“She told us, ‘Boys, if you want to succeed in this, you’ve got to write, write, write,’” Emerson recalls. His mother fell into a coma a week after giving her son that guidance and never woke up. Her death was devastating for Emerson, but those words stayed with him as he navigated the deep grief of her passing.
"After her death, I realized that I actually didn't like my banking job. I just did it because it was something that I felt like other people would respect," Emerson says. "But I love comedy, and her passing sealed my want to pursue comedy in a real way before I tried to get another banking job."
Her words became the foundation of his new path. By 2020, he was producing comedy shows in Denver, focusing on Native comedians and eventually co-creating Bad Indian, a new documentary that fuses his journey of grief with an exploration of Native identity.
The film, directed by Emerson's longtime collaborator and friend Jeff Stonic, is a love letter to his mother and reflects the resilience and humor that define Native communities. Bad Indian follows Emerson's journey to produce Netflix's first all-Native lineup in Los Angeles while spreading his mother's ashes along the way, but ultimately leads to a rediscovery of the meaning of life.
"Every year I would go to a different festival and spread my mom's ashes," Emerson says. "We did the show in Los Angeles, and it's interesting because the grief was so strong when she passed away, but I'm starting to get to a place where the grief is sort of leaving. While I do love my mother and I miss her, grief is also temporary. I'm moving on to the next phase of my life, so this has been a nice little project to show how much I love my mom, how much I miss her, and how she inspired me to really pursue this sort of alternative career path."
In his latest project, Emerson stars in Finding the Funny, a new film that also explores Native joy and grief. In the film, Emerson's character is a comedian struggling with writer's block due to grief. As he spends the day running errands and meeting with various members of the Native community, the natural Native American joy he experiences pulls him out of his funk and helps him rediscover his comedic voice.
The premiere of Finding the Funny is at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 25 at the MCA Holiday Theater and will feature a special Q&A session with the filmmakers following the screening moderated by CityCast's Paul Karolyi.
“Growing up, Native Americans were the funniest people in my life,” Joshua Emerson says.
Courtesy of Jeff Stonic
A founding member of DeadRoom Comedy, an entertainment production company, Emerson has created award-winning live shows including Dead Inside, which won the 2021 Denver Fringe Festival's Audience Choice Award for Best Comedy Show. Raised in the liminal spaces between Phoenix, where he lived with his white father, and the Navajo Nation, where he spent school breaks with his Indigenous mother, Emerson grew up navigating multiple identities.
“Growing up, Native Americans were the funniest people in my life,” he says. "But when I looked around, there were not any real Native comics doing the club systems. This really frustrated me, so I started producing Native comedy shows here in Denver. I’ve made it my life’s pursuit to show how central humor is to our culture.”
His military service as a Marine and his economics degree from Fort Lewis College might seem out of place in a comedian’s biography, but they’re part of the duality that defines him. After moving to Denver in 2019, Emerson quickly became a fixture in the city’s thriving comedy scene.
“Denver’s comedy scene is one of the best in the world,” he says. "I went to school in Durango and Jeff went to school in Indianapolis, but for whatever reason, we both ended up in Denver and began performing comedy together. Then we began collaborating on film projects. Bad Indian is something that Denver birthed, and I think that's really cool."
The idea for Bad Indian took shape during a road trip earlier this year. Emerson and Stonic decided to document their travels as Emerson spread his mother's ashes on their way to produce the first all-Native lineup for the Netflix Is a Joke festival in Los Angeles. Stonic, an experienced filmmaker with a style Emerson describes as “beautiful chaos,” brought the raw footage to life, creating a film that weaves intimate personal moments with universal themes.
Following his mother's death, Joshua Emerson decided to leave his banking job to pursue comedy.
Courtesy of Jeff Stonic
While the film has reached picture lock, it still requires professional coloring and sound design to meet industry standards. The team launched a Seed & Spark campaign to raise $8,500 for those finishing touches and to compensate collaborators like Gandy, who has served as creative director on the project.
“The colorist we are working with has worked on Netflix projects, and the sound guy has worked with the LA Clippers and Hans Zimmer, so it's real people that we're trying to get involved with,” Emerson says. “We want this to be a finished product that belongs on the big screen.”
"Bad Indian is something that Denver birthed and I think that's really cool," Joshua Emerson says of the film.
Courtesy of Jeff Stonic
As he reflects on the journey, Emerson acknowledges that Bad Indian is the "most vulnerable" work he has ever undertaken. Through the film, he exposes his grief, humor and identity in ways that allow audiences to truly see him.
“The story is so powerful because Native people haven’t seen a story told like this," Emerson says. "Even though the story is familiar to them — the early death of a parent and how do you deal with that — it goes beyond what’s expected. There’s so much beauty in Native stories, and it’s time the world sees that.”
Finding the Funny premieres at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 25 at MCA Holiday Theater, 2644 West 32nd Avenue. For more information and to reserve tickets, go to mcadenver.org.
