{"id":1175367,"date":"2024-08-13T09:13:23","date_gmt":"2024-08-13T16:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/?p=1175367"},"modified":"2024-08-13T09:26:18","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T16:26:18","slug":"vera-drew-peoples-joker-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/vera-drew-peoples-joker-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"How Vera Drew Made The People’s Joker With Her Own Money \u2014 But No Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vera Drew broke almost every rule you can make when making a movie \u2014 and not just because she based her trans Joker parody on intellectual properties owned by Warner Bros. The People\u2019s Joker<\/em>, one of most phenomenal films of the year, in every sense, evolved so naturally from a joke into a feature film that Drew never took time to stop and figure out how much everything would cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI never had a budget,\u201d laughs Drew, the film\u2019s director, co-writer, editor, producer and star. \u201cI never really had a roadmap. I would never make a movie like this again, and I don’t advise anybody else to make a movie the way I made it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film, now available on video on demand and Blu-Ray, sprang from the discourse over Todd Phillips\u2019 2019 Joker<\/em>, which reimagined both Batman\u2019s greatest nemesis and the Martin Scorsese classics Taxi Driver<\/em> and the King of Comedy<\/em>. Phillips said in an interview he had moved on from comedies like Old School<\/em> and The Hangover<\/em> in part because it\u2019s hard \u201cto be funny nowadays with this woke culture.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drew was known at that time for her editing for Tim & Eric, Eric Andr\u00e9, Sacha Baron Cohen and other comedy icons. Her writer friend Bri LeRose, taking issue with Phillips\u2019 assessment of the state of comedy, sent Drew $12 over Venmo to commission a comedic re-edit of Phillips\u2019 Joker<\/em>. But soon Drew soon got serious, and realized she wanted to make a \u201creal movie.\u201d She reached out to LeRose to see if she would co-write, and The People\u2019s Joker<\/em> was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many wise experts at breaking into the industry advise screenwriters to write something very affordable to shoot. Drew and LeRose didn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs far as micro-budget film scripts go, this was like the most ambitious script ever written,\u201d Drew laughs. \u201cWe did not know how we were going to pull off anything we were writing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two imagined a lurid, vibrant, gorgeous twist on the Gotham City of Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher\u2019s Batman films, stacked with characters that even films with multimillion-dollar budgets have sometimes struggled to carry convincingly from comics pages to cinema screens. It is both a queer coming-of-age story and a knowing, alternately harsh and affectionate critique of comedy institutions from the Upright Citizens Brigade to Saturday Night Live<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vera Drew. Photo by Sophie Prettyman-Beauchamp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Among those who praise the film is The New Yorker<\/em><\/a>\u2018s Richard Brody, who has called it \u201cthe best superhero movie I\u2019ve ever seen\u2014because, unlike\u00a0studio-produced films\u00a0in the genre, it responds to the filmmaker\u2019s deep personal concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve perhaps heard about what happened<\/a> when the film premiered last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival: It played just once because Drew received a letter from Warner Bros. representatives concerned about the use of their characters.

The resulting headlines led to film-festival circuit fascination, but Drew thinks it may have also scared off some distributors. After several semi-secret festival screenings, The People\u2019s Joker<\/em> rolled out for a theatrical run in cities across the United States this spring, distributed by Altered Innocence. Drew had worked closely with her lawyers to make sure the film was legally protected as a parody.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We talked with Vera Drew about making The People\u2019s Joker<\/em> with more than $100,000 to spend \u2014 but no budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Molloy:<\/strong> This movie is beautiful. May I ask what it cost? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vera Drew:<\/strong> It’s tough to say because the process was so organic. \u2026 In 2020, during the pandemic, it was like, OK, I can’t work. So I’ll get a PPP loan so that I can stay self-employed, and maybe pick up some freelance gigs. And while I’m doing that, I’ll work on this movie and kind of just pay myself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then that ran out and I reached the point where I was like, OK, now we need to film it. And I wanted it to look good, because I knew every shot was going to be on a blue screen. So it needed to be lit, and I needed to shoot it on a soundstage. So I tried to crowdfunded it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The <\/em>People’s Joker 2D amusement park by A.T. Pratt<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We raised just shy of $25,000, and it was crazy because I think my goal was $10,000. But I’m glad I raised that amount. Because all of that went into our shoot, pretty much every single dime. Which was cool, because it looks great. And it was lit well, and we got everything we needed. We shot it in five days.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Molloy:<\/strong> If you\u2019d told me it cost $200,000, or $2.5 million, I would have believed you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vera Drew:<\/strong> Thank you. I mean, we definitely ended up spending a lot more, because after we wrapped, I had surgery and so kind of had a downtime. I opened up my computer and it finally settled in: Oh, now I\u2019ve got to edit it. And I had this whole team of artists that wanted to work with me on it. A lot of them had already started working with me on it, coming up with revisions and sets and stuff. I knew I needed a lot more money to finish this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never wanted people to work on it for free, because the movie was so much about how exploitative and shitty show business can be. I didn’t want the behind the scenes of it to embody that in any way.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I did what they tell you never to do, and I took out a huge loan. I went about $100,000 in debt. Not all of that went into the movie \u2014 a lot of that went into taking time off so that I could oversee this big, unwieldy, sort of VFX nightmare that I created for myself. But I used that reserve of money to pull from to pay the artists as much as I could. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And again, I didn’t really have a roadmap. It was really like going through and figuring out, What do we need for each of these moments? What can I pay people? Because everybody that worked on it was underpaid. If I\u2019d had $2 million to make it, everybody would have probably gotten appropriately paid, but even then it might have been cutting it very close, just because of the amount of work that went into just the blue-screen removal.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vera Drew on Offering Creative Freedom to Her People’s Joker Collaborators<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Tim Molloy:<\/strong> There’s also such a thing as barter, where you have all these creative people doing something for you and you’re presumably giving something back, besides money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vera Drew:<\/strong> Well, that’s the thing. I\u2019ve worked for a lot of people and at a lot of places where you’d get told, \u201cWe’re all family here,\u201d which is such an empty gesture. A lot of people who want to make films end up hearing these things. If your boss is ever telling you that, run for the hills, because all that means is you’re gonna get underpaid. And you might even get told you’re gonna get experience out of it or whatever. And that so rarely happens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to apply this different approach to it, where it’s almost like a community garden or a community art project or something where there’s a collectivist approach to it. I always knew that my voice and my face would be in almost every shot of the movie, so I was never worried about my vision disappearing in it. So I would go to these artists, and say, \u201cLook, here’s what I can afford to pay you. If you don’t want to do it, please don’t. I want you to feel compensated financially, but more than that, artistically.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That meant not micromanaging what the artists were bringing to the table, and allowing the artists to lean into their best aesthetics. For example, we have a broken-down amusement park set that was just a 2D abstract painting of a broken-down amusement park by artist A.T. Pratt. I didn\u2019t know how to use it as a set, but thought, let’s figure out a way to make it work. So my 3D animators cut out individual pieces of it, and turned it into a 3D diorama set. And it\u2019s amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Adaptations of Pratt\u2019s painting into the 3D environment used for the film, by Jasperi Wirtanen and Scott Lougheed<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was just the approach of working with what people wanted to bring to the table and allowing them to really explore their best aesthetics. That\u2019s why the Batcave in the movie looks like an old PlayStation. Salem Hughes, the artist who made that set and our Batmobile, makes that kind of 3D model. So it was like, that’s perfect \u2014 let’s make all those sequences look like a Batman video game or something from the \u201890s. I think it helps the movie feel so eclectic, and queer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Molloy: <\/strong>I’ve always wondered: Why can’t someone just make a movie and give shares to everyone who works on it. And then if the movie hits it big \u2014 and of course most movies don’t \u2014 you can pay them a percentage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vera Drew: <\/strong>Yeah, you absolutely can. And we had a level of that in place, to a certain extent. Like my line producer on the movie, Joey Lyons, was making almost no money on this. So that was a person where I was like, \u201cHey, you get points on the movie.\u201d And when I was able to get finishing funds via my distribution partners, we said, let’s go back and pay Joey more, let’s go back and get our character artists paid, let’s license the songs we want to use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I think with this one, it was a little tricky just because from the legal standpoint, I didn’t want to implicate anybody either, financially. But your point stands. I think more indie filmmakers could make really ambitious projects, if they approached it from a DIY community. Sort of like a co-op.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Main image: Joker the Harlequin and Mx Mxyzptlk (Vera Drew and Ember Knight in <\/em>The People’s Joker. Altered Innocence. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story initally appeared in the summer 2024 issue of <\/em>MovieMaker, on newsstands now.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vera Drew broke almost every rule you can make when making a movie \u2014 and not just because she based","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":1175369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_comments":false,"cm_data":"","cpt_newsletter_id":0,"tpd_coauthor":[],"tpd_feed_delay":[],"is_tpd_lists_single_post":false,"tpd_featured_posts_arr":"","tpd_franchise_content":"","hide_featured_img_single_post":false,"msn_featured_video":[],"_msn_custom_title":"","tpd_featured_video":[],"tpd_sponsored_post_logo":"","tpd_sponsored_post_logo_link":"","tpd_sponsored_post_logo_width":0,"tpd_sponsored_enable_nofollow":true,"tpd_disable_incontent_ads":false,"tpd_disable_right_rail_ads":false,"tpd_disable_after_content_ads":false,"tpd_disable_header_ads":false,"tpd_disable_sticky_footer_ads":false,"tpd_disable_video_ads":false,"tpd_disable_outbrain":false,"tpd_affiliate_disclaimer":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[40579],"tags":[],"coauthor":[],"feeds":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1175367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-films-at-any-budget"},"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Joker-and-Mx-Mxyzptlk-Vera-Drew-and-Ember-Knight-428x241.jpg","fimg_url_thumb":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Joker-and-Mx-Mxyzptlk-Vera-Drew-and-Ember-Knight-428x241.jpg","fimg_url":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Joker-and-Mx-Mxyzptlk-Vera-Drew-and-Ember-Knight-788x444.jpg","author_name":"Tim Molloy","author_avatar":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/IMG_1078-100x100.jpg","author_link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/author\/tim-molloy\/","coauthors":[],"primary_category":{"term_id":40579,"name":"Films at Any Budget","slug":"films-at-any-budget","taxonomy":"category","url":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/category\/films-at-any-budget\/"},"featured_img_medium":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Joker-and-Mx-Mxyzptlk-Vera-Drew-and-Ember-Knight-788x444.jpg","post_categories":["Films at Any Budget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1175367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1175369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1175367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1175367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1175367"},{"taxonomy":"coauthor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthor?post=1175367"},{"taxonomy":"feeds","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feeds?post=1175367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}