A screening of the film The People's Joker, directed and starring Vera Drew, presented by the 2nd Story Film Club at the Violet Crown Cinema.
The People's Joker screens at Violet Crown Cinema on Tuesday, August 18, as part of the 2nd Story Film Club. It's a madcap, pseudo-autobiographical, genre-bending film directed by and starring Vera Drew, who takes on the lead role herself. She describes the project as a stress test of copyright law and an explicitly queer take on characters that have become calcified as studio icons.
If that sounds like a lot to unpack, it's because the movie is built around it. The whole thing is a parody that leans hard into fair use, and it doesn't shy away from its own legal precariousness. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022 and was shut down just a day later, though the fair-use angle held up. The Austin screening is presented by the 2nd Story Film Club, and the Austin Chronicle's review thanked the club for the chance to see it again.
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It's the kind of film that's hard to pin down with a single label—part autobiography, part genre-bending experiment, and a direct challenge to how we think about corporate characters. Seeing it in a theater is a different experience than catching it on a screen at home, especially given how much it plays with its own format. The screening is at Violet Crown Cinema, 434 W. Second, in downtown Austin, on Tuesday, August 18.
