‘The People’s Joker’: Unmasking identity

‘The People’s Joker’ reinvents Gotham’s Clown Prince in a subversive and funny coming-of-age tale.

By James Verniere/Boston Movie News

How do comic book characters get inside our heads? How do comic book characters get inside our heads if we are an unhappy trans kid into cosplay?

This is the question asked by director and co-writer Vera Drew in “The People’s Joker,” a cult sleeper in the making that has been held over at Alamo Drafthouse and will play a week at the Brattle in June. Meet (name bleeped out (it’s Drew)). This lonely young person (Griffin Kramer) lives with a constantly upset and confused single mother (Lynn Downey, “Daisy Jones & the Six”). The mother is confused because the son she gave birth to has decided that he might be a girl or at least not a boy. The mother starts taking her child to Arkham Asylum, where the child is treated by Dr. Jonathan Crane (Christian Calloway), aka Scarecrow in the “Batman” universe. Pass the Smylex. The film’s protagonist eventually takes the “both sides now” stage name Joker the Harlequin. “Joker” uses an inhaler labeled Smylex to help her get through the day with a smile, however wide and chemically induced.

Joker, who adopts the Joker’s green hair, make-up, and costume, tells us how, as a child, she was terribly confused by the “Bat-nipple scene” in “Batman Forever” (1995) because she wanted to be Nicole Kidman. Joker watches a channel on TV called UCB (United Clown Bureau), run by none other than an animated Lorne Michaels (voice of Maria Bamford). Joker moves to a green-screen Gotham to try to get an audition. There, Joker, whose costume includes fishnets, meets a new and fellow comic friend who has taken the name Penguin (Nathan Faustyn) and comedy guru Ra’s al Ghul (David Liebe Hart).

Describing the plot of “The People’s Joker” does little to convey what makes it special. The film is a gifted artist’s multi-form, coming-out confessional, a fictionalized and sometimes animated autobiography, a tale that unfolds in a “dark haze of Smylex” and that, while “completely unauthorized,” co-opts plot lines and characters from DC Comics “Batman” series.

At UCB, the Joker meets a young, jaded comic named Mr. J. (Kane Distler) and falls in love for the first time, happily playing the woman’s role in the relationship, only to discover that Mr. J, whose full name is Jason Todd aka the second Robin, is a total abuser. Drew, who co-wrote the screenplay with Bri LeRose, has some ideas about comedy in general and makes references to such masters as Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman, and even the canceled Woody Allen. In her stand-up act, Joker says that her pronouns are “he and ha.” She refers to herself as “a gay guy with an asterisk.” She confesses that she used to “call suicide hotlines.” She dreams, Joker-style, of being dropped into a “vat of feminizing hormones.” Batman himself (voice of Phil Braun) makes an appearance in animated form. Also making an appearance is the trickster known as Mister Mxyzptlk (voice of Ember Knight), aka Mxy.

“The People’s Joker” is a celebration of how comic books offer a haven to estranged young people in the form of hall-of-mirrors reflections of themselves and their issues. The film is subversive and co-optive in the style of Todd Haynes’ great 1987 breakout effort, “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.” In Haynes’ film, which predates “Barbie” by 36 years, all of the characters are “played” by stiff Barbie and Ken dolls voiced by actors and features an “unauthorized soundtrack” that limited showings of the film to film festivals (identity has been Haynes’ lifelong theme). In the words of writers Drew and LeRose, “The People’s Joker” is “an indie Batman queer film” with a notably Terry Gilliam-esque animation style. Without warning, “The People’s Joker” breaks into a song and dance number. The animated Batman has a very dark secret. Out of nowhere, Drew pulls a rabbit out of a hat, and “Batman” (1987) veteran Bob Wuhl appears on the screen whether he likes it or not.

“The People’s Joker” is unlike anything out there, and that is not always a good thing. But Emmy-nominated editor-turned-director Drew (“Who Is America?”) gets on those stairs on which Joaquin Phoenix riotously danced in “Joker” and struts her stuff into our hearts.