Photo: Diné Nation Navajo Comedian Joshua Emerson at Monument Valley, May 2024
When Joshua Emerson isn’t working his day job as Moco the Clown at Casa Bonita, he’s on the road doing comedy shows, focusing many of his bits on his Native American heritage, while giving other Indigenous comedians a bigger platform.
Realizing that comedy clubs would be a great venue for a short film, the 33-year-old member of the Diné Nation decided to star in his own: “Bad Indian” takes a comedic look at some of the tropes surrounding Native Americans.
Walking around in different settings, he offers witty commentary; in the opening, he describes how the frequent regularity of a train would make the task of planning a suicide easier – an example of a way to use comedy to lessen the blow about high rates of suicide for Native Americans.
Throughout the 28-minute film, he makes no mention of himself rocking elaborate cornrows, which show both the significance and reverence Native Americans place on braided hair, and a link between braids worn by Black people and by Native American people – different in meaning, but, through his demonstration, transferable inter-culturally.
Bringing to light those connections is what he said he hopes the film will accomplish. In an interview this week, he said: “I want it to be a way that non-Natives can see a Native story and not just see trauma or not just see the same story that’s been told over and over again, but to see something new, a contemporary Native story, that they’re able to engage with the community and maybe spark interest and start to build relationships that way.”
He said his fundraising efforts to complete production are about halfway done. He needs $4,250 more – about half of the $8,500 he planned to raise to complete the production, which includes getting the sound and light to professional levels. So on Saturday, he’ll be screening it at Glass Grove, while making himself available for donations through online crowd-funding efforts.
Emerson, a comedian who lives in the Berkeley neighborhood of Denver, relates his strategy of engaging audiences to the crescendos and descendos in music: “You sort of want to play the audience like an instrument where you are controlling the energy and you’re able to make ‘em laugh really loud, or you can sort of make ‘em listen and make ‘em very quiet while you’re telling the story.”
The audience for his comedy shows and the audience for the film are likely interconnected, and so he said a possible venue for the film would be in the same clubs he plays. He produced “Netflix is a Joke” for Netflix, and does other Native-comedy performances and line-ups around the country.
He said his goal in raising funds is to get the film before a wider audience – the final cut might be longer than what he has in the can so far.
“Maybe 50-ish minutes,” he said of the possible full length. “But that would be further down the line, I think. The plan right now is to sort of perfect this and submit it into some festivals, talk to some people, and go from there.”
In the meantime, he keeps his comedy skills strong working at the re-opened Casa Bonita in Lakewood. He wears a costume of the 3-year-old gorilla named Moco, who he said can have “bratty” behavior.
He tries to make people laugh there, although his face and voice are obscured by his gorilla suit. Of his day job that pays the bills when he’s not on the road, he said doing it keeps his skills sharp.
“The comedic bits are all non-verbal, which is a fun challenge, I will say, because it’s like, how can you be funny without speaking?” he said. “It’s sort of like a dance, like a comedic dance.”
