Speaker 1: A media this is it could happen here on Garrison Davis.
Speaker 1: The past few years, we have regularly covered the rise
Speaker 1: of legislation that restricts access to public space and medical
Speaker 1: care for trans people in the United States, as well
Speaker 1: as attempts by politicians, lobbying groups, and media personalities to
Speaker 1: drum up transphobia in hopes of quote unquote eliminating transgenderism
Speaker 1: from our society and culture. The quest to eliminate transgenderism
Speaker 1: includes harassment campaigns targeted against specific individuals, boycotting companies that
Speaker 1: feature trans people in their marketing, and banning queer books, media,
Speaker 1: and art from libraries across the country. The conservative right
Speaker 1: has decided that the boogeyman of gender ideology and the
Speaker 1: woke mind virus is one of the most pressing threats
Speaker 1: to Western civilisation. This brand of transphobic militancy opposes any
Speaker 1: form of visible queerness, viewing it as an ideology that
Speaker 1: acts as a viral cultural contagion. That's why they spend
Speaker 1: so much time trying to ban drag shows and art
Speaker 1: featuring queer people. They know they're losing the cultural battle
Speaker 1: and that really scares them. As trans people have been
Speaker 1: trying to weather this huge wave of organized transphobia. Trans
Speaker 1: and queer artists continue to push forward, with multiple hit
Speaker 1: films coming out this year from trans directors and transactors
Speaker 1: and actresses are taking more and more high profile roles.
Speaker 1: Last episode, I interviewed comedian Ella Yerman and filmmaker Ver
Speaker 1: Drew on the process of creating independent queer media. This
Speaker 1: episode will focus on why we are seeing this new
Speaker 1: wave of queer art, why mere representation isn't enough, and
Speaker 1: attempts to go beyond the online media ecosystem. Ellie Yerman
Speaker 1: is the host of Late Stage Lives, a queer gen
Speaker 1: Z Public Access late show on Brooklyn Public Access and YouTube.
Speaker 1: The format of late night comedy is almost wholly dominated
Speaker 1: by old white sis straight men. Late Stage Live attempts
Speaker 1: to deconstruct the genre in which it aligns itself with,
Speaker 1: utilizing sketches, correspondence, segments, and original reporting, but for a younger, queerer,
Speaker 1: more politically radical audience. The show is not just made
Speaker 1: for gen Z queers. It's also made by an entire
Speaker 1: team of young queer and trans people, which gives it
Speaker 1: a very unique feel compared to literally all of its competition.
Speaker 1: The show itself feels queer and highlights the massive gap
Speaker 1: between simple queer representation and queer art, or in this case,
Speaker 1: queer late night comedy. There's a palpable distinction between hiring
Speaker 1: a gay person to work on seth Myers versus having
Speaker 1: a late night show that is built on queerness. On
Speaker 1: that note, here's a clip from my interview with Ella Yerman,
Speaker 1: host of Late Stage Live.
Speaker 2: There's like a huge difference between like the token queer
Speaker 2: writer and like a show that centers queerness and transness.
Speaker 2: And I'm really proud of of that. As in terms
Speaker 2: of our show, like, I think that's one of its
Speaker 2: main drives is how queer focused. It is something we
Speaker 2: talk about in every episode, in every piece read loves
Speaker 2: to Hammer This Home is sort of the question of
Speaker 2: why us. It's the first question we ask when anyone
Speaker 2: pitches any segment or piece or story of the question
Speaker 2: is like, what's the game, what's the perspective? And then
Speaker 2: why is it us delivering this perspective? Because anyone can
Speaker 2: write a piece of political analysis, lots of people do,
Speaker 2: but like, what about this story is uniquely coming from us,
Speaker 2: uniquely coming from the host, Ella from the Writer's Room,
Speaker 2: and I think we found it most strongly in the
Speaker 2: last two pieces, the Lives of TikTok piece, and then
Speaker 2: the episode before that, we did a segment on the
Speaker 2: Alliance Defending Freedom, which is a spooky, evil conservative cabal
Speaker 2: that trains lawyers to overturn Scotis cases. And I think
Speaker 2: those both found felt really focused in on sort of
Speaker 2: us as young queer people. And I think the gen
Speaker 2: Z part is also really relevant for us. A lot
Speaker 2: of Late Night is hosted by old men, and as
Speaker 2: much as I love John Stewart, he is an old man,
Speaker 2: an old sis, white man, an old sis as far
Speaker 2: as I know, heterosexual white man.
Speaker 1: Who already left the job ten years ago and.
Speaker 2: He already left it, right and he's back now. But
Speaker 2: like what does that say about anything?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And everyone talking about politics.
Speaker 2: Is like old white guys, and everyone in Congress is
Speaker 2: old white guys or George Santos, and there's like this
Speaker 2: sense of like the world is ending, as you probably
Speaker 2: know on this show that bills itself as like amidst
Speaker 2: the collapse or whatever your tagline is.
Speaker 4: But like gen Z is so.
Speaker 2: Uniquely affected by political goings on in a way that
Speaker 2: I so this is true of every general, every youngest generation,
Speaker 2: that like all of the decisions are impacting us most,
Speaker 2: but it feels more urgent these days because the world
Speaker 2: is ending with climate change and with the encroaching you know,
Speaker 2: global fascism, and with the decay of light stage capitalism,
Speaker 2: that it feels so important now more than ever to
Speaker 2: like center those experiences and look at how the world
Speaker 2: and the news and politics impacts these groups of people.
Speaker 2: And the way we achieve that is, Yeah, we don't
Speaker 2: just have one token queer writer. We are Our room
Speaker 2: is all queer, largely trans. About half of our writer's
Speaker 2: room is non white, and as we grow that that
Speaker 2: number will either stay the same or get bigger, certainly
Speaker 2: not smaller. Yeah, at the end of the day, I
Speaker 2: think the fact that the room is is completely queer
Speaker 2: and predominantly trans and non white and all young, it
Speaker 2: just like sort of happens. And the fact that it
Speaker 2: started that way and been built from the ground up
Speaker 2: that way, I think gives us a huge edge. Even
Speaker 2: if the daily shows fired all of their writers and
Speaker 2: hired only trans people, I think it would be a
Speaker 2: hard pivot to get the show to suddenly be doing
Speaker 2: what we're doing, just because the whole structure is built differently.
Speaker 1: In Vera Drew's new movie The People's Joker, an autobiographical
Speaker 1: transgender coming of age parody set in the Batman universe,
Speaker 1: the shallowness of queer representation is actually one of the
Speaker 1: core themes of the film. In the movie, the main
Speaker 1: character is not satisfied by simply being a token diversity
Speaker 1: hire for a late night comedy show, and instead hijacks
Speaker 1: the airwaves and charts her own path. This plotline, like
Speaker 1: many others, mirrors the director's own life and the movie
Speaker 1: itself is a perfect example of how creating a piece
Speaker 1: of art inherently built on a multimedia experience of queerness
Speaker 1: will produce a wildly different result than simply having a
Speaker 1: gay person in the writer's room. Here's a from my
Speaker 1: interview with Vera Drew. It's not even that I feel
Speaker 1: like queer representation is like too straight or sis. It's
Speaker 1: just not even like an accurate reflection of queer reality.
Speaker 1: You know, like every gay couple I know is nothing
Speaker 1: like a straight couple. I mean, some of them are,
Speaker 1: but like those those gay couples always break up like
Speaker 1: it's like they're just they're just in you know, reenacting
Speaker 1: cycles and thousands and thousands of years of patriarchal bullshit
Speaker 1: on each other when they could just be having hot
Speaker 1: gay sacks with each other. And like that to me
Speaker 1: is like the biggest tragedy of like representation. And it's
Speaker 1: like is also why I think people lash out at
Speaker 1: us so much. Like I on one level, I understand
Speaker 1: the idea of like this is getting shoved down our throats,
Speaker 1: you know, because like it kind of is that's coming
Speaker 1: from a place that I sort of agree with because
Speaker 1: they're getting sold this like propaganda that it's like they're
Speaker 1: just like us, you know, And like to me, it's
Speaker 1: like my experience is so specific to me and in
Speaker 1: so specific to you know, like the experience of a
Speaker 1: trans woman. There are things about my life that are
Speaker 1: similar to that of a sis woman but not certainly
Speaker 1: not identical. So like I never want to see art
Speaker 1: that is that. I also, I'm like really over trans
Speaker 1: people being used in a way that they're either I mean,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really happen anymore where they're like treated like freaks,
Speaker 1: but like it's kind of the tragedy porn or kind
Speaker 1: of pedestalizing us. I guess, like I hate that, like
Speaker 1: my identity is inherently political, like just because I this
Speaker 1: is who I am, Like I it's not a pleasant
Speaker 1: situation to deal with. So I think with joker, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want people joker, I really wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: representation in a way that also just wasn't annoying because
Speaker 1: like I also, it's not even I'm tired of having
Speaker 1: this conversation. It's just sad that people like us keep
Speaker 1: even having to have this kind of conversation because like
Speaker 1: I've also heard it now within our own community that
Speaker 1: like you know, I've heard other trans filmmakers say, like
Speaker 1: we should only be telling happy stories, we should only
Speaker 1: be spreading queer joy or what absolutely does no, absolutely not,
Speaker 1: Like it's that's embarrassing. Yeah, I want I want to
Speaker 1: spread queer panic. I want to it's not even panic
Speaker 1: just like queer existential uh horror. I suppose I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean for me, it's like I don't know,
Speaker 3: like because I've gotten shipped to not I haven't gotten
Speaker 3: a lot. And now honestly that I've started mentioning in
Speaker 3: the press, people have said it to me as much
Speaker 3: as good, but like I was getting a little bit
Speaker 3: of the like, how oh, making the joker a murderous
Speaker 3: trans woman? Okay, you know please, first of all, like
Speaker 3: villains are queer coded the history of film. Oh, almost
Speaker 3: all of the Pavan villains are queer coded except completely,
Speaker 3: And like why can't so why can't a why can't
Speaker 3: we do it like not in a subtext way, why
Speaker 3: can't we just do it directly? And then also like
Speaker 3: I live in a country that villainizes trans people, so
Speaker 3: like why can't I process that very thing by making
Speaker 3: myself a queer villain in a in a movie that
Speaker 3: I made? And and I don't know, it's like I
Speaker 3: think what I hate about the queer joy thing and
Speaker 3: the like The People's Joker is like a very funny movie.
Speaker 3: It's very colorful, it's very campy, but it's also like devastating,
Speaker 3: you know, like it's it's got a very serious message
Speaker 3: to it that I think it brings up a lot
Speaker 3: of emotion in people when they watch it, both sis
Speaker 3: people and trans people, And you know, I think that
Speaker 3: speaks to something else, just like about representation is like
Speaker 3: I told this story that was so specific to my
Speaker 3: experience and like trans people are identifying with it and
Speaker 3: relating to it, but so are CIS people, you know,
Speaker 3: Like yes, like you know, we should be telling stories
Speaker 3: that portray the trans experience honestly or the queer experience
Speaker 3: honestly and specifically. And if we do that, like if
Speaker 3: we do that effectively, that is still art that a
Speaker 3: SIS person can consume because SIS people also go through transitions.
Speaker 3: SIS people also have to die and be reborn sometimes,
Speaker 3: and like I think just everybody kind of comes of age.
Speaker 3: It's just like trans people and queer people kind of
Speaker 3: have to do it more visibly and publicly and externally
Speaker 3: a lot of the times. And I don't know, for me,
Speaker 3: it's like that was like another reason too, of like
Speaker 3: of just being like no, like we're gonna get this
Speaker 3: out into theaters and and you know, like make this
Speaker 3: kind of theatrical experience for anything else. You know, it
Speaker 3: was always made made to be like viewed I think
Speaker 3: with like a crowd of people like yeah, yeah, kind
Speaker 3: of like a midnight movie vibe.
Speaker 1: I guess when you think about it, Jesus and the
Speaker 1: Joker I do have a lot in common in terms
Speaker 1: of getting baptized, getting bored again it's it's really very
Speaker 1: similar characters.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I mean that's why, uh, because I think
Speaker 3: this was something while Brie and I were writing the
Speaker 3: movie that she was constantly every step of the way
Speaker 3: like what are you doing? Like why are you bringing
Speaker 3: this much like gnostic Christianity to this absolutely?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: Like I remember, you know, there's this like French song
Speaker 3: that's in the movie called I'll Be Your Joker that's
Speaker 3: composed and performed by Emily Sloan, and the lyrics to
Speaker 3: that are a poem that I wrote that are just
Speaker 3: you never like it's not in anywhere in the movie,
Speaker 3: it's just in that song, but it's like this it's
Speaker 3: the people's joke prophecy, Like I actually wrote it in
Speaker 3: this like kind of Gnostic Bible structure, and then we
Speaker 3: translated it to French and recorded it as a song,
Speaker 3: and like that was like really kind of coming from
Speaker 3: that place of like just really I love I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm obsessed with Jesus, uh, And I kind of just
Speaker 3: always have have been. Like I was raised Catholic and
Speaker 3: I just, uh, I'm not I'm not Christian, but I
Speaker 3: have a lot of Jesus stuff around my house, Like
Speaker 3: I I'm I'm just obsessed with like the iconography and
Speaker 3: really love it the story itself as like a myth
Speaker 3: and like the mythic understanding of of death and rebirth,
Speaker 3: and and also just thinking of it as like another
Speaker 3: example of like the hero's journey and I don't know,
Speaker 3: like it's it's somebody uh asked me at a Q
Speaker 3: and A like basically like how do you have the
Speaker 3: balls to like cause by the end of the People's Joker,
Speaker 3: like you basically find out it's like cut it is
Speaker 3: like Dune. There's like a weird Messiah story happening, and
Speaker 3: that partially just comes from like I think for me,
Speaker 3: queerness is inherently like a very spiritual experience. It just
Speaker 3: has been for me, and I think a lot of
Speaker 3: trans people actually deal with Messiah complexes. I think it's
Speaker 3: something that I feel safe saying I have. And I
Speaker 3: also really wanted to unpack that just idea of the
Speaker 3: like Joseph Campbell White Savior Heroes Journey thing.
Speaker 1: It could happen here, we'll return after these messages we
Speaker 1: now return to it could happen here. During my interview
Speaker 1: with Vera Drew, she mentioned as something about not just
Speaker 1: wanting to throw the movie up on YouTube when the
Speaker 1: film is dealing with legal issues, resulting in uncertainty around
Speaker 1: how the film would be released. And that got me
Speaker 1: thinking about queer people's relationship to platforms like YouTube as
Speaker 1: the sort of default way of sharing video art. A
Speaker 1: big reason why is simply because the platform is so
Speaker 1: accessible without many of the hurdles and roadblocks of more
Speaker 1: traditional distribution models. But sometimes I worry that it's become
Speaker 1: so default that our reliance on YouTube has actually become
Speaker 1: a self limiting factor that overdetermines the scope of our
Speaker 1: own art. Let's return to my interview with Vera Dru
Speaker 1: to continue this topic. Queer people, specifically trans people have
Speaker 1: kind of been stuck with a lot of their like
Speaker 1: art or video art just becoming this thing that you
Speaker 1: throw up on YouTube. We've done a good job in
Speaker 1: making like a community there, I suppose, but at certain
Speaker 1: points it feels very like insular, like we've created this
Speaker 1: little tiny bubble that everything is just trapped inside of
Speaker 1: because obviously we can't rely on like big studios to
Speaker 1: make our own stuff or distribute our own stuff, Like
Speaker 1: that's not happening either. But I feel like we're kind
Speaker 1: of kicking ourselves in the foot if our only artistic
Speaker 1: output is like techno music and YouTube video essays, both
Speaker 1: of which can be good, both of which can be art.
Speaker 1: But there's a whole other world out there that I
Speaker 1: feel like we have closed ourselves off from. So I'm
Speaker 1: kind of interested, like like on that choice to like
Speaker 1: not put it on YouTube and actually like ride this
Speaker 1: thing out as like a movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that is It's such a relief to
Speaker 3: hear you talk about it in that way, because yeah,
Speaker 3: I never want to be dismissive of online creators. Sure.
Speaker 3: Like I worked in TV for ten years as an editor,
Speaker 3: and I was very fortunate to work on a lot
Speaker 3: of really cool shit, like I worked on. My first
Speaker 3: job was I was an intern on The Eric Andre Show,
Speaker 3: and like then my job immediately after that was on
Speaker 3: Nathan for You, So I really got to work with
Speaker 3: like all these really amazing comedians, many geniuses, And in
Speaker 3: that process, like always knew I had wanted to make film,
Speaker 3: Like my earliest memories are are wanting to make films.
Speaker 3: Like right around the time I saw Batman Forever, I
Speaker 3: was like, I want to be a director, and I
Speaker 3: came up in post production just because like a lot
Speaker 3: of editors end up sort of following you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of editors are really just direct like frustrated directors.
Speaker 3: So I was kind of like, here's a place where
Speaker 3: I could like sort of learn my craft. And I've
Speaker 3: always loved experimental animation and visual effects and stuff and
Speaker 3: also just like incorporate that as well into like my career.
Speaker 3: And it's good. I'm so glad I had it as
Speaker 3: like an incubation period for me to kind of find
Speaker 3: my voice and my aesthetic and and learn a lot
Speaker 3: from these like super talented people. But there was always
Speaker 3: this frustration that I had because when I would take
Speaker 3: stuff out to pitch or anything that was like my
Speaker 3: own story, like you can't really get trans art made
Speaker 3: in any sort of mainstream space. I think that's one
Speaker 3: of the things that's most frustrating about the whole like
Speaker 3: woke culture bullshit, just because it's like they act like
Speaker 3: we're some sort of like elite class that's like favored
Speaker 3: by the media, which it's like I can just tell you,
Speaker 3: like that's I'm on my press week right now. Like
Speaker 3: the media is certainly enamored with trans people. But like
Speaker 3: I don't think it's like coming from a place of
Speaker 3: like we're trying to change and put everything and you know,
Speaker 3: make these people in charge. It's just uh, you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's click baity and it gets people, it keeps
Speaker 3: people arguing online. So it's very hard just to even
Speaker 3: break through as a director too. Like I mean I
Speaker 3: was at that, you know, forget pitching shows that I've
Speaker 3: written or whatever, like just trying to get episodic TV work.
Speaker 3: I just couldn't do it, like once I changed my pronouns,
Speaker 3: Like I was literally up for jobs that went away
Speaker 3: after I came out. So I just reached this point
Speaker 3: of like I think, maximum frustration and kind of like
Speaker 3: wanted to whatever I did, you know, I don't want
Speaker 3: to say like I was ready to walk away from
Speaker 3: like working in the industry in twenty nineteen, but I
Speaker 3: kind of was like I was kind of just at
Speaker 3: this point where I was like, I need to make
Speaker 3: a fucking movie or something on my own and kind
Speaker 3: of just put all I have into that, and that's
Speaker 3: going to be the way people will either finally take
Speaker 3: me seriously as a director or like I'll at least
Speaker 3: have made a movie and then I can just be
Speaker 3: in debt and I'll have a movie I made. So
Speaker 3: to me, it was always about not necessarily like finally
Speaker 3: being taken seriously by my industry, but just like kind
Speaker 3: of making this giant piece of art that is not
Speaker 3: only like a big like look what I can do,
Speaker 3: you know style thing, but like is also just about
Speaker 3: all of that, about the frustration of being allowed in
Speaker 3: but only being allowed in in these certain ways, like
Speaker 3: whether it's on like a diversity cast or like, you
Speaker 3: know whatever. Like I was, I worked on the show.
Speaker 3: I can't really talk about it because it's like nda
Speaker 3: stuff and I don't think the show will ever come out.
Speaker 3: But I was in the writer's room on a cartoon
Speaker 3: that was being rebooted, and it was one of my
Speaker 3: favorite cartoons of all time. But I had a day
Speaker 3: where I was like just sitting in the writer's room
Speaker 3: and I was like looking around at my coworkers and
Speaker 3: it was I was like, oh, wait a minute, it's
Speaker 3: all girls, and I'm I'm a girl, and I'm a
Speaker 3: trans girl. We're all just being brought in to rehabilitate
Speaker 3: this like problematic piece of arc, you know, And it
Speaker 3: was like this crazy moment of having like like also
Speaker 3: have had lost jobs because of my identity and now
Speaker 3: being in this place where it's like my identity is
Speaker 3: like this bargaining chip. So anyway, how does this connect
Speaker 3: to the online art conversation? Like I've always kind of
Speaker 3: had to also play in like online spaces. Like I
Speaker 3: started a public access station with my friends a few
Speaker 3: years ago called Highland Park TV. A few years ago.
Speaker 3: I was like ten years ago now, but that's still
Speaker 3: going on today. And it was basically just this space
Speaker 3: for us where we could like just record whatever. You know.
Speaker 3: We'd meet up one week and come with like some
Speaker 3: pretty simple sketches and shoot it on our public access
Speaker 3: set and throw it up online and you know, like
Speaker 3: twelve people would watch it and that was it and
Speaker 3: that but that was cool, Like you know, you build
Speaker 3: like little followings and communities that way, And I had
Speaker 3: always just wanted to break out of that, you know,
Speaker 3: because I think my sensibilities are pretty me and edgy
Speaker 3: and weird, but like I'm really kind of a basic bitch.
Speaker 3: Like when it goes to the stuff I like, like,
Speaker 3: I really like my taste is very college dorm room.
Speaker 3: I have a back to the future tattoo. Like, I'm
Speaker 3: very influenced by like genre film, and you know, like
Speaker 3: I love David Lynch, I love experimental film and stuff too.
Speaker 3: But like I've always like really felt like I could
Speaker 3: do it. I could be like just like a genre filmmaker.
Speaker 3: But and we had the controversy at TIFF. I had
Speaker 3: a lot of pressure on me to just kind of
Speaker 3: put the movie out there, and I could never articulate
Speaker 3: to people why it was important to me to not
Speaker 3: do that and to hold out. It wasn't just like financial,
Speaker 3: it really was. I mean, I mean maybe it's ego thing,
Speaker 3: but it's it's also just like I've been doing this
Speaker 3: long enough to know like the movie was gonna always
Speaker 3: find its audience, but there needed to kind of be
Speaker 3: a plan in place so that like I could actually
Speaker 3: put it towards having a career that the career that
Speaker 3: I've wanted my whole life. You know, Like I think
Speaker 3: it's ridiculous that we live in a culture now where
Speaker 3: every artist, even the ones like me who have had
Speaker 3: a trade in this industry, Like in an industry like that,
Speaker 3: we have to really carve our own path in online
Speaker 3: spaces or on Twitter or YouTube, or whatever. It just
Speaker 3: keeps us all in cycles of poverty. It like, like,
Speaker 3: I fucking hate posting to Twitter. I do it still
Speaker 3: just because it's the easiest way to get the word out,
Speaker 3: But every single time I send a tweet, I'm like,
Speaker 3: this sucks. Like I'm supporting one of the worst people
Speaker 3: alive right now just by still using this site, somebody
Speaker 3: who hates me and people like me so much that
Speaker 3: he literally won't talk to his own child. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 3: I really just wanted to kick the door down for
Speaker 3: myself and hopefully for some people that come after me.
Speaker 3: And you know, I really don't want to be the
Speaker 3: type of filmmaker and the type of queer filmmaker who
Speaker 3: like holds the ladder up behind them. Like it's not
Speaker 3: even that I have integrity, it's just that like this
Speaker 3: movie is that to me, this movie is such like
Speaker 3: it's a gospel on how we need to be making
Speaker 3: art more ethically and more for ourselves and from a
Speaker 3: place of care. And yeah, that's just I want to
Speaker 3: hopefully change my little corner of the industry as much
Speaker 3: as I can toward that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it definitely feels like we're getting more and
Speaker 1: more people are embracing this idea of independent queer cinema,
Speaker 1: and more people are are deciding, instead of putting whatever
Speaker 1: short film they want on YouTube, try to do a
Speaker 1: festival circuit.
Speaker 4: And it's that.
Speaker 1: Was one of the things that I think I really
Speaker 1: respected after what happened at TIFF. What I really respected
Speaker 1: at your insistence to like, no, like we're going to
Speaker 1: find a distributor, Like we're We're not just going to
Speaker 1: throw it up online and call it a day. It's
Speaker 1: not just going to be like a fan film. It's like,
Speaker 1: this is an actual, like expressive piece that we're gonna
Speaker 1: It might mean that you won't see it for another
Speaker 1: two years, but it shows like a level of like
Speaker 1: actual artistic commitment that I found gave gave the project
Speaker 1: a real sense of.
Speaker 3: Like, wait, oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: The notion of this comfortable YouTube bubble we've created is
Speaker 1: perhaps why I find the public access TV side of
Speaker 1: Ella Yeerman's Late Stage Live so compelling. A lot of
Speaker 1: queer people around my age grew up with the transgender
Speaker 1: video essay as the primary form of our artistic video output,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of good video essays out there,
Speaker 1: but at a certain point it started to feel like
Speaker 1: the main way a young, radical queer person could engage
Speaker 1: with the art form. It's gotten to feel so insular
Speaker 1: and a bit restrictive, like we're enforcing our own bubble.
Speaker 1: On top of this self limiting aspect, I'm not even
Speaker 1: sure how much growth the format even has Anymore. Recently,
Speaker 1: I've begun to see more queer artists specifically trying to
Speaker 1: make things outside the strict video essay framework. Even some
Speaker 1: of the most popular trans video essay creators have been
Speaker 1: trying to move into documentary and narrative filmmaking. I asked
Speaker 1: Ella about moving beyond the video essay bubble because although
Speaker 1: Late Stage Live does it air on YouTube as well
Speaker 1: as Brooklyn Public Access, the format is not just your
Speaker 1: average transgender video essay.
Speaker 2: We don't have any pink lighting at all. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: definitely something I've been thinking about a lot, both like
Speaker 2: in my own personal career and for the show. A
Speaker 2: lot of my bylines in the last few years are
Speaker 2: all YouTube based, with Late Stage and some more news,
Speaker 2: and it's frustrating that even as YouTube is seen so
Speaker 2: much growth and like celebrities come from YouTube all the time,
Speaker 2: and some of the biggest names in the world are
Speaker 2: Internet stars now, there's still like the sense of illegitimacy
Speaker 2: to be doing a project on YouTube, and like, like
Speaker 2: when I try and get published in like more legitimate
Speaker 2: journalism magazines every so often, I'm always looking at my
Speaker 2: resume and being like, I wish I had like a
Speaker 2: byline in a magazine instead of three years of writing
Speaker 2: for a YouTube show that I love so much and
Speaker 2: think is doing better works than most of these magazines,
Speaker 2: but like that I know won't get treated the same.
Speaker 2: So there's definitely an aspect to that that I think. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like it's partly YouTube is so accessible anyone can post
Speaker 2: on YouTube that I understand why queer people have sort
Speaker 2: of relegated themselves to this bubble. Trans people wrote like
Speaker 2: why we've ended up with like you know, the trans
Speaker 2: video essay scene, Thank you Mother Natalie. But it makes
Speaker 2: it hard to sort of break into this like final
Speaker 2: frontier of legitimacy, I think, and I think by like, yeah,
Speaker 2: like not fully committing ourselves to being a YouTube show
Speaker 2: from the get go, we do sort of leave doors
Speaker 2: open to be considered like a more legitimate television production,
Speaker 2: which is exciting for like growth opportunities. I think the
Speaker 2: live studio audience also really pushes us out of that zone.
Speaker 2: We get a lot of accusations from people who are
Speaker 2: mean on the Internet of using a laugh track, and
Speaker 2: I just want to say, and I will say it
Speaker 2: till the day I die.
Speaker 4: It would be so much easier if we were.
Speaker 1: I could totally tell when there's gay people laughing the
Speaker 1: background versus a laugh track. It's a very clear difference.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it would be so easy if I was just
Speaker 2: plugging that in in post.
Speaker 4: But no.
Speaker 2: We bring in thirty thirty five Gaze every month just
Speaker 2: to laugh at my jokes, and sometimes they don't.
Speaker 4: And you can see that too when they don't laugh
Speaker 4: at my jokes.
Speaker 2: But I think that is something I was really excited
Speaker 2: to do that is different from a lot of the
Speaker 2: other video essay sphere because it also brings in aspects
Speaker 2: of live performance that I love as a up and
Speaker 2: as a theater artist, and also like, yeah, just pulls
Speaker 2: it into like a slightly different genre of thing that
Speaker 2: we're making. And I think certainly in terms of like
Speaker 2: growth and audience building and like the potential of being
Speaker 2: picked up by some larger organization. It definitely puts us
Speaker 2: in like a different It makes us look slightly different
Speaker 2: than like a YouTube show, even if we can all
Speaker 2: like sort of quietly acknowledge, like, well, what all of
Speaker 2: our growth is happening on YouTube and Instagram?
Speaker 4: But like, as you said, like Real Late Night.
Speaker 2: Is huge on YouTube now too, And there's all these
Speaker 2: other extra correlating factors of like monetization on YouTube sort
Speaker 2: of died a few years ago after the ad apocalypse
Speaker 2: or whatever, and so you have to go through crowdfunding
Speaker 2: sources like Patreon or sponsorships or x other white Like
Speaker 2: there's not like you.
Speaker 1: Can't Nebula or whatever. Right, new streeting service for YouTube
Speaker 1: pops up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, you can't just rely on ad sense anymore.
Speaker 2: And that's frustrating in its own degree. But I think
Speaker 2: even beyond that, Yeah, like not relegating ourselves to being
Speaker 2: a YouTube show, both thematically and like concretely in terms
Speaker 2: of content and form, is like really exciting. And I
Speaker 2: think like, even as we grow and gain a budget
Speaker 2: and are able to buy nicer cameras, we want to
Speaker 2: like keep the aesthetics and vibe of like Edgy Radical
Speaker 2: public Access because it's like a part of the voice
Speaker 2: of the show, along with sort of the practicalities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, having background ketamine jokes, I think really is right.
Speaker 1: It sets you apart the quote unquote.
Speaker 2: VHS cleaner that sits on the desk every episode. I
Speaker 2: don't own a VHS.
Speaker 1: We will return to. It could happen here after these
Speaker 1: messages we now return to. It could happen here. To me,
Speaker 1: the most exciting thing about the idea of a new
Speaker 1: wave of independent trans cinema is that we'll get to
Speaker 1: see a whole bunch of trans films that otherwise would
Speaker 1: never get made by the big studios. After trans filmmaker
Speaker 1: Jane Shanbron's successful festival run of her small scale future
Speaker 1: debut titled We're All Going to the World's Fair back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, her next film, called I Saw
Speaker 1: the TV Glow, got picked up by m Stone's production
Speaker 1: company and a twenty four The film is now coming
Speaker 1: out later this month. In the case of The People's Joker,
Speaker 1: it dares to take Warner Brothers and Disney at their
Speaker 1: word that their privately owned intellectual property is in fact
Speaker 1: our culture's version of mythology, our very own Greek gods,
Speaker 1: and so if these characters really are the cultural icons
Speaker 1: that the monopolized companies who own them claim them to be.
Speaker 1: What happens when we actually do treat them like mythology
Speaker 1: and use these characters to artistically mythologize our own lives.
Speaker 1: By skillfully sidestepping copyright law via effective legal parody, we
Speaker 1: get to have a Batman film through the lens of
Speaker 1: transgender chaos magic, which I'm afraid would simply never happen
Speaker 1: under Warner Brothers Discovery, as they can't even stop deleting
Speaker 1: their own finished films to get tax right offs. A
Speaker 1: few weeks ago, I showed my it could happen here
Speaker 1: co host Mia Wong the People's Joker, and afterwards we
Speaker 1: talked about what makes it feel so special and it's
Speaker 1: placed within the pantheon of queer cinema.
Speaker 5: One of my dear friends, Vicky Osterweil, is writing a
Speaker 5: book called The Extended Universe about sort of copyright law
Speaker 5: and what it's done to film, and specifically focusing on
Speaker 5: on Disney and the thing that's different about The People's Joker. Right,
Speaker 5: if if you want to know why the People's Joker is,
Speaker 5: you know why specifically you couldn't make this, it's it's
Speaker 5: partially because it's trans and it's partially because it's actually
Speaker 5: a movie. Yeah, because and then this is this is
Speaker 5: this is this is Vicky's argument, you know, and this
Speaker 5: is this is the hidden truth about the film industry
Speaker 5: is that movies are not designed to sell movies.
Speaker 1: No, they're to send copyright.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 5: No, it's it's worse than that. Like, a superhero movie
Speaker 5: does not make money on the movie, right, the movie
Speaker 5: theater is not making money on the movie. Movie theater
Speaker 5: is making money on food the company itself. That's not
Speaker 5: where the money comes from. The money comes from toy sales, yeah,
Speaker 5: and sales of stuff afterwards. Right, So what you're actually
Speaker 5: seeing when you're seeing a superhero movie is just an
Speaker 5: ad and this is yeah, and this is part of
Speaker 5: what the people's joker is that makes it different, right,
Speaker 5: And you know, and it's because like specifically, because it
Speaker 5: is trans and because of the way that is transit
Speaker 5: makes it impossible for its being made by corporation, and
Speaker 5: because trans people fought to make it, it gets to
Speaker 5: be an actual movie and not a fucking toy sales thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they're not going to be making a toy
Speaker 1: of mustache pedophile batman.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Right, and this is incredibly important for the genre
Speaker 5: of film, because you know, I mean, there is a
Speaker 5: world that is not too far off where we are
Speaker 5: the last people making actual fucking films and not advertisements.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: To use this sort of like only semi ironically, using
Speaker 5: this sort of lofty, like Marxist language is like, yeah,
Speaker 5: like we kind of also have been given the historical
Speaker 5: task of safe film from its complete annihilation by these
Speaker 5: fucking capitalist copyright ghouls.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to see. It's a joy to see.
Speaker 1: I think I was reading an interesting article recently that
Speaker 1: talked about how trans media's orientation has been very referential.
Speaker 1: It's been very much based on experiences that trans people
Speaker 1: have as kids engaging with media, whether that's with something
Speaker 1: like Buffy the Vampires Layer, whether that's with DC comics,
Speaker 1: And it's because transness is so much about recontextualizing your
Speaker 1: whole life and identity. A lot of trans media has
Speaker 1: also been about this form of recontextualization, both with I
Speaker 1: think The People's Joker is a great example, also the
Speaker 1: upcoming film I saw The TV Glow, which is very
Speaker 1: much based on like Buffy and other and other kind
Speaker 1: of like Monster of the Week title TV shows. It's
Speaker 1: combining all of that kind of stuff with a lot
Speaker 1: of lynching influences, both in these cases, both in The
Speaker 1: People's Joker and in I saw the TV glow to
Speaker 1: create this like dream of self identity in this referential format,
Speaker 1: and that's been an interesting trend to watch in trans cinema,
Speaker 1: and I think that's that's something that's something to look
Speaker 1: I think that's something to look for when you're engaging
Speaker 1: with future trans cinema projects, seeing if those kind of
Speaker 1: things pop up, and if and if they don't, why
Speaker 1: is that what else is actually happening instead? I think
Speaker 1: those are gonna be some interesting interesting ways to uh
Speaker 1: engage with our own diy art in the next decade here.
Speaker 1: Because as much as like everything we talk about is
Speaker 1: so like depressing, like on this show, like about how
Speaker 1: everything dealing with like trends stuff is about how everyone's
Speaker 1: trying to like kill us and restrict our medical care,
Speaker 1: that does not actually stop us from becoming people who
Speaker 1: actually engage with culture in any real sense. I think
Speaker 1: despite everything that's targeted against trans people, it does not
Speaker 1: stop us from actually having a cultural output. And the
Speaker 1: thing a lot of conservatives are afraid of is our
Speaker 1: cultural output. The fact that trans people keep being actually
Speaker 1: really compelling artists and really compelling people in general makes
Speaker 1: conservative service. I don't think it's impossible for conservatives to
Speaker 1: make art. I think there is conservative art that actually
Speaker 1: can be seen as like okay art. But they certainly
Speaker 1: are afraid at how good trans people are at making
Speaker 1: music and now making movies. When I was talking with me,
Speaker 1: she brought up a good point that all paraphrase here.
Speaker 1: Part of why we're seeing this new wave of independent
Speaker 1: transcinema is the result of a combination of two things.
Speaker 1: One is that trans and queer artists have been and
Speaker 1: continue to be chewed up and spat out by the
Speaker 1: traditional media machine, and two, the traditional media machine itself
Speaker 1: is slowly rotting from the inside, which can be a
Speaker 1: tricky situation to navigate for a lot of queer artists.
Speaker 1: But simultaneously, it also means that we're in this position,
Speaker 1: we're having been spat out. We have full rain to
Speaker 1: go make our own, massive, grotesque, degenerate queer art on
Speaker 1: our own, because there simply is no artistic alternative. Trans
Speaker 1: people need to be submitting to film festivals regardless of
Speaker 1: whether or not CIS viewers and critics will understand the work.
Speaker 1: Filmmaking is one of those art forms that you can't
Speaker 1: really do all by yourself, but that doesn't need to
Speaker 1: be a limitation. That can be an asset. Gay people
Speaker 1: are good at a lot of different things, and filmmaking
Speaker 1: integrates so many different artistic areas and skills, and as
Speaker 1: we've seen, a movie made by a community of queers
Speaker 1: can create such a unique result. When talking with Vera Drew,
Speaker 1: she mentioned that having a whole team of artists help
Speaker 1: her complete the movie is also in part what ensured
Speaker 1: that she would find a way for the film to
Speaker 1: be distributed the right way so that it's seen up
Speaker 1: on the big screen and not just published online for free.
Speaker 3: You know. That was another thing that really kind of
Speaker 3: kept me from doing anything irrational with the film, like
Speaker 3: posting it on Google Drive with contribution to a donation
Speaker 3: link or whatever. It was like like I have all
Speaker 3: these artists that just worked on this movie with me
Speaker 3: for two and a half years, and like, no, we're
Speaker 3: gonna fucking do this. Like I said I would do this,
Speaker 3: and I'm gonna do this cause like I can't just
Speaker 3: like feed this back into the incubator and the fucking
Speaker 3: feedback loop of trans Twitter and like cool underground circles
Speaker 3: that I totally love to be a part of, but
Speaker 3: we're all trying to, you know, get more visibility outside
Speaker 3: of those things. So yeah, I always really just wanted
Speaker 3: to honor that, honor the team and make everybody feel valued.
Speaker 3: And you know, I paid as many people as I could,
Speaker 3: and you know, was very straightforward about what I could afford,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people worked in ways that they
Speaker 3: just felt compensated and that was very appreciated. You know,
Speaker 3: I think in general, like everybody on this was very underpaid.
Speaker 3: But like it was such a labor of love and
Speaker 3: such like a a personal thing for all of us
Speaker 3: that everybody just like showed up and and really rallied
Speaker 3: around each other and really just kept saying yes and
Speaker 3: to everything, and it's so cool. I don't I don't
Speaker 3: know how I'll ever really be able to replicate. I
Speaker 3: don't think I should either, just because it's it was.
Speaker 3: It was quite a gargantuan task, but you know, it
Speaker 3: was it was literally the best time of my life,
Speaker 3: was was making this movie. Like I think it really
Speaker 3: it taught me just how to be a human being
Speaker 3: and how to love and how to like finally feel
Speaker 3: connected to my to my queer community, because I think
Speaker 3: like The People's Jokers really more than anything, it's really
Speaker 3: about nuance and like relationships and family and uh politics,
Speaker 3: And it talks about nuance by really leaning into these
Speaker 3: like extremes, which I think just is also inherently queer,
Speaker 3: and I don't know, I mean that to me is
Speaker 3: like another thing. It's just like I I hope and
Speaker 3: there there's there's a lot of trans filmmakers that are
Speaker 3: like starting to pop up in the genre space, but
Speaker 3: like I hope, I hope we more of it, just
Speaker 3: because like we all grew up on the same movies
Speaker 3: that SIS people did, So like why can't we make
Speaker 3: similar art, you know, and tell our stories in the
Speaker 3: process and also do it in a way that's like
Speaker 3: not hiding in the shadows.
Speaker 1: The People's Joker is slowly ending its US theatrical run,
Speaker 1: but you can still look for tickets and show times
Speaker 1: at the People's Joker dot com, and you can find
Speaker 1: Vera Drew online at Vera Drew twenty two Late Stage
Speaker 1: Live just released their sixth episode, and I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to see how the show will grow and evolve over time.
Speaker 2: And we've actually recently hit an inflection point with the
Speaker 2: show where like the sort of organic, haphazard growth is
Speaker 2: no longer sustainable for us. We've been having a lot
Speaker 2: of really exciting and scary conversations behind the scenes about
Speaker 2: like formalizing our production process and kicking our shit up
Speaker 2: a notch so that we have the potential to make
Speaker 2: this bigger and better and more polished. But it is
Speaker 2: at its core still like a production born out of
Speaker 2: community and like mutual respect. Yeerman. You can find me
Speaker 2: on Instagram at La dot Yeerman, on x dot com
Speaker 2: at Ella Yeerman. I think I'm on Blue Sky also,
Speaker 2: though I don't do anything there. You can find Late
Speaker 2: Stage Live as Late Sailers Live on all platforms. That's Instagram,
Speaker 2: x YouTube, TikTok probably also Blue Sky, but those are
Speaker 2: the big ones. And then if you're interested in finding
Speaker 2: my stand up show, we're at T four T Comedy
Speaker 2: on Instagram and x oh. And then most specifically, if
Speaker 2: you're interested in helping fun Blade Stage and make us
Speaker 2: bigger and better and shinier, you can go to Patreon
Speaker 2: dot com slash Late Stage Live, where we post Yeah,
Speaker 2: we have a behind the scenes photos and videos, and
Speaker 2: we make a semi frequent podcast where my head writer
Speaker 2: and I talk about the news and shoot the shit
Speaker 2: and talk about the process and a lot more detail
Speaker 2: episode by episode. And we're so grateful for our current
Speaker 2: patrons and for opportunities like this, and we're excited to
Speaker 2: see where the show.
Speaker 1: Goes that doesn't for us at It could Happen here.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed my Transformers and Gi Joe ad
Speaker 1: break references, and if not, you can send any complaints
Speaker 1: to the President of Columbia University. Solidarity to everyone across
Speaker 1: the country who's been out the past few weeks. See
Speaker 1: you on the other side. It could Happen here as
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 3: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.