Latest news with #ThePeople'sJoker
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Movies to see this week: 'High Fidelity' with John Cusack, 'Dogma,' 'Rogue One'
Movies to see this week: 'High Fidelity' with John Cusack, 'Dogma,' 'Rogue One' originally appeared on Bring Me The News. How did this get released? Why did this disappear? And how the hell did this get made? These are all valid questions to ask of some of the repertory movies hitting movie theaters this week. (That'd be, from my point of view, The People's Joker, Dogma, and Threads, respectively.) However, those are far from the only alluring movies out there this week. The Queenie Von Curves-curated Pride series at The Parkway starts this week, and John Cusack is in town to talk about High Fidelity on its 25th anniversary. Scroll onward for details on those and other movies playing around the Twin Cities this week. Thursday, June 5, at Grandview Theatres It's a miracle The People's Joker even got made. It's a parody of a coming-of-age superhero movie starring writer and director Vera Drew as a closeted trans girl trying to make a name as a comedian in Gotham City. It's a psychedelic, strange, funny, surprisingly personal movie that managed to be released despite its use of DC characters. While Drew is the star, it also has a litany of comedic cameos from the likes of Tim Heidecker, Bob Odenkirk, Maria Bamford, and Scott Aukerman. 1830 Grand Ave., St. Paul ($14.44) Thursday, June 5–Wednesday, June 11, at various theaters (full details below) Director Kevin Smith passed through the Twin Cities suburbs earlier this year for a screening of Dogma, a beloved but (until now) hard-to-see movie in Smith's catalog. It had been caught in limbo through a winding series of events that involved producer Harvey Weinstein, who eventually sold off the rights. While the film had a DVD release at one point, it hasn't been in theaters or on streaming, so it's been a big return for the movie that stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as a pair of fallen angels who've found a loophole that could get them back into heaven. Bethany (Linda Fiorentino) is tasked by a surly angel (Alan Rickman) to stop their inglorious return. She's given a pair of "prophets" in the form of Jay and Silent Bob (Smith and Jason Mewes), and a litany of cameos that includes Chris Rock, George Carlin, Alanis Morissette, Janeane Garofalo, Salma Hayek, and Jason Lee. Friday, June 6, at Uptown Theater With apologies to Empire Records and celebrants of Rex Manning Day, High Fidelity may be the greatest movie about a record store ever made. The adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel follows the tormented love life of Rob (John Cusack) and the lovable, aloof employees of his record store. It's a time capsule for the way record stores once were. Cusack will be on hand to celebrate the movie's 25th anniversary and maybe fire off a couple of his own top-five lists. Head to your favorite record store afterwards when you've been convinced to buy a copy of The Beta Band's The Three E.P.s. 2900 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis ($91–$277) Friday, June 6–Tuesday, June 10, at The Trylon Cinema Even as the Star Wars universe exploded with movies and shows after its release, Rogue One may be the most atypical and thematically interesting among the onslaught of stories from a galaxy far, far away. (Though, more recently, Andor has continued that legacy.) Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is recruited into the resistance because her kidnapped father (Mads Mikkelsen) has designed the Empire's planet-ending weapon. Though, he's secretly given it a weakness that could be exposed. A ragtag group of freedom fighters — including Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, Riz Ahmed, and Wen Jiang — have to execute an ill-advised heist to get plans for the Death Star back to the Rebellion. It fills in gaps from the original trilogy and manages to be a dark, tense movie, even though viewers of the original movies know, more or less, where things will wind up. 2820 E 33rd St., Minneapolis ($8) Saturday, June 7–Sunday, June 8, at The Trylon Cinema The Trylon and the American Cinematheque are not messing around with their "Bleak Week" programming. It's described as a series that explores "the darkest sides of humanity." Threads is as advertised. There are plenty of grim films about nuclear warfare, but Threads somehow makes movies like Oppenheimer, War Games, and I Live in Fear look like pleasant diversions. The made-for-TV movie plays like a documentary of nuclear annihilation while also having fictional narrative threads that show the devastation that families go through during this nuclear winter. It's not just your usual cautionary tale. It goes from a jolly couple in Sheffield to protests to the private fears of citizens to hiding in bomb shelters to eating animals found dead to stillbirths with shocking quickness and clarity. 2820 E 33rd St., Minneapolis ($8) Tuesday, June 10, at The Parkway Theater The Parkway Theater invited Queenie von Curves to curate a series of films for Pride Month, and it starts off with But I'm a Cheerleader. Actually, it starts with a burlesque/drag show hosted by Von Curves before each movie in the series. Then, it's But I'm a Cheerleader, where Megan (Natasha Lyonne) gets sent to a camp by her tightly wound parents, who suspect that she might be a lesbian. The movie also stars Clea DuVall, Michelle Williams, and RuPaul. 4814 Chicago Ave., Minneapolis ($12)More movies playing this week in the Twin Cities: June 4: Tape Freaks at The Trylon Cinema June 4: Grease (1978) at Emagine Eagan, Emagine Lakeville, Emagine White Bear, and Emagine Willow Creek June 4: Los Zafiros: Music From the Edge of Time (2003) at The Main Cinema, part of the Minnesota Cuban Film Festival June 4: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) at Mann Edina Theatres June 4: Insurgent Transmissions: Queer Cinema for Palestine at Bryant Lake Bowl June 4: Footloose (2011) at The Commons in Minneapolis (free) June 4–5: The Asylum's Ballerina Assassin (2025) at The Trylon Cinema June 4 and 10: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014) at Alamo Drafthouse June 5: Purple Rain (1984) at The Parkway Theater June 5: The People's Joker (2022) at Grandview Theatres June 5: Days of Wine and Roses (1962) at Heights Theater June 5: Shivers (1975) at Emagine Willow Creek June 5: Mufasa: The Lion King (2024) at Brackett Field Park in Minneapolis (free) June 5: Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) at Capri Theater June 5–7: Clue (1985) at Riverview Theater June 5 and 8: Dogma (1999) at B&B Theatres Mall of America, Oakdale Cinema, Parkwood Cinema, Southbridge Crossing Cinema, and West End Cinema June 5–8: Dogma (1999) at AMC Southdale, Emagine Eagan, Emagine Lakeville, Emagine White Bear, and Emagine Willow Creek June 5–11: Dogma (1999) at Alamo Drafthouse June 6: The Garfield Movie (2024) at Webber Park in Minneapolis (free) June 6: An Evening with John Cusack + High Fidelity (2000) at Uptown Theater June 6: Scream It Off Screen at The Parkway Theater June 6–10: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) at The Trylon Cinema June 6: The Sweet Hereafter (1997) at The Trylon Cinema June 7: Forrest Gump (1994) at Lake Harriet Bandshell in Minneapolis (free) June 7: The Craft (1996) at The Main Cinema June 7, 11, and 22: Dinner in America (2020) at Grandview Theatres June 7–12: The Wild Robot (2024) at St. Michael Cinema June 7: Come and See (1985) at The Trylon Cinema June 7 and 11: Brokeback Mountain (2005) at Alamo Drafthouse June 7 and 10: Dogra Magra (1988) at The Trylon Cinema June 7–8: Threads (1984) at The Trylon Cinema June 8: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) at Roxy's Cabaret June 8: Tangerine (2015) at Emagine Willow Creek June 8: Twilight (2008) at Emagine Eagan, Emagine Lakeville, Emagine White Bear, and Emagine Willow Creek June 8–12: Despicable Me 4 (2024) at Oakdale Cinema, Parkwood Cinema, Rosemount Cinema, Southbridge Crossing Cinema, and West End Cinema June 8 and 12: Happy Together (1997) at Grandview Theatres June 9: Natural Enemies (1979) at The Trylon Cinema June 9: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) at Emagine Willow Creek June 9–14: The Land Before Time (1988) at Riverview Theater June 10: But I'm a Cheerleader (1999) at The Parkway Theater June 10: Unfriended: Dark Web (2018) at Alamo Drafthouse June 10: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) at Bottineau Park in Minneapolis (free) June 10–12: The Bad Guys (2022) at B&B Theatres Mall of AmericaThis story was originally reported by Bring Me The News on Jun 5, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The People's Joker' Director Vera Drew Actually Enjoyed the ‘Sexy Grossness' of ‘Joker: Folie à Deux'
'Joker: Folie à Deux' may not have many fans, but those who do appreciate its contrarian energy really love saying so. No, we're not just talking about Quentin Tarantino, but 'The People's Joker' herself, Vera Drew. Speaking in a recent interview with 'The Independent,' the indie filmmaker voiced her admiration for co-writer/director Todd Phillips' efforts and the whole team's commitment to subverting expectations. 'It's a middle finger to incels and 'Joker' (2019) fans,' said Drew. 'There's a sequence in 'Joker 2' where Joaquin Phoenix loses his virginity to Lady Gaga, and he cums in less than four seconds. How could I not love that film? It had a sexy grossness to it that I was just not anticipating. Todd Phillips, please call me.' More from IndieWire Jack Haven Says Because of 'I Saw the TV Glow' People Are Coming Out as Trans 'Faster Than Their Passports Can Be Revoked' Jane Fonda Offers 'Good Luck' to Teams Behind Remakes of 'Barbarella' and '9 to 5' This praise carries a huge weight coming from Drew, as 'Joker' was the film that kicked off a journey that resulted in her own creation, 'The People's Joker.' At the time, Phillips had shared how 'woke culture' had pushed him away from comedy and toward more serious material, a fact Drew's eventual co-writer Bri LeRose responded to by tweeting, 'I will only watch this coward's Joker movie if Vera Drew re-edits it.' And thus, 'The People's Joker' was born. And though she would spend years obsessing over every kind of Joker there has ever been, she was still willing to take time out for one more with 'Joker: Folie à Deux.' 'I had to see it opening night, just because I needed to get over it, to see the movie and stop thinking about these fucking characters,' Drew said. 'And it reinvigorated me. I don't think anything that cost $200m and, you know, stars Lady Gaga, is really punk per se, but it didn't give you anything you wanted.' Though Drew may have offered high marks to the critically panned box-office bomb, she had less kind words for the studio behind the film, Warner Bros. Discovery. In 2022, days ahead of her film's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, the company sent a communication to Drew emphasizing its objections to her project. Many misconstrued this as an official cease and desist, causing Drew to have to cancel screenings of 'The People's Joker' at TIFF and other festivals. 'It was just like this strongly worded letter,' Drew told The Independent. 'Saying that we don't approve, and don't think you should be allowed to screen or profit off this film. And we want you to show this letter to anybody who is interested in exhibiting it. Which was devastating. They literally waited until the last minute.' Despite these tactics, Drew's film still exists within the parameters of parody law, allowing it eventually to continue its rollout in 2023 at OutFest, followed by a U.S. theatrical release in April 2024. Now the film is even headed to the U.K., which Drew unaffectionately referred to as 'Terf Island,' an allusion to the rampant transphobia that still exists there, largely brought on by fellow storytellers like J.K. Rowling. She does hope that will change though, now that they get to experience 'The People's Joker.' 'It feels like trans art is really needed there right now,' said Drew. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
The Independent
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
‘Was this a big mistake?': How Vera Drew defied Warner Bros and turned the Batman universe trans
Not to put myself down, but I think I'm just kind of dumb,' says Vera Drew, the droll, intelligent director-star of The People's Joker. I let her explain. Back when she was making her film – a frantically funny, deeply personal parody of DC Comics' Batman universe, which re-imagines the Clown Prince of Crime as a burgeoning alternative comedian who realises she's transgender – it never occurred to her what the reaction would be. 'When I was making this thing, I was never prepared for the level of visibility it would get,' says Drew. 'I thought I would maybe screen it like once, in a warehouse or party or something, and all my friends would go, 'Thanks for reminding us how traumatised you are and how many fetishes you have. Thanks, Vera.'' But The People's Joker – as the internet would say – broke containment. After premiering at the Toronto Film Festival in 2022, the film became mired in legal issues, as Warner Bros (who owned the rights to Batman, and were in the process of releasing their own $200m Joker sequel) threatened to intervene. The dispute brought lengthy delays in The People's Joker 's release – and a long run of underground 'secret screenings' – but also news headlines, and free publicity. For a film as queer as this, the term ' Streisand effect ' has never felt more apt. This week, finally, The People's Joker is out in UK cinemas. 'It honestly feels like a major weight off my shoulders, just for how much on a daily basis I get yelled at by people from the UK,' says Drew, speaking to me over video chat from her home in Los Angeles. The 35-year-old is wearing oversized glasses and sitting in a dimly lit room. 'You know, no offence to the UK, but I have described it as 'Terf Island' to some of my friends recently.' The phrase, playing on the acronym 'Terf' (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), alludes to the overall pervasiveness of transphobia in the UK, amplified by rhetoric from high-profile voices such as JK Rowling, campaigners say. 'It feels like trans art is really needed there right now,' Drew adds. She's not wrong. The People's Joker comes at an exciting time for trans cinema, less than a year after Jane Schoenbrun's haunting, dysphoric I Saw the TV Glow hit screens. What exactly trans cinema looks like is a question still being defined. Both films share a kind of internet-savviness; both are thoroughly, unapologetically queer. In The People's Joker, Drew's Joker dates a problematic trans man styled a la Jared Leto in Suicide Squad. Batman is depicted as an abusive, alt-right gay man; Ra's al Ghul an ageing, problematic stand-up; Penguin an edgy, well-meaning stoner. DC aficionados will recognise much of Gotham's rogues' gallery – most of them queered in one way or another, and several of whom are rendered in comically lo-fi CGI. 'It became very unwieldy,' says Drew, 'every single shot in it being a visual-effect shot'. Before making her debut as a filmmaker, Drew was an editor, working on projects such as Sacha Baron Cohen's Who is America?, the Netflix sketch series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson – a more or less epochal text for modern comedy nerds – and the oddball talk show parody Comedy Bang! Bang! The Chicago-born filmmaker is well acquainted with the American alt-comedy scene – as you might gather from some of the names to feature in The People's Joker: Tim Heidecker, Bob Odenkirk, Maria Bamford and Scott Aukerman. The film was conceived in the wake of 2019's Joker, the self-serious artiste blockbuster that reframed the famous comic book villain as a mentally ill incel, played by Joaquin Phoenix. Todd Phillips, Joker 's director, made a comment suggesting that he turned towards the dour project because 'woke culture' had made comedies untenable. Among those to take umbrage at his remark was Arrested Development writer Bri LeRose, who tweeted: 'I will only watch this coward's Joker movie if Vera Drew re-edits it.' From this throwaway joke ballooned The People's Joker. (LeRose co-wrote the film with Drew.) On the subject of the recent, widely maligned sequel to Joker, last year's bleak musical Joker: Folie à Deux, Drew is positively effusive. 'I had to see it opening night, just because I needed to get over it, to see the movie and stop thinking about these f***ing characters,' she says. 'And it reinvigorated me. I don't think anything that cost $200m and, you know, stars Lady Gaga, is really punk per se, but it didn't give you anything you wanted. 'It's a middle finger to incels and Joker (2019) fans,' she continues. 'There's a sequence in Joker 2 where Joaquin Phoenix loses his virginity to Lady Gaga, and he c***s in less than four seconds. How could I not love that film? It had a sexy grossness to it that I was just not anticipating. Todd Phillips, please call me.' When it came to her own take on the Joker, lawyers were consulted from the early stages of development; it was (and remains) Drew's argument that the film complies with 'fair use and parody' laws. The night before the film's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, Drew received 'an angry letter from Warner Bros' (though not, as was sometimes misreported, a formal cease and desist, she says). 'It was just like this strongly worded letter,' she says. 'Saying that we don't approve, and don't think you should be allowed to screen or profit off this film. And we want you to show this letter to anybody who is interested in exhibiting it. Which was devastating. They literally waited until the last minute.' At the time, there had been larger distributors sniffing around the project; the copyright uncertainty put an end to it. 'My bank account would be a lot better if that had worked out,' she says, 'but I don't know if that would have been the best journey for the movie. It would have probably been dumped on a streaming platform immediately. I think [the whole story] provides an interesting window into the actual problems with copyright laws – which are not really there to protect artists. They're there to protect corporate interests.' A key part of the movie's defence was that it was autobiographical. The Batman imagery became a vehicle to tell Drew's own story: her fraught relationship with her mother, her coming out as transgender, her relationship with an emotionally abusive partner. And, of course, comedy – perhaps the most unexpected part of the film is how much time it devotes to satirising the American comedy scene, specifically Saturday Night Live and its creator Lorne Michaels, who is depicted in the film as a crude CGI bad guy. 'One of the first ideas I had for the movie was that Lorne Michaels would be the primary villain,' she laughs. 'If we're making this version of the Joker a sketch comedian, like obviously, the villain should be Lorne Michaels.' 'In a lot of ways,' she continues, ' SNL is really kind of an arm of the US military-industrial complex. It's this thing that gets people elected, or unelected. They are constantly platforming [controversial stand-up comedian] Dave Chappelle, for some reason – one of the most transphobic artists working right now… aside from the Harry Potter witch.' There's a tendency for The People's Joker to be swallowed up by the story of its making, and its arduous, subversive journey to release. But the film succeeds terrifically on its own merits. 'I've had periods of really resenting the movie,' says Drew, 'and being like, was this a big mistake? But where I'm at now, I'm so thankful. It's been this thing that's really connected me to other queer people, and reconnected me to myself.' A few nights before we speak, Drew screened the film at a college in Florida, where she was able to watch young trans film students respond to it. 'I have goosebumps talking about it,' she says. She smiles – not a rictal, Jokerfied grin, but sweetly, sincerely. 'It fills my heart with so much joy.'
The Guardian
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The trans film-maker who remade Batman: ‘There's a reason all the heroes are queer, mentally ill villains'
'It started as a joke,' says Vera Drew. 'I just took it a little too far.' The 35-year-old former editor for Sacha Baron Cohen, Nathan Fielder and Tim & Eric is referring to her debut movie: The People's Joker, a transgender-punk-superhero comedy in which she hijacks DC Comics characters to tell her own coming-out story. The film is set in an apocalyptic Gotham City ruled by Batman, billionaire groomer of teenage boys. Comedy can only be practised by licensed clowns divided into Jokers (male) and Harlequins (female). Enter Joker the Harlequin, played by Drew, who establishes an illegal comedy club specialising in cringe and bad-taste humour. Sitting at home today in Los Angeles, Drew is wearing a dress from the emo chain Hot Topic and a pair of Swifty Lazar-style glasses as big as TV screens. The curtains are drawn against the morning sunlight, rendering the room murky. The whole vibe is very witness protection programme. Not that she is hiding from anyone. The People's Joker has been through more than its share of controversy but that's all behind her now. The trouble reached its peak just hours before the movie premiered in the midnight slot at the 2022 Toronto International Film festival, when she received correspondence from Warner Bros. Though nothing as definitive as a cease-and-desist letter, it did dispute her claim that the picture fell under the laws of 'fair use and parody' in its reliance on existing IP. An accord was reached, and the film opened in the US last year. Accepting the breakthrough director prize at the recent Gotham awards in New York, Drew thanked Warner Bros 'for not suing me'. Right from the start, she and her co-writer, Bri LeRose, had consulted lawyers, some of whom preferred to remain anonymous in the movie's credits. Legally, Drew was permitted to use the Batman template and characters only insofar as they were analogous to the details of her life. As a genuine failed child actor (she auditioned, unsuccessfully, for Superbad) and teenage improv comic, as well as a trans woman in a transphobic world, it was no stretch for her to appropriate the story of the bullied standup Arthur Fleck, AKA Joker, as a vehicle to tell her own. Shot in just five days in the office of Tim Heidecker (who has a voice cameo, as does Better Call Saul's Bob Odenkirk), the film was pieced together over several years of pandemic-era post-production by more than 100 artists. The result is a hectic, high-calorie collage of live-action, green-screen, computer graphics, puppetry and assorted animated styles from punchy comic-strip panels to lush watercolours. When Drew edited Baron Cohen's series Who Is America?, the British comic warned her not to overload a scene with gags. Let loose on her own, she goes for broke. (She also throws in a cheeky nod to Borat in a film poster for a fictional comedy called Foreign Man.) The People's Joker may have started as a gag but it was inspired by an alleged absence of humour. In 2019, the director of Joker, Todd Phillips, insisted that woke had killed the joke. 'Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture,' he grumbled. Incensed by his argument, LeRose, a writer on Arrested Development, tweeted: 'I will only watch this coward's joker movie if Vera Drew re-edits it.' She then transferred a 'fee' of $12 to Drew's account. 'I'm not saying that every autistic person would do this,' Drew said, last year. 'But with my autism I don't understand sarcasm or irony. I saw that as my first artistic commission.' She is not without sympathy for Phillips' claim, which has been echoed by numerous other straight, middle-aged comics including Jerry Seinfeld. 'We do live in a time where everybody is hypersensitive and reactive, myself included,' she says now. 'So I get where people like Todd Phillips and Seinfeld are coming from. I'm also, like: 'Oh, you're so afraid of being replaced.' I can relate to that on a human level. Ageing is hard!' Her original idea had been to remix Joker by inserting backdrops from 1990s Batman movies or using found footage and deepfakes. 'But the technology wasn't quite there, and it seemed like a lot more work than shooting a movie with my friends. Also, it wasn't until I was doing it that I realised how much I gave a shit about these characters.' Take the sequence in which Joker as a child goes to see a Batman movie with her mother, and realises that she is trans. 'That memory of mine only resurfaced as I was making the film. I was taken to see Batman Forever when I was seven, and I identified with Nicole Kidman's character rather than Batman. I felt represented by this very expensive gay art film. It was as if I was seeing the rest of my life.' She must have spotted women in movies before then. What was the special sauce that gave this experience its kick? 'It's the Joel Schumacher of it all,' she says, referring to the late director of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, to whom The People's Joker is dedicated. 'He was the gayest man who ever lived, so there's no 'straight male gaze'. And his female characters are highly developed. Nicole Kidman plays a professional woman who has agency and desire. It's kind of fucked-up: she's obsessed with bats and rubber nipples. Gender aside, I'd never seen anything so colourful and over-the-top. There was an intensity to it.' Drew gave a shout-out to Kidman during her Gothams acceptance speech for being one of the catalysts for her trans epiphany; the Babygirl star responded by raising a fist in solidarity. 'I dropped her a note afterwards,' Drew says with a smile. 'I'm dying to work with her. She's fearless.' The same could be said about her. Making a film that lightly fictionalises the first three decades of her life, even drawing on verbatim conversations she had with an emotionally abusive ex, sounds like the definition of triggering. (Drew has likened the making of the film to 'taking a four-year-long shit on my trauma'.) You can plainly hear the toll it has taken by listening to the commentary track on the US Blu-ray, which she recorded while 'a little bit high' and having her nails painted; in the final seconds, she descends into exhausted tears. 'Making the film was something I needed to do,' she tells me. 'It was like this thing that had to be removed from my body surgically. But there were so many moments when I thought it wouldn't see the light of day.' Now it was out at last, and she was ricocheting from one cinema to the next for public appearances in her Joker makeup. It all got too much. 'I'm a workaholic. And a few other things-aholic. I just wasn't prepared for how exhausting it would be watching all my trauma over and over.' She has claimed she made The People's Joker to repair her relationship to her art and her body. Did it work? 'I don't know that it did. I had just got out of this bad relationship, and my relationship with my parents was fractured because of my transition. I went into this thinking: 'It's gonna fix something!'' By the time the movie was done, she felt even more confused. 'I had spent almost four years looking at this version of myself through the scope of fictional characters that I didn't even own the rights to. It ended up becoming this psychedelic mindfuck. I was, like: 'Did I fracture my relationship to my transness and my identity even more?' But I think I might have needed to blow up that foundation to start figuring shit out.' In the process, she has blown up many of the conventions of queer cinema, much like John Waters before her. 'It's important more than ever today for queer people not to worry too much about being problematic or finding some invisible barometer for respectability. Our rights are being taken away on a daily basis, so I'm not about to deny those parts of myself that might be ugly to a cis audience. It's more appealing to me to write trans and queer characters that are unlikable than to make them perfect. Look at The People's Joker: there's a reason why all the heroes are queer, mentally ill Batman villains!' The People's Joker is at the Prince Charles cinema, London, on 15 February and on release from 21 February
