Over the holidays, Talkhouse Film is revisiting some of its favorite pieces of the previous 12 months, including this one. Hope you had a great year! — N.D.
When you’re a creative person and you have a new project — a film, an album, a TV show, a book — there’s a process you go through where one journalist after another will talk to you … and each one will pretty much ask you the same handful of standard, kinda predictable questions. “How did you come up with the idea for this?” “What were some of the challenges?” “What’s it like to work with George Clooney?!” Etc. The interviewer is doing what is expected of them, and the artist gets comfortable with a series of answers that they quickly learn off by heart.
For many years, in all the conversations I’ve had with filmmakers, musicians and writers — whether they were on the record or not — I’ve tried as much as possible to deviate from that well-trodden path. To go beyond the most obvious questions to discover a different side of the person.
Which is exactly what Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That is all about. The aim is to talk to artists whose work I love and ask them substantive questions that get to the heart of who they are as people, because those are the questions I am most interested in asking, and lead to the kind of conversations I love the most.
The guest on this inaugural episode of Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That is Vera Drew, the writer-director-editor-star of The People’s Joker. That film was one of the most acclaimed and talked about movies of last year, and is a brilliant, singular piece of personal cinema: a work that channels Vera’s own life experiences as a trans person through the mythology of Batman’s Gotham City and its iconic inhabitants.
It’s queer autobiographical filmmaking at its most human, and it’s also hilarious. It’s a musical. It’s a fusion of animation, green screen and live action. It’s truly unique, and if you haven’t already seen it, you absolutely must.
My talk with Vera was kind of the test case for this new series, and I honestly had no idea how well the format was going to work, but sensed that Vera would be an ideal first guest. And she was. The conversation you’re about to hear was surprising for both of us, in the best way, and touches on a range of subjects including dreams, shoplifting, addiction, recovery, first love, self-love, self-care, polyamory, anxiety … as well as horny audiences, toxic yoga instructors and idyllic meetings with Elijah Wood and Lilly Wachowski. — N.D.
This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range.
