It Could Happen Here - The Future of Queer Art

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Gare talks with filmmaker Vera Drew and comedian Ella Yurman about the pitfalls of representation and moving beyond the online media bubble.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia,

and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. CallZone Media. This is It Could Happen Here. Call zone media. as well as attempts by politicians, lobbying groups, and media personalities to drum up transphobia in hopes of, quote-unquote, eliminating transgenderism from our society and culture. The quest to eliminate transgenderism includes harassment campaigns targeted against specific individuals, boycotting companies that feature trans people in their marketing,

and banning queer books, media, and art from libraries across the country. The conservative right has decided that the boogeyman of gender ideology and the woke mind virus is one of the most pressing threats to Western civilization. This brand of transphobic militancy opposes any form of visible queerness, viewing it as an ideology that acts as a viral cultural contagion. That's why they spend so much time trying to ban drag shows and art featuring queer people. They know they're losing the cultural battle, and that really scares them. As trans people have been trying to weather this huge wave of organized transphobia, trans and queer artists continue to push forward, with multiple hit films coming out this year from trans directors, and trans actors and actresses are taking more and more high-profile roles.

Last episode, I interviewed comedian Ella Yerman and filmmaker Vera Drew on the process of creating independent queer media. This episode will focus on why we are seeing this new wave of queer art, why mere representation isn't enough, and attempts to go beyond the online media ecosystem. Ellie Ehrman is the host of Late Stage Live, a queer Gen Z public access late night show on Brooklyn Public Access and YouTube. The format of late night comedy is almost wholly dominated by old, white, cis, straight men. Late Stage Live attempts to deconstruct the genre in which it aligns itself with, utilizing sketches, correspondent segments, and original reporting,

but for a younger, queerer, more politically radical audience. The show is not just made for Gen Z queers, it's also made by an entire team of young queer and trans people, which gives it a very unique feel compared to literally all of its competition. The show itself feels queer and highlights the massive gap between simple queer representation and queer art, or in this case, queer late night comedy. There's a palpable distinction between hiring a gay person to work on Seth Meyers versus having a late night show that is built on queerness. On that note, here's a clip from my interview with Ella Uriman, host of Late Stage Live.

There's like a huge difference between like the token queer writer and, and like a show that centers queerness and transness. And I'm really proud of, of that as in terms of our show, like, I think that's one of its main drives is how we're focused. It is something we talk about in every episode, in every piece. Reed loves to hammer this home is sort of the question of why us.

It's the first question we ask when anyone pitches any segment or piece or story of like, the question is like, what's the game? What's the perspective? And then why is it us delivering this perspective? Because anyone can write a piece of political analysis. Lots of people do. But like, what about this story is uniquely coming from us, uniquely coming from the host Ella, from the writer's room. And I think we found it most strongly in the last two pieces, the Lives of TikTok piece.

And then the episode before that, we did a segment on the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is a spooky, evil, conservative cabal that trains lawyers to overturn SCOTUS cases. cabal that trains lawyers to overturn SCOTUS cases. And I think those both felt really focused in on sort of us as young queer people. And I think the Gen Z part is also really relevant for us. A lot of Late Night is hosted by old men. And as much as I love Jon Stewart, he is an old man, an old cis white man, an old cis, as far as I know, heterosexual white man. Who already left the job 10 years ago. And he already left it. Right. And he's back now. But like, what does that say about anything? Yeah. Yeah. And everyone talking about politics is like old white guys and everyone in Congress is old white guys or George Santos.

or George Santos. And there's like this sense of like the world is ending, as you probably know on this show that bills itself as like amidst the collapse or whatever your tagline is. But like Gen Z is so uniquely affected by political goings on in a way that I suppose this is true of every generation, every youngest generation that like all of the decisions are impacting us most. But it feels more urgent these days because the world is ending with climate change and with the encroaching, you know, global fascism and with the decay of late stage capitalism that it feels so important now more than ever to like center those experiences and look at how the world and the news and politics impacts these groups of people and the way we achieve that is yeah we don't just have one token queer

writer we are our room is all queer largely trans about half of our writers room is non-white and as we grow that that number will either stay the same or get bigger certainly not smaller that number will either stay the same or get bigger, certainly not smaller. Yeah, at the end of the day, I think the fact that the room is completely queer and predominantly trans and non-white and all young, it just like sort of happens. And the fact that it started that way

and has been built from the ground up that way, I think gives us a huge edge. Even if The Daily Show fired all of their writers and hired only trans people, I think it would be a hard pivot to get the show to suddenly be doing what we're doing just because the whole structure is built differently. In Vera Drew's new movie, The People's Joker, an autobiographical transgender coming-of-age parody set in the Batman universe, the shallowness of queer representation is actually one of the core themes of the film. In the movie, the main character is not satisfied by

simply being a token diversity hire for a late-night comedy show, and instead hijacks the airwaves and charts her own path. This plotline, like many others, mirrors the director's own life, and the movie itself is a perfect example of how creating a piece of art inherently built on a multimedia experience of queerness will produce a wildly different result than simply having a gay person in the writer's room. Here's a clip from my interview with Vera Drew. It's not even that I feel like queer representation is like too straight or cis. It's just not even like an accurate reflection of

queer reality. Every gay couple I know is nothing like a straight couple. I mean, some of them are, but those gay couples always break up. They're just reenacting cycles and thousands and thousands

of years of patriarchal bullshit on each other when they could just be having hot gay sex with each other. And like, that to me is like the biggest tragedy of like representation.

And it like, is also why I think people lash out at us so much. Like I, on one level, I understand the idea of this is getting shoved down our throats. Because it kind of is. That's coming from a place that I sort of agree with. Because they're getting sold this propaganda that it's like, they're just like us. And to me, it's like my experience is so specific to me. and so specific to the experience of a trans woman.

There are things about my life that are similar to that of a cis woman, but certainly not identical. So I never want to see art that is that. I'm really over trans people being used in a way that they're either... I mean, it doesn't really happen anymore where they're treated like freaks, but it's kind of the tragedy porn or

kind of pedestalizing us, I guess. I hate that my identity is inherently political just because this is who I am. It's not a pleasant situation to deal with.

So I think with Joker, yeah, people with Joker, I really wanted to talk about representation in a way that also just wasn't annoying because I also... It's not even that I'm tired of having this conversation. It's just sad that people like us keep having to have this kind of conversation. Cause like, I've also heard it now within our own community that like, you know,

I've heard other trans filmmakers say like, we should only be telling happy stories. We should only be spreading queer joy or whatever. Absolutely not. No, absolutely not. Like it's, that's embarrassing.

Yeah. No, I, I want want i want to spread queer panic i want to not even panic just like queer existential uh horror um i suppose i don't i don't know well i mean for me it's like i don't know like because i've gotten shit too not i haven't gotten a lot and now honestly that I've started mentioning it in the press, people haven't said it to me as much as good, but like I was getting a little bit of the, like how, Oh, making the Joker a murderous trans woman.

Okay. You know, please. First of all, like villains are queer coded. It's the history of film. Oh, almost all of the Batman villains are queer coded.

Exactly. Exactly. Completely. And like, why can't, so why can't a, why can't we do it? Like not in a subtext way. Why can't we just do it directly?

And then also like I live in a country that villainizes trans people. So like, why can't I process that very thing by making myself a queer villain in a in a movie that i made and and i don't know it's like i think what i hate about the the queer joy thing and the the like the people's joker is like a very funny movie it's very colorful it's very campy but it's also like devastating you know like it's it's got a very serious message to it that I think it brings up a lot of emotion in people when they watch it, both cis people and trans people.

And, you know, I think that speaks to something else just like about representation is like, I told this story that was so specific to my experience and like trans people are identifying with it and relating to it but so are cis people you know like yes like you know we should be telling stories that portray the trans experience

honestly or the queer experience honestly and specifically and if we do that like if we do that effectively that is still art that a cis person can consume because cis people also go through transition cis people also have to die and be reborn sometimes and like i think just everybody kind of comes of age it's just like trans people and queer people kind of

have to do it more visibly and publicly and externally a lot of the times and and I don't know, for me, it's like, that was like another reason too of like, of just being like, no, like we're gonna get this out into theaters and, you know, like make this kind of theatrical experience before anything else. You know, it was always made to be like viewed, I think with like a crowd of

people like yeah yeah kind of like a midnight movie vibe i guess when you think about it jesus and the joker do have a lot in common in terms of getting baptized getting born again it's it's really very similar characters absolutely and i mean that's why uh because i think this was something while brie and i were writing the movie movie that she was constantly every step of the way. Like, what are you doing? Like, why are you bringing this much like Gnostic Christianity to this? Yeah, absolutely. Like, I remember, you know, there's this like French song that's in the movie called I'll Be Your Joker that was composed and performed by Emily Sloan.

And the lyrics to that are a poem that I wrote that are just... It's not anywhere in the movie. It's just in that song. But it's the people's Joker prophecy. I actually wrote it in this kind of Gnostic Bible structure. And then we translated it to French and recorded it as a song. And like, that was like really kind of coming from that place of like, just really, I love,

I mean, I'm obsessed with Jesus. Uh, and I kind of just always have, have been like, I was raised Catholic and, um, I just,

uh, I'm not, I'm not Christian, but I have a lot of Jesus stuff around my house. Like I, I just, uh, I'm not, I'm not Christian, but I have a lot of Jesus stuff around my house. Like I, I'm, I'm just obsessed with like the iconography and really love it. The story itself as like a myth and like the mythic understanding of,

of death and rebirth. And, and also just thinking of it as another example of the hero's journey. And I don't know, somebody asked me at a Q&A, basically, how do you have the balls to... Because by the end of The People's Joker, you basically find out it is like Dune. There's a weird Messiah story happening. And that partially just comes from...

I think for me, queerness is inherently like a very spiritual experience. It just has been for me. And I think a lot of trans people actually deal with Messiah complexes. I think it's something that I feel safe saying I have. And I also really wanted to unpack that just idea of, of the like Joseph Campbell, white savior hero's journey thing. It could happen here. We'll return after these messages.

Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.

You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things

to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban,

I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We now return to It Could Happen Here. During my interview with Vera Drew, she mentioned something about not just wanting to throw the movie up on YouTube

when the film was dealing with legal issues resulting in uncertainty around how the film would be released. And that got me thinking about queer people's relationship to platforms like YouTube as the sort of default way of sharing video art. as the sort of default way of sharing video art. A big reason why is simply because the platform is so accessible, without many of the hurdles and roadblocks of more traditional distribution models. But sometimes I worry that it's become so default that our reliance on YouTube has actually become a self-limiting factor that over-determines the scope of our own art. Let's return to my interview with Vera Drew to continue this topic. Queer people, specifically trans people, have kind of been stuck with a lot of their like art or video art just becoming this thing that you throw up on YouTube. We've done a good job in making like a community there, I suppose. But at certain points, it feels

very like insular, like we've created this little tiny bubble that everything is just trapped inside of. Because obviously, we can't rely on big studios to make our own stuff or distribute our own stuff. That's not happening either. But I feel like we're kind of kicking ourselves in the foot if our only artistic output is techno music and YouTube video essays. Both of which can be good, both of which can be art, but there's a whole other world out there that I feel like we have closed ourselves off from. And so I'm kind of interested in like, on like on that choice to like not put it on

YouTube and actually like ride this thing out as like a movie. Yeah. I mean, that is, uh, it's, it's, it's such a relief to hear you talk about it in that way. Because yeah, I never want to be dismissive of online creators. Sure. I worked on... My first job was... I was an intern on the Eric Andre show. And then my job immediately after that was on Nathan For You. So I really got to work with all these really amazing comedians, many geniuses. And in that process, I always knew I had wanted to make film. My earliest memories are wanting to make films. Right around the time I saw Batman Forever, I was like, I want to be a director. And I came up in post-production just because like a lot of editors

end up sort of following, you know, a lot of editors are really just direct, like frustrated directors. So I was kind of like, here's a place where I could like sort of learn my craft. And I've always loved experimental animation and visual effects and stuff. And also incorporate that as well into my career. And it's good. I'm so glad I had it as an incubation period

for me to find my voice and my aesthetic and learn a lot from these super talented people. But there was always this frustration that I had because when I would take stuff out to pitch or anything that was my own story, you can't really get trans art made in any sort of mainstream space. I think that's one of the things that's most frustrating about the whole woke culture bullshit

just because they act like we're some sort of like elite class that's like favored by the media which it's like i can just tell you like that's i'm on my press week right now like the media is certainly enamored with trans people but like i don't think it's like coming from a place of like we're trying to change and put everything and you know make these people in charge. It's just... It's clickbaity and it gets people... It keeps people arguing online. So it was very hard just to even break through as a director too. I mean, I was at that... Forget pitching shows that I've written or whatever. Just trying to get episodic TV work. I just couldn't do it once I

changed my pronouns. I was literally up for jobs that went away after I came out. So I just reached this point of, I think, maximum frustration and wanted to... Whatever I did... I don't want to say I was ready to walk away from working in the industry in 2019, but I kind of was. I was kind of just at this point where I was like, I need to make a fucking movie or something on my own and kind of just put all I have into that. And that's going to be the way people will either finally take me seriously as a director, or I'll at least have made a movie and then I can just be in debt and I'll have a movie I made. So to me, it was always about not necessarily

finally being taken seriously by my industry, but just making this giant piece of art that is not only a big, look what I can do style thing, but is also just about all of that, about the frustration of being allowed in, but only being allowed in, in these certain ways, whether it's on a diversity cast or whatever. I worked on the show. I can't really talk about it because it's NDA stuff. I don't think the show will ever come out. But I was in the writer's room on a cartoon that was being rebooted. And it was one of my favorite cartoons of all time. But I had a day where I was just sitting in the writer's room. I was looking around at my co-workers.

And I was like, Oh, wait a minute. It's all girls. And I'm a girl. And I'm a trans girl. We're all just being brought in to rehabilitate this problematic piece of art. And it was like this crazy moment of having like, also have had lost jobs because of my identity. And now being in this place where it's like my identity is like this bargaining chip.

So anyway, how does this connect to the online art conversation? I've always kind of had to also play in online spaces. I started a public access station with my friends a few years ago called Highland Park TV. A few years ago. It was like 10 years ago now. But that's still going on today. And it was basically just this space for us where we could just record whatever. We'd meet up one week and come with some pretty simple sketches and shoot it on our public access set and throw it up online. And 12 people would watch it. And that was it. But that was cool. You build little followings and communities that way. And I had always just to break out of that, you know, because I think my sensibilities are pretty me and edgy and weird. But like, I'm really kind of a basic bitch. Like when it comes to the stuff I like, like,

I really like my taste is very college dorm room. I have a back to the future tattoo. Like I'm very influenced by like genre film. And you know, like I love David Lynch. I have a Back to the Future tattoo. I'm very influenced by genre film. And I love David Lynch. I love experimental film and stuff too. But I've always really felt like I could do it. I could be just like a genre filmmaker. But when we had the controversy at TIFF, I had a lot of pressure on me to just put the movie out there. And I could never articulate to people why it was important to me to not do that and to hold out. It wasn't just financial. It really was... I mean, maybe it's ego thing. But it's also just like, I've been doing this long enough to know the movie was going to always find its audience. But there needed to kind to be a plan in place so that I could actually put it towards

having a career, the career that I've wanted my whole life. I think it's ridiculous that we live in a culture now where every artist, even the ones like me who have had a trade in an industry, that we have to really carve our own path in online spaces or on Twitter or YouTube or whatever. It just keeps us all in cycles of poverty. I fucking hate posting to Twitter. I do it still just because it's the easiest way to get the word out. But every single time I send a tweet, I'm like, this sucks. I'm supporting one of the worst people alive right now just by still using this site. Somebody who hates me and people like me

so much that he literally won't talk to his own child. Yeah. I really just wanted to kick the door down for myself and hopefully for some people that come after me. And I really don't want to be the type of filmmaker and the type of queer filmmaker who holds the ladder up behind them. It's not even that I have integrity. It's just that this movie is that to me. This movie is such like, it's a gospel on how we need to be making art

more ethically and more, um, for ourselves and from a place of care. And, uh, yeah, that's just, I,

I want to hopefully change my little corner of the industry as much as I can, uh, toward that. I mean, it definitely feels like we're getting more and more people are embracing this idea of independent queer cinema and more people are, are deciding instead independent queer cinema, and more people are deciding, instead of putting whatever short film they want on YouTube,

try to do a festival circuit. And that was one of the things that I think I really respected after what happened at TIFF. I really respected your insistence to, no, we're going to find a distributor. We're not just going to throw it up online and call it a day. It's not just going to be a fan film. It's like this is an actual expressive piece that we're going to...

It might mean that you won't see it for another two years. But it shows a level of actual artistic commitment that I found gave the project a real sense of weight. Oh, thank you. The notion of this comfortable YouTube bubble we've created is perhaps why I find the public access TV side of Ellie Ehrman's Late Stage Live so compelling. A lot of queer people around my age

grew up with the transgender video essay as the primary form of our artistic video output. And there's a lot of good video essays out there, but at a certain point, it started to feel like the main way a young radical queer person could engage with the art form. It's gotten to feel so insular and a bit restrictive, like we're enforcing our own bubble. On top of this self-limiting aspect, I'm not even sure how much growth the format even

has anymore. Recently, I've begun to see more queer artists specifically trying to make things outside the strict video essay framework. Even some of the most popular trans video essay creators have been trying to move into documentary and narrative filmmaking. I asked Ella about moving beyond the video essay bubble, because although Late Stage Live does air on YouTube as well as Brooklyn Public Access, the format is not just your average transgender video essay. We don't have any pink lighting at all. Yeah, it's definitely something I've been thinking about a lot, both in my own personal career and for the show. A lot of my bylines in the

last few years are all YouTube-based with Late Stage and Some More News. And it's frustrating that even as YouTube has seen so much growth and like celebrities come from YouTube all the time and some of the biggest names in the world are internet stars now. There's still like the sense of illegitimacy to be doing a project on YouTube. And like when I try and get published

in like more legitimate journalism magazines every so often, I'm always looking at my resume and being like, I wish I had like a byline in a magazine instead of three years of writing for a YouTube show that I love so much and think is doing better works than most of these magazines, but like that I know won't get treated the same.

So there's definitely an aspect to that that I think, yeah, like it's partly because YouTube is so accessible. Anyone can post on YouTube that I understand why queer people have sort of relegated themselves to this bubble. Trans people have wrote like why we've ended up with like, you know, the trans video essay scene.

Thank you, mother Natalie. But it makes it hard to sort of break into this like final frontier of legitimacy, I think. And I think by like, yeah, like not fully committing ourselves to being a YouTube show from the get-go we do sort of leave

doors open to be considered like a more legitimate television production which is exciting for like growth opportunities i think the live studio audience also really pushes us out of that zone we get a lot of accusations from people who are mean on the internet of using a laugh track and i just want to say and i will say it until day I die, it would be so much easier if we were. I could totally tell when there's gay people laughing in the background versus a laugh track. It's a very clear difference. Absolutely. It would be so easy if I was just plugging that in in post.

But no, we bring in 30, 35 gays every month just to laugh at my jokes. And sometimes they don't. And you can see that too when they don't laugh at my jokes but i think that um is something i was really excited to do that is different from a lot of the other video essay sphere because it it also like brings an aspect of live performance um that i love as a stand-up and as a theater artist and also like yeah just pulls it into like a slightly different genre of thing that we're making and i think certainly in terms of like growth and audience building and like the potential of being picked up by some larger organization,

it definitely puts us in like a different, it makes us look slightly different than like a YouTube show, even if we can all like sort of quietly acknowledge like, well, but all of our growth is happening on YouTube and Instagram. But like, as you said, like real late night is huge on YouTube now too. And there's all these other extra correlating factors of like monetization on YouTube sort of died a few years ago after the ad apocalypse or whatever. And, and so you have to go through crowdfunding sources like Patreon or sponsorships or X, other Y, like there's not like you can't. Nebula or whatever new streaming service for YouTube pops up. Yeah, right. You can't just rely on AdSense anymore. And that's frustrating in its own degree. But I think even beyond that, yeah, like not relegating ourselves to being a YouTube show, both thematically and concretely in terms of content and form is like really exciting.

content and form is like really exciting. And I think like even as we grow and, and gain a budget and are able to buy nicer cameras, we want to like keep the aesthetics and vibe of like edgy, radical public access, because it's like a part of the voice of the show along with sort of the practicalities. Yeah. Having background ketamine jokes,

I think really is what sets you apart. The quote unquote VHS cleaner that sits on the desk every episode. I don't own a VHS. We will return to It Could Happen Here after these messages. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities,

artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German,

where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We now return to It Could Happen Here. To me, the most exciting thing about the idea of a new wave of independent trans cinema is that we'll get to see a whole bunch of trans films that otherwise would never get made by the big studios. After trans filmmaker Jane Shonbrun's successful festival run of her small-scale feature debut

titled We're All Going to the World's Fair back in 2021, her next film, called I Saw the TV Glow, got picked up by Emma Stone's production company and A24. The film is now coming out later this month. In the case of The People's Joker, it dares to take Warner Brothers and Disney at their word that their privately owned intellectual property is in fact our culture's version of mythology, our very own Greek gods. And so if these characters really are the cultural icons that the monopolized companies who own them claim them to be, what happens when we actually do treat them like mythology and use these characters to artistically mythologize our own lives?

By skillfully sidestepping copyright law via effective legal parity, we get to have a Batman film through the lens of transgender chaos magic, which I'm afraid would simply never happen under Warner Bros. Discovery, as they can't even stop deleting their own finished films to get tax write-offs. A few weeks ago, I showed my It Could Happen Here co-host Mia Wong, the People's Joker, and afterwards we talked about what makes it feel so special and its place within the pantheon of queer cinema. One of my dear friends, Vicky Osterweil, is writing a book called The Extended Universe about sort of copyright law and what it's done to film and specifically focusing on Disney. specifically focusing on on disney and the thing that's different about the people's joker right if you if you want to know why the people's joker is you know why specifically you couldn't make this

it's it's partially because it's trans and it's partially because it's actually a movie because and then this is this is this is vicky's argument you know and this is this is the hidden truth about the film industry is that movies are not designed to sell movies no they're designed to extend copyright. No, no, it's worse than that. Like a superhero movie does not make money on the movie, right? The movie theater is not making money on the movie. The movie theater is making money on food.

The company itself, that's not where the money comes from. The money comes from toy sales and sales of stuff afterwards, right? So what you're actually seeing when you're seeing a superhero movie is just an ad in advertising this and this is yeah and this is part of what the people's joker is that makes it different right and you know and it's because like specifically because it is trans and because of the way that it's trans this makes it impossible for it to be made by a corporation and because trans people fought to make it it gets to be an actual movie and not a fucking toy sales thing yeah because they're not going to be making a toy of mustache pedophile batman yeah right and this is incredibly important for the genre of film because you know i mean there there is a world that is not too far

off where we are the last people making actual fucking films and not advertisements yeah to use the sort of like only semi-ironically using the sort of lofty like marxist language is like yeah like we kind of also have been given the historical task of saving film from its complete annihilation by these fucking capitalist copyright ghouls it's a pleasure to see it's a joy to see i It's a joy to see. I was reading an interesting article recently that talked about how transmedia's orientation has been very referential. It's been very much based on experiences that trans people have as kids engaging with media, whether that's with something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whether that's with DC Comics. comics and it's because transness is so much about recontextualizing your whole life and and identity a lot of trans media has also been about this form of recontextualization uh both with i think the people's joker is a great example also uh uh the upcoming film i saw the tv glow which is very much based on like buffy and other and other kind of like monster of the week style tv shows

it's combining all of that kind of stuff with a lot of lynching influences, both, both in these cases, both in the people's Joker and in, I saw the TV glow to create this like fever dream of self identity in this referential format. And that's been an interesting trend to watch in trans cinema. And I think that's,

that's something, that's something to look, I think that's something to look for when you're engaging with future trans cinema projects seeing if those kind of things pop up and if and if they don't why is that what else is actually happening instead i think those are going to be some interesting interesting ways to uh engage with our own diy art in the next decade here because as much as like everything we talk about is so depressing, like on this show, about how everything dealing with trans stuff is about how everyone's trying to kill us and restrict our medical care, that does not actually stop us from becoming people who actually engage with culture in any real sense. I think despite everything that's targeted against trans people, it does not stop us from actually having a cultural output. And the thing a lot of conservatives are afraid of is our cultural output. The fact that trans people

keep being actually really compelling artists and really, really compelling people in general makes conservatives nervous. I don't think it's impossible for conservatives to make art. I think there is conservative art that actually can be seen as like okay art. But they certainly are afraid at how good trans people are at making music and now making movies. When I was talking with Mia, she brought up a good point that I'll paraphrase here. Part of why we're seeing this new wave of independent trans cinema is the result of a combination of two things. One is that trans and queer artists have been and continue to be chewed up and spat out by the traditional media machine. And two, the traditional media machine itself is slowly rotting from the inside,

which can be a tricky situation to navigate for a lot of queer artists. But simultaneously, it also means that we're in this position where, having been spat out, we have full reign to go make our own massive, grotesque, degenerate queer art on our own, because there simply is no artistic alternative. Trans people need to be submitting to film festivals, regardless of whether or not cis viewers and critics will understand the work. Filmmaking is one of those art forms that you can't really do all by yourself, but that doesn't need to be a limitation. That can be an asset.

Gay people are good at a lot of different things, and filmmaking integrates so many different artistic areas and skills. And as we've seen, a movie made by a community of queers can create such a unique result. When talking with Vera Drew, she mentioned that having a whole team of artists help her complete the movie is also in part what ensured that she would find a way for the film to be distributed the right way, so that it's seen up on the big screen and not just published online for free. That was another thing that really kept me from doing anything irrational with the film, like posting it on Google Drive with a donation link or whatever.

I have all these artists that just worked on this movie with me for two and a half years and no, we're going to fucking do this. I said I would do this and I'm going to do this because I can't just feed this back into the incubator and the fucking feedback loop of trans Twitter and cool underground circles that I totally love to be a part of.

But we're all trying to get more visibility outside of those things. So yeah, I always really just wanted to honor the team and make everybody feel valued. And I paid as many people as I could and was very straightforward about what I could afford. And a lot of people worked in ways that they just felt compensated. And that was very appreciated. I think in general, everybody on this was very underpaid, but like it was such a labor of love and such like a, um, a personal thing for, for all of us that everybody just like showed up and,

and really rallied around each other and really just kept saying yes. And to everything. And, um, it's so cool. I don't, I don't know how I'll ever really be able to replicate. I don't think I should either just

because it was quite a gargantuan task. But it was literally the best time of my life was making this movie. I think it really taught me just how to be a human being and how to love and how to finally feel connected to my queer community. Because I think the People's Joker is really more than anything, it's really about nuance and relationships and family and politics and it talks about nuance by really

leaning into these extremes which I think just is also inherently queer. And I don't know. I mean, that to me is another thing. It's just like I hope and there's a lot of trans filmmakers that are like starting

to pop up in the genre space. But like I hope we see more of it just because like we all grew up on the same movies that cis people did. So like why can't we make

similar art, you know, and tell our stories in the process and also do it in a way that's like not hiding in the shadows. The People's Joker is slowly ending its US theatrical run, but you can still look for tickets

and showtimes at thepeoplesjoker.com and you can find Vera Drew online at veradrew22. Late Stage Live just released their sixth episode and I'm really excited to see how the show will grow and evolve over time. And we've actually recently hit an inflection point with the show where the sort of organic haphazard growth is no longer sustainable for us. We've been having a lot of

really exciting and scary conversations behind the scenes about formalizing our production process and kicking our shit up a notch so that we have the potential to make this bigger and better and more polished. But it is at its core still like a production born out of community and like mutual respect. I'm Ella Yerman. You can find me on Instagram at Ella.Yerman on x.com at Ella Yerman. I think I'm on blue sky also, though I don't do anything there. You can find Late Stage Live as Late Stage Live on all platforms. That's Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok, probably also Blue Sky, but those are the big ones.

And then if you're interested in finding my stand-up show, we're at T4T Comedy on Instagram and X. Oh, and then most specifically, if you're interested in helping fund Late Stage and make us bigger and better and shinier, you can go to patreon.com slash late stage live, where we post. Yeah, we have a behind the scenes photos and videos and we make a semi frequent podcast where my head writer and I talk about the news and shoot the shit and talk about the process in a lot more detail episode by episode. And we're so grateful for our current patrons and for opportunities like this. And we're excited to see where the show goes.

That does it for us at It Could Happen Here. I hope you enjoyed my Transformers and G.I. Joe ad break references. And if not, you can send any complaints to the president of Columbia University. Solidarity to everyone across the country who's been out the past few weeks. See you on the other side. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral.

We're talking music, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into Tex Elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. from the chaotic world of generative ai to the destruction of google search better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose listen to better offline on the iheart radio app apple podcasts wherever else you get your podcasts from