: can find Late Stage Live by that name on all platforms,
Speaker 2: and to support the show, you can get behind the
Speaker 2: scenes content on Patreon at Late Stage Live. Solidarity to
Speaker 2: everyone out there this week, see you on the other side.
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here as a production of Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio, app,
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Speaker 1: find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at
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