150 Word Review: 'The People's Joker' (2024) + Essay: 'Sunset Boulevard' (1950)

The clown princess of crime

Apr 21, 2024

The People's Joker has a well-publicized David and Goliath backstory—it was an unauthorized parody of DC Comics characters that irked Warner Bros. bigwigs. Everything worked out, though.

But that's the least interesting thing about Vera Drew's sweet, semi-autobiographical trans-coming-of-age rom-com on acid. Where to start? It's experimental and moving, a queer burlesque that reveres and mocks Batman, Gotham's favorite fascist.

Drew is a multihyphenate: she directs, stars, and co-wrote with Bri LeRose The People's Joker, a madcap debut that whisks together DIY costumes, green screens, and low-budget CGI to tell the story of Joker the Harlequin, a misfit standup who fights the system with the help of a family of supervillains. For all its colorful chaos, The People's Joker is brilliantly cohesive; Drew is influenced by Adult Swim's late-night animation blocs and meme culture in general, but she never loses sight of her character's journey toward self-love and acceptance.

Grief, friendship, Jazz Hands. My debut memoir, Theatre Kids, comes out June 18th.

Pre-order it now!

Random Rankings

Top Batman Villain Who Aren't The Joker

5. Clayface (Ron Perlman's version)

4. Bane (Tom Hardy’s version)

3. Penguin (Colin Farrell's version)

2. The Riddler (Frank Gorshin’s version)

1. Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer's version)

Essay: 'Sunset Boulevard' (1950)

I used to play hooky at a job where I was one of the oldest employees. I’d tell my bright-eyed coworkers I had an ‘off-site’ meeting and then go to a matinee screening. It was easier and more dignified to have a panic attack in a dark theater than in an open office, so I’d sit there and emotionally eat popcorn and wonder when I’d get laid off.

And it was obvious I would get laid off. It was only a matter of time. I was never a big deal, but I had been a moderate-sized one long ago. I had been a boss once. I knew the signs that my skills were of diminishing value. The first sign: I could go to a movie for hours in the middle of the afternoon, and no one cared.

The job was at a startup that vibrated with the manic, hopeful energy of a casino. The cheerfulness was exhausting, but I dutifully wore a smile. There were all kinds of perks, like kombucha on tap and free yoga classes, but people had a way of disappearing. One day, I’d be sitting in a meeting while someone scribbled something on a whiteboard, and the next day, that same person would send an upbeat email about “moving on to the next adventure” that read like a letter from a hostage.

The truth was, though, I really was old or just not as young as everyone around me. Most were in their late twenties or early thirties. I was 44, ancient. I was slower than my peers. There were new technologies I didn’t understand. I was probably too desperate for approval and then resentful of that desperation. Age is just a number, and one day, you run out of them.

I told that to a coworker one day in the kitchen. We were making avocado toast. She laughed. To be perfectly transparent, I worked alongside some impossibly talented people. Many were friendly and hard-working and genuine. I knew, though, that I’d be working for them one day unless I got laid off.

One workday afternoon, I went to a rare multiplex screening of the 1950s black and white classic Sunset Boulevard instead of the usual disposable action-packed blockbuster. It was a special event for cinephiles only. I had seen it twice before but never on the big screen. I thought watching a classic might do my brain cells some good. I love old black-and-white movies. They’re like secretly watching ghosts haunt a house.

***

Sunset Boulevard opens famously with a dead man floating face down in a pool. He narrates, from beyond the grave, the story. His story. It’s a love story. Yes, there’s a murder, too. But it’s also about how people, even the rich and famous, get left behind and forgotten. One day, you will be obsolete, too.

The plot is simple: faded silent movie star Norma Desmond, played with a mix of fury and vulnerability by Gloria Swanson, lives in a crumbling mansion with her butler, an old man who had once been her husband. She spends her day screening her old movies, complaining about the modern world, and plotting comebacks that never happen. And then, one day, a penniless screenwriter hides his car from debt collectors in her garage. The man, played with cool cynicism by handsome William Holden, is a loser with one foot on a bus back to Dayton looking for an easier way to make his dreams come true.

He’s the one who ends up dead.

The story isn’t complicated. It is boy meets girl, boy leaves girl, and girl shoots boy in the back. But each time I’ve seen it, I discover something new about myself and the world. For instance, Holden’s character Joe first sees Norma and her manservant Max, grieving over the grave of a recently deceased primate, her beloved companion, who will soon be replaced by William Holden’s character. It’s a darkly comic moment but a striking one. Maybe it wasn’t so smart of man to evolve from a monkey.

When the pair finally meet, Joe blurts out, “You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be big.”

“I am big,” she replies. “It’s the pictures that got small.” There has never been a sexier, more triumphant portrayal of denial.

Written and directed by legendary Billy Wilder, responsible for timeless movies like The Apartment and Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard mocks Hollywood but ends up telling on the American dream: one day, everyone wakes up old and useless. Or, in Joe’s case, young and useless. Norma kills him in a brokenhearted fit of rage after he dumps her for a woman who works at the studio. They’re writing a screenplay together and falling in love. The woman is everything Joe isn’t, which is talented.

My mother was the first person to introduce me to the movie Terminator, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt when she suggested we watch Sunset Boulevard. I was probably thirteen at the time. She swore it wouldn’t be boring, and while I would have rather watched another movie about a killer robot, I was caught up in my mother’s enthusiasm.

She felt for Norma Desmond. A successful woman brought low by men, men who adored her, used her and threw her away. My mom wanted me to understand a truth she was taught to believe in by society: when women lose their beauty, they lose value. Norma undergoes medieval-like torture to look gorgeous, which is ironic because she is flawless from the first frame. I don’t think my mom ever used the word ‘feminist’ around me. That wasn’t her generation or her culture. Mexican-American families are matriarchies, but the men can still be beasts.

That was the first time I saw the movie. The second time, I lived in Burbank across the street from a short-lived job at Warner Brother’s studio. I would walk to work because I did not have a car. The furnished apartment I was renting had a small stack of DVDs. I re-watched Sunset Boulevard more intently, more cerebrally. I was much more aware of the arch-Hollywood satire, or so I thought. Like a snob, I noted how the movie’s fear of women made it a true ‘film noir.’ But my primary takeaway was a man without a car in Los Angeles isn’t a man. At best, he turns into a sniveling, self-loathing golddigger. At worst, he turns up dead in a pool, whining about his fate from the afterlife.

The third time I saw it, I was back in New York City, hiding from my job in a dark movie theater.

“Oh god,” I thought, “what If I’m Norma Desmond?”

Norma is unmoored from reality by the movie's end, a runaway moon. She’s a has-been, a never-will-be-again, a murderer. Undone and unloved. The only man who ever truly loved her, the butler, convinces her that the police and paparazzi waiting for her are just actors on the set of her next big movie. I sat in awe as she glided down the stairs and into handcuffs; her eyes opened wide like the mouths of hungry sea monsters.

***

Twenty years ago, I worked at a print magazine. The main difference between print and digital is that a page of ink is silent. A website is interactive: it listens and talks back to you, whether you like it or not. I worked for many editors opening hand-written letters — letters! — from readers, making coffee, answering phones, and taking messages, and one of them, a chain-smoking copy editor of 50 or so, used to tell me how the internet was a racket, how it wouldn’t last.

I respected him even though that was not true. He was a Tyrannosaurus Rex angrily shaking one tiny clawed arm at a planet-smashing asteroid falling from the sky. Eventually, I would leave that job to work for a website. I was a success for a few years. He and I lost touch, and I’m pretty certain he’s fine with that.

I think about him all the time, though. His defiance in the face of inevitable change was almost courageous as was his refusal to learn modern skills or work in new ways. I was more open-minded at that time. As I climbed publishing’s very short ladder, I tried to be receptive to feedback and change. Endless feedback, inevitable change. I never complained when someone half my age sat next to me and patiently told me how I was doing this or that wrong. I had ideas, but they weren’t the freshly-picked ideas that progress requires. I was excited to share my ideas, too! And they were received politely. My coworkers were so patient with me. Well, some were. Those who weren’t dismissive, for instance.

I reflected on those memories during a scene in Sunset Boulevard I had never noticed before. I was surprised at how delicately it stung me. Inspired and reinvigorated by her love affair with Joe, Norma Desmond marches into the movie studio where she once ruled with all-new, all-old ideas. She is welcomed warmly by the few who remembered her and real-life film director Cecil B. DeMille, playing himself. And, in turn, she is a cold marble museum statue come to life, the victim of a curse, an exhibit from antiquity blowing kisses at flesh and blood.

DeMille, a silent movie great, had survived the chaos sound recording technology had unleashed on Hollywood—it’s called disruption now—and for sentimentality’s sake, he humors his friend and former collaborator. But nothing more. There are no jobs for her. Norma plans to reclaim her status as a star but immediately confuses DeMille’s courtesy for opportunity and his pity for promises.

While she waits on a busy set for what she thinks is an important meeting, she swats away a microphone on a boom as if it were a street pigeon. She is in the way of the technology that rendered her useless, and she is annoyed by it. She does not fear it, but she should have. Where would Norma have been if she had just learned to memorize lines and then, you know, speak them aloud? DeMille smiles and waves as Norma and her boy-toy drive off in her ancient limo. They will never see each other again.

I was laid off with a smile. I was no longer needed. For my big salary, they could hire three young people. They’d have to fight for my desk, of course. The company was pivoting, and I was not part of that pivot. I wasn’t the only person laid off, either. A half-dozen were also invited to enjoy unemployment—a modest culling.

The Human Resource representative was gentle and understanding. My work was good, but things were suddenly and inexplicably different. Market conditions. A reorganization was afoot. New technologies, etc. The company was this, and now it is that. I was no longer needed. I was obsolete. It was nothing personal, just business, please collect your things and leave before the dogs are released.

I wanted to argue. I was angry. Livid. I wanted to shout, “My performance is optimal, but the slideshow presentation software is inefficient!” But rage causes wrinkles, so I just smiled back. I would keep my ideas to myself. I signed papers and collected my personal belongings in a box. I shook hands with shell-shocked coworkers and waved goodbye across the open-office plan to people whose names I didn’t know. I floated past the reception desk and said goodbye to the receptionist as if I were going to return the next morning. I glided into the elevator, my eyes opened wide like the mouths of hungry sea monsters.

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