After Battling DC Comics, Parody Film The People's Joker Makes Its Way to Dallas

A nefarious Gotham supervillain is coming to Dallas. But this isn’t just any run-of-the-mill ne’er-do-well hailing from the home of Lucius Fox. A new kind of comic book “villain” is headed to the historic Texas Theatre for a special event: The People’s Joker, a highly anticipated motion picture from writer/director/star Vera Drew.

A satire of the Batman mythos, The People’s Joker will clown around the Oak Cliff movie house for an April 25 screening. Drew will be in attendance for a Q&A.

A major arthouse release coming to the Texas Theatre isn’t, on paper, a massive deal. But The People’s Joker is no ordinary motion picture. The queer parody film brought on a now-legendary deluge of copyright disputes. The chaos began at the 2022 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival. Just as the feature was debuting, Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns DC Comics, sent Drew and company a cease-and-desist letter claiming that The People's Joker violated copyright law.

Drew staunchly maintained that her passion project fell under the purview of fair use. However, the big corporation won for the moment and further TIFF showings and other film festival screenings were scuttled.

The People's Joker found itself stuck in a place scarier than Gotham's Arkham Asylum, and the production found itself in legal limbo.

Rampant internet support didn't seem to make a dent in ailing The People's Joker's woes, and the film seemed destined  to follow the path of Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and Pieces as film festival darlings that would never see a general release due to legal conflicts. By the summer of 2023, though, the clouds finally parted, and the sun began to shine on Drew's project. A July 2023 Outfest film festival screening indicated that The People’s Joker was finally free from its legal woes. Subsequently, specialty distributor Altered Innocence picked up the movie for general release and brought it to select movie theaters starting this month.

That slow-burn theatrical release first entered Texas through a series of Austin screenings in mid-April. Now, The People’s Joker is due to finally hit Dallas on April 25. With this showing, The People’s Joker continues a long tradition of queer and transgressive cinema playing in the auditoriums of the Texas Theatre. That tradition includes the long-running CinéWilde film series, which brings LGBTQIA+ cinema to the big screen every month.

CinéWilde has screened an excitingly varied collection of movies at the Texas Theatre, with titles such as Saving Face, Speed Racer and Paris Is Burning. Beyond entertainment, the series demonstrates the firm reality that there’s no one way to be queer. Being a member of the LGBTQIA+ community comes in many forms, including the demented clown protagonist of The People’s Joker.

CinéWilde founder and self-professed Red Hood comic fan DR Mann Hanson sees the Texas Theatre’s queer cinema screenings as something truly important.

“The Texas Theatre and CinéWilde stand out as a beacon of queer joy and excellence,” Hanson says.

He also emphasizes that the Texas Theatre hosting CinéWilde showings and other queer films is critical to “making queer cinema and culture accessible to queer people and straight allies” as both of those populations exist in an age of constant political challenges for queer Texans.

The People’s Joker also fits right into the trashy grindhouse fare that the Texas Theatre regularly programs. The Oak Cliff movie theater hosts rare theatrical showings of F.W. Murnau and Akira Kurosawa films, sure. But it’s also a place to watch the campy 30 Segundos Para Morir, Voyage of the Rock Aliens and 2020 Texas Gladiators (among many others) on the big screen — those schlocky titles that only existed as VHS tapes on the back shelves of a 1993 video store.

Seeing B-movies invade the same expansive canvas that houses Gone With the Wind injects an extra level of prankishness to the theater's existence, and The People's Joker is as enthralling as any past trashy Texas Theatre screening.

This screening will also continue the Texas Theatre tradition of attracting big-name directors to the location. Kevin Smith came to the theater for a screening of Clerks III in November 2022. David Lowery stopped by in January 2023 with a new short film and took questions from moviegoers. Vera Drew’s presence at this screening of The People’s Joker will put her in esteemed company. But for many attendees of the (as of this writing) only Dallas theatrical screening of The People’s Joker, this motion picture making it to the big screen is enough.

“When you’re in that theater watching a queer film with a queer audience, it’s so powerful,” Hanson says.

The People's Joker Dallas premiere and Q&A takes place at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, April 25, at the Texas Theatre, 231 W. Jefferson Blvd.