WEBVTT - Making Independent Queer Art 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:08.080 Cool media. 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:12.000 This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis, and 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:15.240 once again it does continue to be happening here as 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:18.160 a massive wave of police repression is levied against students 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:22.919 protesting the ongoing Palestinian genocide. Since it's been so busy 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:25.600 and hectic, I thought to end this week on a 0:00:25.600 --> 0:00:28.640 bit of a lighter note. Last week I did an 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:32.400 episode on a new movie titled The People's Joker, an 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:35.920 unauthorized Batman parody through the lens of a surprisingly genuine 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:39.480 queer coming of age story by transgender filmmaker Vera Drew. 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:42.159 If you want to hear me geek out about that 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:44.839 movie and gay Batman stuff, you can listen to that 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:47.760 episode from last week. But this episode is going to 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:51.400 delve more into the diy nature of this movie, some 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:54.480 behind the scenes, and how you go from an idea 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:57.400 to a piece of wacky queer art playing in a 0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:01.560 movie theater or a TV show on your local cable 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:05.600 access TV station. So I talked to two trans women 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:09.839 who are currently making independent queer media. The aforementioned Vera Drew, 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:13.160 as well as Ella Yeerman, host of the late night 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:18.080 comedy show Late Stage Live. Transgender and a comedian, the 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:22.920 two most persecuted classes. So I've been keeping up with 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:27.000 Ella's indie transgender gen Z comedy project since it first 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:29.880 got announced earlier this year. I have kind of a 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:34.600 love hate relationship with the late night comedy news format, 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:37.920 and I myself have thrown around the idea of playing 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:41.200 with that format. So when I first heard about Ella's 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:45.120 new show, Late Stage Live, my first thought was, damn it. 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:47.800 That's such a good title for a show, and now 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:51.160 I can't use it. Just this immense sense of jealousy 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:54.000 washed over me, and I've had to watch everything She's 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:54.920 put out since then. 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:55.960 Hi. 0:01:56.120 --> 0:02:00.240 I'm Ella Yeerman. My pronouns are she Her. I am 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:04.960 a comedian, journalist, writer living in Brooklyn. I host Late 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:08.560 Stage Live, which is a queer gen Z public access 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:12.440 late night show on Brooklyn Public Access and YouTube. And 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:14.920 I also host T for T Comedy, which is Brooklyn's 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:17.160 premiere all trans stand. 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:20.240 Up comedy show. We film in a Brooklyn. 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:23.520 Public Access studio called brick Bric in front of a 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:28.960 live studio audience, and the vaguest pitch I give to 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:30.560 people who have no idea what the show is is 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:32.520 that it's what if the Daily Show was hosted by 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:35.720 a transgender woman, and we draw a lot of comparisons 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:38.800 to The Daily Show by virtue of sort of similar formats. 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:42.320 But myself and my writers are really interested in sort of, 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:45.400 for lack of a better term, queering the late night 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:49.400 format and sort of exploring what late night can do 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:54.600 for a younger, more radical political audience. The Daily Show 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:57.800 was like a really big radicalizing force, I think for 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:00.360 a certain generation of people. Really, John Stewart took that 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.760 show and turned it into a really powerful tool for 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.560 getting people engaged and aware of things that they might 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.480 not have otherwise been aware of. But the culture has 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:12.520 really shifted in terms of politics, in terms of media 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:16.079 consumption since John started The Daily Show in the nineties. 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:19.680 We have shows like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:23.800 We have shows like My Coworkers and Bosses at some 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:26.320 More News and when we have like all of the 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:30.280 alternative media sphere ranging from like Tucker Carlson and Alex 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.360 Jones to the Young Turks to everybody and their mom 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:34.200 on YouTube. 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:39.000 Now, kids these days don't really watch the news. I 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:42.840 don't know anyone my age who's tuning into MSNBC A 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:46.640 twenty twenty two statistica survey of gen Z reported sixty 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:51.400 percent of respondents never go to local or national papers 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:55.000 for news, and only a respect of five percent checked 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:58.320 their local or national papers for news daily, weekly, or 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:02.200 once a month, but fifty percent of gen Z check 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:06.120 social media daily for news, with seventy five percent reporting 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:10.520 they check at least once a week. TikTok reigns supreme 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:14.320 for information dissemination. Over one third of adults under the 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:17.760 age of thirty regularly scroll the app for news, often 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:20.680 treating it like a search engine, with the rest of 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:23.520 the youths and young adults going to YouTube as well 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:27.440 as other social media apps to fill in the information gaps, 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:29.680 as well as podcasts such as this. 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:32.919 My writers and I especially read Pope. My headwriter and 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:35.800 I talk a lot about just like where our generation 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:39.799 is getting its information from and where it's consuming media, 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:44.479 and how ideas and political ideas are being disseminated, especially 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:47.479 in the age of short form content. With TikTok and 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:52.120 the democratization of information. We did a whole episode about 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:55.440 sort of misinformation and the democratization of information a few 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.520 months ago, where there's like, obviously all of these benefits 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:02.760 to the lack of centralization of media consumption. We're seeing 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:04.600 a lot of that with the Palasine stuff right now. 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:06.479 People don't have to rely on the New York Times, 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:09.160 people don't have to rely on these big media institutions 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:13.440 with their obvious biases to get information. But it also 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:18.320 sort of engenders this, I think, this very specific attitude 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:23.560 towards intellectually engaging with information. The platforms and the systems 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:27.239 that we use really encourage very quick opinions and fast 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:31.240 reactions and picking up your phone and talking immediately about 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:36.400 something as quickly as possible hot take political environments, and 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:38.840 we were really interested in looking at a format that 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:42.440 has historically been more about a team of people with 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:47.280 multiple perspectives coming together to create one piece of analysis 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:50.360 and taking longer to look at those pieces of analysis 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:54.880 and being able to really dig into data. And then 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:58.159 what putting that into a late night format means. We 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:00.520 have a live audience, which a lot of like stuff 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:02.760 on YouTube doesn't have, and we have a lot of 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:06.640 the trappings of like og late night. We have like sketches, 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:10.000 and we have correspondents, and we have a theme song, 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:12.159 and a lot of that has sort of gone away 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:14.880 as we've moved more into like a YouTube media sphere, 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:17.800 so it's been exciting to both bring that back for 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:20.120 like esthetic and nostalgia's sake, and then also to sort 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:23.760 of see what and I think the shows in early stages. 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:26.279 So I am excited to keep playing with this but 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:30.640 finding out like what exactly the package does for the content. 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:33.400 We talk a lot about like form follows function and 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:38.360 vice versa, but I think there's like intentionality behind presenting 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:40.039 it as a late night show. It's not just like 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:41.279 for aesthetic value. 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:46.479 Speaking of late night televised comedy, The People's Joker follows 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:50.480 an aspiring comedian who goes by Joker the Harlequin as 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:53.360 she attempts to host a Lauren Michael's TV show legally 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:56.760 distinct from snl Oh, and on her way, she transits 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:00.000 her gender and fights Batman. The project started a few 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:03.080 years ago because a friend of filmmaker Vera Drew jokingly 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:06.039 commissioned her for twelve dollars to make a re edit 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:09.800 of Todd Phillips's Joker movie. Phillips had been in the 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:14.120 news cycle complaining that quote unquote, woke culture was making 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.440 it too hard to make comedy, which is interesting coming 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:19.920 from a guy who's continually made some of the most 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:23.160 successful comedies in the past twenty years. But I digress. 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:27.840 Here's Vera Drew talking about how The People's Joker ballooned 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:30.760 from an ironic re edit of the in Cell Joker 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.640 movie into a whole new piece of queer cinema. 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:37.240 Yeah. I started doing it, like in earnest. I started 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:42.320 like actually re editing the movie. And I had worked 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:45.720 at Absolutely Productions for years as an editor and had 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:48.440 kind of come up as an alternative comedy editor, So 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:51.280 you know, at that point it was probably just going 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:54.120 to be like a lot of bart sound effects and 0:07:54.160 --> 0:08:00.080 woosh noises and slips and slide whistles. But as I 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.600 was working on it and kind of just making this 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:06.800 like big piece of like bound footage video art, like 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:09.040 a narrative kind of just like fell into place, and 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:12.560 I it kind of just came in an instant and 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:15.760 I was just like, oh, okay, I think I actually 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:18.760 want to make like a coming of age film, but 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:21.800 I want to make like a parody of The Joker, 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:25.760 like in that process and kind of just like tell 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:30.600 like a really earnest and super personal autobiographical story about 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:33.720 my life and growing up in the Midwest and coming 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:37.920 out as trans and comedy and you know, my relationship 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:40.760 with my mom and toxic relationship I was in and stuff, 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:46.880 but kind of process and mythologize all of that through 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:51.800 Batman characters. So that's kind of the origin of the movie. 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:56.240 I guess I had also kind of been kicking around 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:59.920 an idea for like a body horror, like a transpot 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:05.520 horror movie before that that was basically like about a 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:09.200 drag queen who was physically addicted to irony and like 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:11.960 couldn't like survive without it, but it was also like 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:16.040 destroying her from the inside out, and the two ideas 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:20.360 kind of like merged together into this sort of I guess, 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:23.920 like ver Drew, I watched a lot of Batman growing up, 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:28.120 but from a weirdly young age, I was also always 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:32.840 weirdly fascinated by late night TV. My parents never watched 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:35.520 the news, but they watched late night. They got their 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:37.880 news from Stephen Colbert, they got their news from, at 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:40.400 least at a certain point, Jimmy Fallon, although that fell 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:44.760 off quite quickly. But I've just always been incredibly fascinated 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:48.160 by the whole late night format as a cultural source 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:52.079 for news. At a certain point around twenty seventeen, YouTube 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:55.400 started pushing late night clips into everyone's feeds, and everyone 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:58.880 just got so inundated with this style of political comedy. 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.000 I also grew up on The Daily Show and Colbert. 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:05.360 My parents are both journalists, so I probably am a 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:07.720 little biased towards being someone who did read the paper 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:11.560 growing up, who did like watch CNN growing up. But 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:16.000 I recognized there's this huge chunk of America who gets 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:20.320 their news from yeah, Colbert's monologue, from Letterman's monologue, from 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:22.080 the Colbert Report, which is such a. 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:24.360 Crazy, very very scary. 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:28.680 I had so many like conservative family members who did 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:32.760 not realize the Colbert Rapport was satire, took it as 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:34.080 a legitimate news source. 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:35.240 Well. 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:37.200 I mean when Trevor Noah took over The Daily Show, 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:39.840 they tried to do like their version of the Colbert 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:43.199 Rapport with Jordan Klepper's The Opposition, And I think there 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:45.080 are a number of reasons that didn't work out, but 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:48.160 one of them being that the like the Colbert Rapport 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:52.120 was parodying the other Fox News guy. Yeah, I was 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.760 pairting that whole realm of people and the Opposition was 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:59.880 partying info wars, which is almost an unparitable thing. So 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:04.040 like the like the right wing media ecosystem has shifted 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:05.920 so far that that you can't really get a Colbert 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:08.800 Report now, it just doesn't work. But yeah, like there's 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:10.920 so many people who get their information directly from that. 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:14.720 And I think a lot about like the creator responsibility, 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:16.160 like which is a word that gets start or a 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:19.400 lot around in social media spaces. But it's interesting to 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:24.040 think that Colbert now and Stuart and even like Seth 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:27.560 Meyers have this responsibility as like informants to their audience 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:30.080 in some sorts of the sole source of news for 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:32.520 those people. When we were writing our misinformation piece, we 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:34.160 did talk about how in twenty fifteen, there was a 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:36.760 poll that came out that said that like the majority 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:39.080 of liberals, like the highest percentage of rules got their 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:39.800 news from The. 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:41.000 Daily Show with John Stewart. 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.560 And I think a lot about the excuse John used 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:46.840 to give to conservatives at the time who would criticize 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:50.439 him for not doing his due diligence on any given subject. 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:52.840 He would often say, well, we're a comedy show. 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:55.760 The show that comes on after us is Pupp's making 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:58.600 prank phone calls, and he would sort of like deflect 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:01.800 that responsibility by saying, I'm an entertainer first. And I 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:04.120 think that one of the big things that has changed 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:07.720 in the last twenty years or however long, is that 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:11.840 the line between entertainer and journalist has totally blurred. With 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:14.199 like the rise of like video essays on YouTube, and 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:19.280 just like again like the democratization of information and content creation, 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:22.240 everyone is sort of an entertainer, everyone is sort of 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.560 a journalist. There is like a responsibility that comes with 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:29.240 having a platform, and so obviously, like our show takes 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:31.400 a great deal of care to make sure that the 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:34.720 information we're presenting is is accurate and correct, and that 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:37.920 the analysis we're doing is as empathetic and thoughtful as 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:38.320 we can. 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:41.520 I do think there is real value in going after 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:45.720 late night as a specific culturally impactful mode that isn't 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:48.600 just comedy, isn'to just to the news, and in its 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:50.800 quest to be a little bit of both, it becomes 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:54.360 its own thing. I've always been interested to see what 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:57.160 a late night show with my politics would look like, 0:12:57.679 --> 0:12:59.080 and I think to some degree, you can look at 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:02.400 John Stewart in the twoth and I've been watching Stuart's 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:05.360 new stuff on the Daily Show every Monday, mostly just 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:07.600 to see how he's going to handle this landscape, which 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:11.000 is very different from when he left in twenty fifteen. Nowadays, 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:13.360 I think you can look to John Oliver as being 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:18.440 probably slightly more radical, but even still there's a decent gap. 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:21.880 Certainly some YouTube shows try to fill in that gap, 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:25.160 but I've really enjoyed watching the Late Stage team apply 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:29.000 classic late night stylings to a more radical queer form 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:33.760 of politics, including like Ella mentioned, correspondence segments as well 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.679 as actual reporting. Late Stage Live did a recent piece 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:40.760 on the effects of Libs of TikTok. It was a 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.800 really good look at something that I oddly hadn't seen 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:48.240 anyone else really interrogate before, actually looking at the people 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:51.559 that Libs of TikTok has targeted and how that has 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:53.199 literally affected their lives. 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:56.400 Obviously, we are still like growing and trying new things. 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:58.520 I was really proud of the Libs of TikTok piece. 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.040 It was the first time we'd done like firsthand recording 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:02.959 on the show, and it's like something I want to 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:05.440 keep exploring. One of my favorite parts of the Daily 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:09.000 Show is the more serious like field pieces they end 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:11.920 up doing that obviously also have comedic games applied to. 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:14.640 Them, but also are like real journalism that. 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:18.840 Maybe mainstream news institutions don't cover, and that's really exciting 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.920 and obviously coming from like a specifically queer perspective. There's 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:25.600 not a ton of specifically queer news. There's a few magazines, 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:27.920 but there's nothing huge. 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:41.520 It could happen here, will return after these messages we 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:45.200 now returned to. It could happen here. Something I noticed 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:48.000 about both Late Stage Lives and The People's Joker is 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:51.480 that they're not just made by queer people, but the 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:56.120 work itself feels queer. I think part of the reason 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:59.680 why is that both carry this spirit of patchwork and 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:03.880 collect aberration, proudly featuring a sense of punkish outside noess 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:07.760 that's uninterested in being tamed for a sis straight audience. 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:11.720 The end result is one holy reflective of the community 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:15.160 that has fostered the arts creation. To extrapolate on this, 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.160 let's return to my interview with Vera Drew. I know 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.560 for a while you were getting people to send in 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:24.640 to like send in stuff to get put in the film. 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:26.640 There was kind of it was like a very collaborative 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:29.560 start to this project, and I am I am interested 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.520 in that aspect of like how this is like both 0:15:32.600 --> 0:15:35.760 like a collage multimedia piece, but also it's not like 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:38.400 the work of like one singular artist. It's like a 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:42.480 very like queer community made thing. And it definitely feels 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:44.600 that way, especially with all of like all like the sets, 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:47.000 all of like the art. It's so many different styles 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:50.600 mashed together into like this beautiful mosaic. And I'm interested 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.120 in like your decision to have it be that collaborative 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:54.560 thing and how that kind of came together. 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:57.680 Thank you for asking, because yeah, I don't really get 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.680 to talk about that that much. And it's it's definitely 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.600 like a part of this that really, I think is 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:06.920 why the movie just feels inherently queer. You know, we 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:11.240 had just this incredible team of people working on it 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:13.440 because you know, like I said, like I did cash 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:16.240 in like every favor I had, you know, to cash in. 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:20.720 But you know, the movie started as this like video 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.280 remix thing, and then I think as we were writing 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:27.160 the script and it became more narrative driven. It was 0:16:27.240 --> 0:16:29.080 just like we were always writing this script that was 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:33.080 very impossible to film. Uh, you know, just a very 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:36.240 like there's Batmobile and like, yeah, you know, fuck are 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:38.800 you gonna do that? But we weren't really thinking about 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:40.520 that as much. We were just like, let's just write 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:42.400 this movie, and let's just write it as like a 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:44.640 comic book movie, like let's have the tropes of a 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:46.760 comic book movie and a queer coming of age film 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:51.040 and and just fully execute those. And you know, I 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.520 think the idea of it becoming sort of this mixed 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:57.440 media piece was was very gradual. I think like it 0:16:57.480 --> 0:16:59.800 was one of the many things about this This movie 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:03.200 was very intuitively like I never had a budget. Really, 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:05.680 I would never make a movie like this again. It 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.440 was it was very like kind of figuring it out 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:10.879 as you go in a lot of ways, especially just 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:12.840 on the like business side of things. 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:16.480 Yeah, it has that kind of Inland Empire uncanniness a 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:17.720 little bit totally. 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:23.439 There's definitely that. It's definitely I'm working backwards this, this 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:26.720 is my Inland Empire and you know, like twenty years 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:31.439 I'll have my eraser head finally. Yes, yes, But it 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:34.600 really just kind of followed that like sort of intuitive path. 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:37.800 And I kind of announced what I was doing and 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:39.840 I said, you know, my friend and I are making 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:45.240 this queer joker parody and anybody who wants to help us, 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:47.720 like you know right here, and I kind of at 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:49.480 that point it still was in this kind of like 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.159 loose space of what is this really? But just so 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:57.159 many artists came forward, and most of them artists who 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:01.760 had never worked on film or TV. So it was 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:04.040 a lot of just like fine artists and painters and 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:06.600 illustrators and visual artists. And then like a lot of 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:10.199 people too, just that I had seen for years on 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:14.320 trans Twitter or like like featured in like very like 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.879 fringe like zines and shit like that. So it's just like, 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:21.080 holy shit, like we could really make this movie that 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:24.679 looks like nothing you've ever seen before, and and we 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:26.640 can do it too in a way that like we're 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:30.280 creating original art, you know, like all the art in 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:33.200 it is original. I mean, like we recreate a lot 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:36.679 of sets and stuff from famous comic book movies, but 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:41.000 like it was painstakingly created, and every character had its 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:45.080 own character design, you know, original character design. Like we 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:48.160 couldn't just take mister mix auplick and put them in 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:50.400 the movie, Like we had to go, okay, like how 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:52.600 can we clear mister mix alepla like, Okay, we'll make 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:56.679 a mix mixy and they'll be like a weird like 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.960 floating like Hanna Barbera cartoon type, but it's kind of 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:04.080 more hr puff and stuff. Was the vibe we went 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.000 for there, very sit in marty Croft, even with a 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:10.200 community of queer artists. How does one go from the 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:13.920 idea stage of say, hey, let's make a more queer 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:17.280 and radically oriented late night comedy show to having it 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:21.440 actually be filmed and then broadcast. So I asked Ella 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:24.040 what allowed her to get this project off the ground 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:26.560 and what her process was like going from an idea 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:28.400 to something that's now on air. 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:30.119 So, like I said, I've been writing for Some More 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:32.359 News for three years and I love that job and 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:35.320 I love my coworkers there, but they are doing one thing, 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:38.560 and I, over the last year or so, sort of 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:40.160 started to realize that I also wanted to be doing 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.119 this other thing. I wanted the live studio audience. I 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:45.199 wanted a very queer focused show. I wanted an in 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:47.600 person writer's room ultimately, or like a local writer's room. 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:49.520 Because everyone else had Some More News is La based 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:51.280 as far as I'm aware, and I'm the only East 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:54.440 Coaster out here, and I just wanted the whole bunch 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:57.359 of things that Somewhere News wasn't doing. So I was like, Okay, 0:19:57.480 --> 0:19:59.000 I guess I have to do that myself because there's 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:01.600 no one else doing it that hire me. But I 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:03.639 grateful that I had my experience with Somewhere News and 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:06.520 continue to have my experience with them, because I structured 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:09.200 our writer's room very similarly to them, and I took 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:12.119 a lot of inspiration from their early stages in terms 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:16.000 of like the creative side of things and then in 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:19.960 terms of like finding people and making it happen. Something 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:22.399 I've learned my whole life as a creative is that 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:24.800 you just sort of have to fucking do it. I've 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:27.800 been like self producing work since I was eighteen. When 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.119 I was eighteen, my community theater in my hometown had 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:33.160 a big all hands meeting where they were like, hey, 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:33.760 we're out of money. 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:34.320 What do we do? 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:36.200 And I said, you should do a Shakespeare play because 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:37.640 you don't have to pay for the royalties for that, 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:39.600 and they were like, well, we don't have anyone who 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:41.600 wants to direct a Shakespeare play. And I said, okay, 0:20:41.640 --> 0:20:43.920 then I'll do it, and they were like, okay, then 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:45.679 you do it, and I sort of had to just 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:48.119 do it. And I did it, and it was messy 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:50.520 and pretty amateurish, and then I did it again the 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:51.720 next year, and I got better, and I did it 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:54.000 again the next year. It got better after that, and 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:56.520 then after I graduated college, I started doing stand up again. 0:20:56.600 --> 0:20:58.439 I just stand up a little bit pre transition, and 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:00.840 it was terrible, and so I started to become a 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:02.879 girl and I started doing stand up again, and I 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:05.080 realized there wasn't a ton of spaces in the stand 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:07.080 up scene for trans people, and I. 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:10.720 Said, okay, so let's host a trans show. 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:13.160 And I found a bar and I got in touch 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:15.680 with the bar, and then I just started dming comics 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:17.159 and I said, hey, I don't really know any of 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:19.560