Posted in: Movies, Streaming | Tagged: indie movies, LGBTQ, MUBI, streaming, The People's Joker, Vera Drew

The People's Joker: Now Streaming on Mubi

The People's Joker, Vera Drew's award-winning transgressive indie satire and highly personal take on pop culture is now streaming on Mubi

The People's Joker, the award-winning indie LGBTQ cause celebre, is now streaming on Mubi, one of the best streaming services for arthouse, indie, and international films that gives the Criterion Channel a real run for its money. In this absurdist autobiographically-inspired dark comedy, a painfully unfunny aspiring clown (writer-director Vera Drew as Joker the Harlequin) grapples with her gender identity while unsuccessfully attempting to join the ranks of Gotham City's sole comedy program in a world where comedy has been outlawed. Uniting with a ragtag team of rejects and misfits, Joker the Harlequin forms an illegal anti-comedy troupe, putting her on a collision course with the devious caped crusader controlling the city.

"Thank You, Warner Brothers, for Not Suing Me" – Vera Drew

Directed, starring, co-written, and edited by trans filmmaker Vera Drew, who got her start in the alt-comedy scene and with Tim Heidecker's Abso Lutely Productions, the film is heavily based on her own life and relationship with queerness and comedy. It had an illustrious and explosive journey to the present, starting out as a TIFF 2022 Midnight Madness selection that was pulled from the festival after its Midnight section world premiere due to WB making it known that they considered the film an infringement.

The People's Joker features a superhero-sized cast of celebrated comedic talent in both voice and live-action roles behind the vibrant kaleidoscope of characters that lampoon the iconic heroes and villains of the DC comics' world, featuring cameos from comedy multi-hyphenate Tim Heidecker, award-winning actor Bob Odenkirk, Maria Bamford (Netflix's Big Mouth, Adult Swim's Teenage Euthanasia), and Scott Aukerman (Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis co-creator and host of the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast), with Vera Drew, Lynn Downey (Amazon Prime Video's Daisy Jones & The Six), Nathan Faustyn (SADDLED), and Kane Distler, in his film debut, making up the film's core cast. With her own life as a trans woman and artist motivating the film's story and theme, the script was co-written by close creative collaborator Bri LeRose (Netflix's Magic for Humans and Chad & JT Go Deep).

Vera Drew shot The People's Joker entirely on green screen, the collaborative work of over 200 independent, predominantly queer creators —artists, musicians, and animators— elevates the instantaneously illustrious feature beyond genre pastiche into an overflowing collage of mixed-media visuals across 2D, 3D, stop-motion, and more forms of animation. The film has been included in end-of-year Best of 2024 lists in The New Yorker, LA Times, Consequence, IndieWire, The Film Stage, OUT, them, and more. Richard Brody of The New Yorker called it "The best superhero movie I've ever seen—because, unlike studio-produced films in the genre, it responds to the filmmaker's deep personal concerns… As intimate as a whisper, as recognizable as a raucous laugh, as singular as the essential story that it tells… Has more energy, audacity, originality, and righteous rage than most of this spring's festival-honored art-house-auteur films."

Or, you know, just come for the Adult Swim vibes! There's so much deep dive in it that it qualifies as an unauthorised, unofficial Elseworlds!

The People's Joker is streaming on Mubi.

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