Sean Baker is very research-oriented and immerses himself in every environment in which he ends up making a film. And yes, he knows what it looks like. “People on the internet were like, ‘Oh, Sean is such a horndog! That’s the only reason he makes these movies.'” , his whole face seemed to be smiling. At 53 years old, he looks like he’s fallen into the fountain of youth. His boyish exuberance and tousled hair give him the wholesomeness of Ritchie Cunningham, an interesting contrast to the subject matter of his films, if not his jovial, irrepressible tone. I am.
His charming fourth feature, Starlet, was a buddy film about a young female porn star and a difficult elderly widow. His fifth film was the blockbuster “Tangerine,” shot on three iPhones on a budget of $100,000 and set among transgender sex workers on Santa Monica Boulevard in LA. Red Rocket is concerned about another porn star, this time older and with a bad reputation, and he tries to persuade his teenage girlfriend to take up the same career.
I would love to work with Jennifer Lawrence or Leonardo DiCaprio someday. I hear they are great!
Baker’s latest film, Anora, is a brilliant, high-energy tragicomedy about an Uzbek-American lap dancer played by Oscar nominee Mikey Madison. She comes to regret her impulsive marriage to her giggling 21-year-old son. Russian oligarchy. The director still seems surprised that Anora won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. “I thought I’d made a hell of an exploitation movie,” he says, his face wrinkled again.
If the impression he gives is that of a U-rated boy in an It matches the memory of the period. “It was a ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ moment every time,” he gasped. “If you drive out through the Lincoln Tunnel, you’ll be on 42nd Street. It was the heyday of grindhouse and porn theaters. Everywhere you went, you’d have ‘Marilyn Chambers XXX.'” He imitated his younger self, staring out the passenger window at the stalks and saying, what happened? ‘That really stuck with me. ”
“I realized I was in a little too deep”…Sean Baker. Photo: Andy Klopa/Invision/AP
Maybe the people who scream “horndog” have a point. “There has been some field research done on Anora,” Baker says, recognizing that this is more than just a representation. In preparation for writing the film, he frequently visited the club where Anora (who prefers to be called Ani) would be working. This was not a solo mission. He saw her play a member of the Manson Family in the bloody climax of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and invited Madison, who had cast her before writing the script, to accompany her. I let it happen. Also in attendance at the club was Baker’s wife, producer Samantha Quan, and one or two other staff members. But still.
“We got a lap dance,” he says sheepishly. “I had to do that. It was the most embarrassing thing and it was just ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’ I’m trying to do an interview while giving a lap dance, which is so ridiculous. Halfway through the dance, I thought, “So what do men usually do at this moment?” It completely kills the atmosphere. The dancers were making a fuss. ”
Some of them had experiences that weren’t all that different from what I imagined Ani going through in the movie. “There was a sad, sobering moment where a woman said, ‘This happened to me.’ She married into a wealthy family, I don’t know if it was an oligarchy, but they I rejected her and she got teary-eyed about it.”
The film features Annie’s young husband-to-be sliding around the mansion floor in his socks, much like Tom Cruise in the 1983 comedy Risky Business, about a teenager who renovates a house. By showing herself, she alludes to Hollywood’s generally sanitized view of sex work. Go to a brothel for the night. But Baker found that the Pretty Woman paradigm still persists: “I’ve heard from a lot of dancers, ‘If I marry that wealthy businessman, I won’t have to do this anymore.’ It’s not that different from winning the lottery.” Is it? “Of course. You get it in every field of work, every area of life. “One day I’ll…” win the Palme d’Or? “that’s right!”
Riot…Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, James Ransone, Maia Taylor “Tangerine” Shot on three iPhones. Photo: AJ Pics/Alamy
How can women like Ani find fulfillment? “If we can get her the respect she deserves from people who actually see and hear her, that’s a step forward,” Baker said. “One of the reasons I made this film was because I realized that our Cinderella story has changed in the last 10 years. Now it’s about wealth and fame. When I was a kid, American The dream was to build a house in the suburbs and hopefully earn enough money for the kids to go to college. That’s changed, and perhaps this is what this movie is commenting on.
It’s easy to imagine a more sordid version of the film, where Ani’s Russian in-laws don’t bother to annul the marriage, but instead murder her and dump her body in the Hudson River. But what’s surprising about Baker’s film is that, despite the poverty, crime, desperation, and drug use of its characters, there is little threat to them. Anora may owe a lot to Jonathan Demme’s 1986 screwball thriller Something Wild, but nothing compares to the terrifying sociopath played by Ray Liotta in that film. Perhaps there is an inherent naivety in Mr. Baker’s view that prevents him from engaging with that kind of threat? “It’s funny because I watch very radical films and I’m friends with people like Gaspar Noe,” he says, confirming the director of the brutal film “Irreversible.” “But you’re right. I’ve never been there. I don’t know why.”
It is conspicuous that not even firearms appear. Baker’s 2004 film “Take Out,” about a Chinese immigrant who works as a delivery driver, is the only one of his films to feature guns. It was 15 years ago that Baker and actor Karen Karagurian, who has appeared in all of his films, began discussing what would eventually become Anora. From the beginning, they set themselves the challenge of creating a gangster story set in the Russian-American community of Brighton Beach (also known as Little Odessa) without ever showing a gun. “We wondered, ‘Is that possible?'” Anora proved that it was possible.
Guns and menace aren’t the only elements missing from Baker’s film. With the exception of Willem Dafoe, who received an Oscar nomination for his role as a good-natured motel manager in 2017’s The Florida Project, Baker has shied away from stars, perhaps due to the loose approach essential to his work. I guess he was afraid of ruining it. Extensive improvisation, last-minute rewrites, and scenes where actors interact with unsuspecting members of the public.
“I have a lot of friends in this industry who have had nightmares working with big Hollywood actors,” he says. “I don’t know how they spend their days. I’d throw in the towel. I’d love to work with Jennifer Lawrence or Leonardo DiCaprio someday. I hear they’re great! But you never know. It can really derail the movie.”
Ready to fly…Anora Madison and Eidelstein. Photo: Album/Alamy
His immersive process and tendency to blur the lines between life and work are similarly off-kilter with the A-list. But will it be a personal burden to him? “Yes,” he said, losing his smile for the first time. “When you tap into real people who are probably struggling, there’s a responsibility that one can take on. I sometimes take a sort of guardianship position with the actors, who I wouldn’t have otherwise. I couldn’t do it. Besides, I’m attracted to it too…” he narrowed his eyes. “The word is not ‘dark.’ But let’s say an “alternative” lifestyle. I feel like I’m going a little too deep on a personal level. I have had addiction issues throughout my life. ”
Baker has been open about being addicted to heroin in his 20s. “I’ll never go back to opiates, because it would be suicidal,” he says. “But as I got into my 40s and 50s, I found myself in a place I never thought I would be. Sometimes I think, ‘Why am I partying like this?’ It may happen. I guess that’s because I stepped into a world that I probably wouldn’t have entered if I wasn’t interested in covering it in a movie. Or maybe you just find it romantic for some reason. ”
Can he keep his distance at that moment? “There’s definitely a distance, because I’m there on an observational level, but I’m participating,” he reflected. It can be scary and I have to be careful with myself. ”
The film industry is notoriously a dangerous place for those with such desires, but Baker claims to have never experienced that side of Hollywood. “It seems like things are getting a lot prettier these days. But I’m so indie that I’m outside of all of that. A lot of my colleagues, and I’m not slamming them here, are pretty straight-laced.” It’s Edge. There are a lot of manga nerds who are making movies!”
When I asked him if he was clean yet, he looked away. Her smile is back, but she’s more disappointed than at ease now. “Well, I’m not,” he finally said. “No, that’s not true. I was clean for seven years, and then I realized that my drug of choice was opiates, and I started to feel comfortable doing other things. It came and went. Obviously, there’s a staple of cannabis that’s more or less normalized in the United States. But there’s always going to be other, uh, party substances. Masu.”
He doesn’t have a shred of defensiveness about this, but rather gently and conscientiously, as if putting a fragile object out of harm’s way, or turning his U-rated face away from an X-rated world. Say it in a tone of voice.
Anora will be released in UK cinemas from November 1st.
