What Makes Vera Drew Laugh

Today I present the first installment of What Makes Me Laugh, a new interview series with funny and interesting people about their favorite funny things: the works of art that shaped their senses of humor, inspired their work, and made them the people they are.

For this first Q+A, I was very pleased to speak with the filmmaker Vera Drew. You surely know her as the director, co-writer, editor, and star of The People's Joker, an exhilarating, impressionistic coming-of-age story that doubles as a critique of the improv industrial complex and SNL. As an editor, she's worked on Comedy Bang! Bang!, The Birthday Boys, On Cinema, I Think You Should Leave, and other shows; she also helped shape Adult Swim's Channel 5, writing, directing, and producing digital comedy series with Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and their broader universe of artists.

I chatted with Drew about her favorite comedians, what she learned working in the Abso Lutely world, and the story behind Maria Bamford's take on Lorne Michaels in The People's Joker. Find our conversation below, and come back next week for the next installment of What Makes Me Laugh.

Who is your favorite living comedian and your favorite dead comedian?

My favorite living comedian is probably David Liebe Hart. I just think he's genuinely the funniest person I've ever met. If he revealed himself to be some sort of magical entity that sent here from another dimension just to entertain people, I'd believe him. He's a laugh a minute, truly, to a degree that's actually exhausting to be around.

I don't know his stuff at all. I'll have to look him up.

He was one of the Tim and Eric guys. He's a genuine multi-hyphenate—he's a puppeteer, he's a song and dance man, and he also just appreciates a really good dick joke. He used to host a show on cable access called the Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson, because he's a Christian Scientist. Just truly one of the most fascinating and funny people I've ever met. I cast him as Ra's Al Ghul in The People's Joker because I wanted to give him the chance to finally play one of those Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting type roles.

My favorite dead comedian—this is a tough one for me because I really don't want to focus on looking cool, but the most authentic answer I have is Divine, because I really think everything he did in the John Waters universe and beyond was completely immaculate and genuinely funny. I really think Divine is actually underrated as a comedic performer. And the fact that he died in his prime—I feel like we didn't get to see the best that Divine could have done, and it kind of breaks my heart. I'm sure we would've seen some sort of really beautiful dramatic turn late in his life. But, yeah, especially revisiting Female Trouble, it's definitely one of my favorite comedic performances of all time.

Do you have a favorite sketch?

This is another one where it's like, I don't want to just be a basic bitch and say a Mr. Show sketch, but I'm going to. For me, it's really "The Joke: The Musical." I rewatch that one probably at least once or twice a year. It really changed my life when I saw it the first time, because it's so dumb. It's just turning just a dumb barroom joke into a full-fledged Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, but doing it with so much sincerity. And the first time I ever saw Jack Black in anything was when I saw that sketch. That one never gets old for me.

Can you tell me about anything in the recent past or the distant past that made you lose it laughing?

I wouldn't say it made me lose it laughing, per se—laughing, for me, I don't know that it's ever really a pleasurable experience. I have the primal, "I'm nervous" or "I'm sweating a lot" laughing. But something that I recently experienced that was really funny, I was going for a walk around Echo Park Lake with my friend Ember Knight, who's a really talented and incredible comedian and filmmaker out here in LA. And the whole walk, she wouldn't stop talking about all these geese at the lake now, all these Canadian geese, and I've just never heard anybody be so upset. It's such a beautiful and majestic animal. She was talking about them how people talk about rats or cockroaches. How they don't belong here, they come here from Canada, but then they stay because they like the weather. And it felt like this beautiful existential metaphor for why so many talented, beautiful, incredible artists get stuck in the Bermuda Triangle that is Los Angeles just because the weather's really nice here and sometimes you get invited to the premiere of a new Bob Odenkirk movie.

Is there a work of comedy that isn't traditional standup, sketch, TV, film or the like that changed your life?

Kurt Vonnegut came to me really at the perfect time in my life. I was a senior in high school and his book Breakfast of Champions just blew my mind and really expanded for me the potential of storytelling in comedy and also irreverent truth to power. I think it's just so cool too, his whole humanist perspective on things—there's no nihilism to it, but it's deeply devoid of any spiritual reverence. It showed me how powerful comedy could be at helping you unlearn toxic beliefs about your country and religion. 

You've worked with some of the funniest people alive—what have you learned from them? How your has your work in post-production influenced your approach as a writer and a director?

The through line between all of them is that whether it was Nathan Fielder or Eric André or Heidecker or any of these guys, they're really doing something that only they can do. Their approach to comedy and writing and directing, it's coming from a perspective that really only they could have. I think the thing that really got reinforced for me when I was incubating in the Abso Lutely world and the Tim and Eric world, and working with Scott Aukerman, is not trying to replicate any specific careers and really trying to carve my own path and lean into my voice instead of trying to mimic another. 

It sounds a little bit saccharine or a pretty basic lesson, but I think a mistake a lot of people fall into is thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna be the next so-and-so." And for me, the path was leaning into "What are the stories that only I can tell and what is the creative voice that only I can really express?" I think I even had multiple times where Tim Heidecker specifically was telling me that, and giving feedback that was like, "Just be you. Don't try to be somebody else." And I think it's a really valuable lesson.

Are there any lines of comedy—Simpsons jokes, stuff from your favorite comics or tweets or whatever it might be—that have become part of your permanent lexicon that you use in your daily life?

I'm embarrassed at how much I've brought up Tim Heidecker talking to you, because he gets enough press. But working with him and being a fan of his for the last 15 years, he's completely destroyed the way I speak. I'm constantly just walking around my house fumbling through words like his On Cinema character. I think in those Awesome Show sketches when he's doing infomercials and stuff, he's speaking with a real infomercial style that I accidentally find myself replicating often. It's a real issue I'm having.

I've also recently been watching Love on the Spectrum, which is one of the most heartwarming and beautiful shows I've ever seen in my life. But one of the people on it is this guy James. And it's another speech pattern that I'm constantly falling into now, just from bingeing the series. He's always saying this thing, "Yes, not too bad, not too bad." I keep finding myself doing that as well.

I love that. I love all the little things that subconsciously shape our senses of humor. Just one other thing I wanted to ask you about: I really loved Maria Bamford's Lorne in The People's Joker. There are so many different fictionalizations of Lorne, I'm curious about the process that brought you to yours and Maria's.

When Maria came in to do the voice, it was very decided that I didn't want it to be a Lorne Michaels impression, because that's just Dr. Evil, and everybody's got their Lorne Michaels' impression. And when we talked, I said, "This version of him, he's kind of like a cult leader and he's kind of like a game show host and a used car salesman." And I could tell that those three things together actually kind of maybe overwhelmed Maria a little bit. She's like, "I don't know, that sounds like three different things." 

And I was like, "Okay, well, just do whatever." And then she read one of the lines, and I don't know if this was her choice or not, but she was basically doing Charlton Heston. And I was like, "That's what it is. You're doing a Charlton Heston voice. Yeah, you're Charlton Heston." And then we didn't really have to do much directing beyond that. 

it was funny too because I think a lot of that character's lines are the sharpest critique of mainstream comedy in the film, so I didn't really know how she would respond to that. Because she's respected in all circles of comedy, and I didn't know how comfortable she'd be. But she really was game to just do what we had written. I think there was one line that was scripted to be Lorne saying, "I don't know why the show is so bad. Our writers are so good." And Maria didn't want to say that. She was like, "What if I just say the show is uneven?" 

And I actually appreciated the feedback, because I think that's actually a better criticism. I haven't watched SNL in years but It still pops up in my algorithm, which honestly is insane. I can't tell you how many times I've clicked "not interested" on Instagram and I still see Reels of it. It really hurts my stomach every time it comes up, especially now having made my film. But, yeah, I mean, I'm sure the show's not bad, it's just uneven. I just don't think anybody should make a show in a week. That seems like a huge mistake.