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00:00My mother brought me to the local library in, I think, Millburn, New Jersey, and they
00:08were showing, I was five years old, and they were showing clips from the Universal Monster
00:14Films.
00:15Now, I don't remember all the details, obviously, I was five, but it must have been like Super
00:198 or 16 millimeter, like these little loops, and not loops, but they would show scenes
00:25from usually the climactic moments of these monster movies.
00:30So you had the mummy, and then you had Bela Lugosi as Dracula rising from the grave, but
00:36the one that got me was the burning windmill sequence at the end of James Whale's Frankenstein.
00:42I just remember Karloff's face in the internal mechanism of the burning windmill, and the
00:50next morning I said to my mother, I want to make movies.
00:57Okay, cool, go get married.
01:03Yes, let's get married.
01:06You asshole.
01:07Why?
01:08Don't, like, don't fucking cheese me with that shit, okay?
01:12Stop.
01:13It ain't cool.
01:14Stop, stop, stop.
01:15Annie.
01:16Yeah?
01:17Will you marry me?
01:18What?
01:19Seriously?
01:20Seriously.
01:21Uh-huh.
01:22So you want to get married to me, Vanya?
01:31You want me to be your little wifey, yeah?
01:35Yes.
01:36I just think that we had a great time together, and, uh...
01:41And I will become American, and my parents will suck my dick.
01:59Are you serious?
02:03I am serious.
02:05And I said it twice.
02:11It's the truth.
02:19Three carrots.
02:23What about four?
02:24Or five?
02:26Or six?
02:29Welcome to Behind the Lens.
02:31Today, he has made many movies, I think eight now, feature films, and the latest being
02:38being Onora, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and everyone is seeing
02:44now and loving. It's a terrific film. This is Sean Baker. Welcome to Behind the Lens.
02:50Oh, it's great to be here. Thank you very much.
02:51I remember seeing you in Cannes the day before those awards, or shortly before. You had your
02:59dog with you.
03:00Yes, I did.
03:01She ran into you in the press area up there. And little did I know that shortly you're
03:06going to win the whole thing.
03:09Little did I know as well. I wasn't expecting it.
03:12That was pretty amazing.
03:13Yeah, it was.
03:14Pretty great, right? I mean...
03:17It was my dream come true.
03:19Was it?
03:20Yeah. And I'm not embellishing there. It was literally the dream come true. So, yeah, I'm
03:28still processing it five months later.
03:30I'll bet, because they don't tell you anything. They just say, show up.
03:35Basically, yeah.
03:36You know, you're going to get something.
03:40But again, with this film, I certainly didn't expect it with this film. It's not like comedies
03:45with, you know, overt comedies win at Cannes often.
03:50But, you know, that jury was run by Greta Gerwig, who has an appreciation, I think,
03:57for comedy. Because a lot of people in the business, oh, comedy is fun and everything.
04:01They don't take it as seriously as they take serious pictures, you know?
04:05Yeah, I guess.
04:06It's a serious picture.
04:07It is. I just called it a comedy, but it actually is quite the dramedy. And to tell you the
04:12truth, I sometimes even call it a tragedy with just, you know, comic elements.
04:18I mean, I heard that you were inspired by Fellini's Nights of Cabiria.
04:22That was definitely one of the influences.
04:24That was one of them, right?
04:25Yeah. And I always... Because I consider it one of the earliest examples of, like, a truly
04:32empathetic approach to sex work in cinema. And so, yes, that film has had definitely
04:42an influence.
04:43Yeah, particularly, if you haven't seen it yet, I don't like to give away endings.
04:47But I don't think I'm giving away the ending here and talking about the human emotions
04:52that we see at the end of this movie, where we can write our own story for these characters
04:59going on, which I love endings like that. But it has a relation to Nights of Cabiria,
05:06you know?
05:07It actually does. And I can't go into it too much without having some spoilers here. But
05:14I will say that, yeah, what you just said is true. I consider endings to be the most
05:20important part of cinema storytelling. And at the same time, I really appreciate when
05:31I'm an audience member and everything isn't just spelled out for me. I have to think.
05:37Sometimes I have to even write the ending or the epilogue, you know, as an audience
05:41member. And I think because it keeps the audience engaged, it's what they're going to be talking
05:46about moments later when they're on the sidewalk with their friends. And so to me, it is intentionally
05:53left a little open-ended and also left up for interpretation.
05:58As a writer, do you write the ending first?
06:01I actually do.
06:02I know some that do that, so they know exactly where they're going rather than...
06:06I feel I have to. Because I don't want to sit down and start writing a screenplay and
06:11realizing months down the road, I don't know how to end this thing. I need...
06:15Robert Altman suffered from that with some of his films.
06:18Oh, yeah?
06:19Yeah, he always got criticized because it's the greatest movie ever made, but the ending
06:22sucks.
06:23Yeah, yeah. No, so that's very important for me to work out the, at least the beginning
06:28and the end before I sit down and start writing the screenplay.
06:31That's good. That's very organized of you.
06:33Yeah, I guess so.
06:35But it helps in the end. That's your process, as they say.
06:40Yes, that's one of my methods, I guess you could say.
06:45When people write about you, they talk about how you as a filmmaker are drawn to the fringe
06:52of society in some ways. You might call it that. Marginalized communities and people
06:58are sex workers, in the case of Onora and other films, and Tangerine and other films.
07:06Is that your mode as a filmmaker, or it just happened into it?
07:09I think that I was tackling stories that I hadn't seen tackled by Hollywood film and
07:17television as much as I would like for them to do. I think perhaps it's a reaction to
07:24what I'm not seeing enough of, or knowing that my approach might be a little bit different
07:31in terms of representation. I think it's ... I didn't truly even realize it until perhaps
07:37my fourth film. My second and third film, Take Out and Prince of Broadway, are about
07:44undocumented immigrants. They're not sex workers, but yeah, they are on the fringe, as you said.
07:53Then my fifth film ... Was it my fifth? I'm sorry, my fourth, started to get into the
08:03world of sex work. I've been on that path ever since. I think it's because of the relationships
08:13I've made within the sex work world.
08:16That's interesting. One begets another. You're just going to find more stories to tell.
08:21Exactly, because one film can't represent an entire community or microcosm or livelihood,
08:27however you want to say it. I see all of these films as individual films exploring
08:33universal themes, but applied to a specific story that is just a one-off story. For example,
08:41with Nora, I realized that I was tackling a story about this young woman who realizes
08:49a little bit too late that she married the wrong man. It's in the Russian-American community
08:54of Brighton Beach in Coney Island, Brooklyn, but I had realized I haven't explored escorting
09:01yet in my films and erotic dancing. This was my chance to explore that aspect of sex work
09:07and apply it to that community.
09:10To this story, which is such a great story. I love the setting. I love the Coney Island
09:15of it all and everything where you place it, but this whole Russian-American world that
09:23I haven't seen portrayed much in movies except as mobs or gangsters or whatever they're doing.
09:30Yeah. At first, we were thinking about a Russian gangster story. This was way back,
09:34when we first started thinking about this. This goes way back, like 15 years.
09:40You're right. I didn't want to tackle Russian gangster story just because I felt that it was
09:46a little cliche. It's been done many times and done well. I was trying to figure out how else
09:51we could tell a similar story in which somebody marries into a mob-like situation, like a married
09:59to the mob situation.
10:00Yes.
10:01This kind of thing.
10:02So when we figured out, okay, but let's have her marry the son of a Russian oligarch.
10:07There's similarities.
10:08It puts her in a similar situation, but it's not another mafia movie. That was basically
10:15our eureka moment when we figured that out.
10:18Having the wild kid, the Russian kid who's got all the money in the world, and they're
10:23away from mom and dad, and they have no control. This thing is worthy of Billy Wilder, just on
10:29its comedic level. He would love this movie, I'm telling you right now, because the way it weaves
10:36in and out. Some of it is just, I was laughing hysterically at it. I'm going like, wow, this is
10:45different.
10:46That's nice to hear. Thank you. Comedy is a big thing.
10:49You even, in what I'd seen.
10:52Yeah. I've always tried to have comedy throughout all of my films, but usually a little bit
10:59subdued or focused on behavioral comedy. Just the humor that comes from two people interacting
11:06and sometimes clashing. I love that stuff. But no, this one, we were definitely knew that we
11:13had to have more comic relief. We were telling a story that, as I said earlier, it's ultimately a
11:20tragedy, but I still want to entertain the audience. I do want to also point out the absurdity
11:27of the situations in this film. Therefore, it comes with laughs. I think that's important.
11:34Life is a balance of comedy and pathos. That's what life is. If you're making a film or telling
11:42a story about life and you leave out one of those two things, you're not being truthful.
11:48You're not being real.
11:50No, it's great. It's not stupid comedy.
11:53Oh, thank you.
11:55I'm just going to throw everything against the wall and see what lands. These are fully fleshed
11:59out characters, three-dimensional characters. Even when you're getting to the supporting roles,
12:05everybody in this, obviously, Mikey, Madison, who's your lead. She's fantastic. The Russian
12:15kid, Mark Edelstein, who plays Yvonne, is fantastic. Then Igor, you're a brilliant character.
12:24You really are rooting for this guy. You're not at first, but you watch him evolve. Then
12:29the other guy, the henchman.
12:31Yeah, the Armenians, Karin Karagulian and Bache.
12:35This is why the SAG has the ensemble category.
12:38Well, I love ensemble casts. As a director who's made, I don't know how many, what?
12:46Seven of, no, almost, I think all eight films are basically ensemble casts.
12:53It's very important for me to never have a weak link, but that's what makes a perfect
12:58ensemble cast. This one is my proudest cast. I'm so proud of this cast.
13:04I walked out of there, because I also do the awards season handicapping, and we were talking
13:10about supporting an actor. I said, let me tell you something. A Nora could fill three slots on
13:14a town. On a town.
13:15That's nice. That's nice.
13:18Worthy to do it. Down the line, you have a real eye for actors. There's no question. Is that
13:25something you've always had?
13:27Well, the actors are the most important thing. Casting is the most important thing when it
13:32comes to these sort of movies. I take on the casting responsibility, role, credit, I guess
13:41you could say. I always say the casting by credit is my proudest credit on this film.
13:50That's the truth. I was blessed.
13:53So you take that action.
13:55Yeah, I do. I do.
13:56It's controversial, because casting directors, they call them. The directors don't necessarily
14:02like that.
14:02Well, I'm sorry, but I get involved very early. Sometimes it's pre-casting before I even write
14:09my screenplay, so it's necessary. As we just said, the ensemble cast is so important to me. I want
14:19to make sure I'm handpicking every single person. And regarding the pre-casting of it, I actually
14:27cast Karin Karagulian, who plays Tauros in the film, 15 years ago when we started talking about
14:34this. And then Jure Borasif, who plays Igor, when I saw him in a Finnish film called Compartment
14:39Number Six.
14:40Which I've seen that, yeah.
14:41Wonderful movie.
14:42Classic movie, yeah.
14:43Yup, yup. Juho Kusmasen directed it. It's a wonderful movie. It was at Cannes the year I
14:47was there with Red Rocket. So I saw him on the big screen. I'd already been thinking about this
14:51Igor character, and I was like, he's our guy. And then when we got closer to, I guess you could say
14:58prep, or not even prep, because I hadn't written the screenplay yet. But I was getting close. We
15:03decided we are going to move forward with the Nora. We better start looking out for our Annie.
15:08I went to see Scream opening weekend, and that's where I saw Mikey. And I had already been so
15:14intrigued by her, from seeing her once upon a time in Hollywood. So it was just a combination
15:19of those two performances. I knew she was our Annie. I called her agent the second I stepped
15:25out of the theater. We had a meeting, and I offered her the role. And then I said, if you
15:31take this role, I'll go write the screenplay with you in mind. And that's what I did. And I have to
15:36tell you, it was really helpful as a screenwriter to have those three faces in my head as I was
15:42fleshing out the story. And so my casting is not just as we're about to go into production. It
15:49starts sometimes even years before. You had one of those great casting stories with Susannah
15:54Son from Red Rocket. Red Rocket, yeah. We were at the Arclight Cinema, which is now sadly temporarily
16:03closed. Okay, good. Good. We were in the lobby of the Arclight in Hollywood, and we were seeing a
16:09film. I think we had just come out, and we spotted Samantha Kwan, who is my wife and producer on the
16:15film. We spotted her across the lobby, and she just had that it quality. Something that said-
16:21Just like Diana Turner in the 1930s at Schwab's Drugstore. The myth is, oh, she was discovered,
16:29someone saw her. But that actually happened. Yeah. And we said, we should talk to her. There's
16:34something special about her. So we went up, and we did our spiel. And thank God I was on my
16:40sixth film at that point, because I was able to say, I made The Florida Project and Tangerine.
16:46It was harder in the past when I didn't have many credits.
16:49You said, hey, would you like to be in a movie?
16:51Yeah. Yeah. But now it's a little easier. And so she had seen both of those films. And so
16:56she was like, actually, I just came to Hollywood to pursue acting. So this is meant to be. And
17:02I said, okay. And I actually didn't even have Red Rocket in development yet. So it was almost
17:09over a year until I contacted her again. And she had almost lost faith that I would ever call her.
17:15But we did, and it all worked out. And she's been working-
17:19In that movie, too. He was certainly not known as a comedy actor or anybody that-
17:24Oh, he was known as a comedy actor. He was in a scary movie.
17:28Oh, yeah.
17:29But he hadn't been working a lot at that time. He had been doing a lot of online stuff. That's
17:38how I saw him, on Vine. Remember that app, Vine? It was like, yeah. And he was making me laugh so
17:43much. And I said, I'm going to work with this dude someday. And that's what happened. So yeah,
17:51I love my casts.
17:54As well, you should.
17:55Yeah.
17:57So, Florida Project is another one I looked at, where it's just such a simple,
18:03brilliant idea in this motel, basically, in Florida, in the shadow of Disney World. And
18:10we're looking at these people who sort of are the underdogs in life, and don't have it. And yet,
18:17there's fantasy land hovering over them. And you present these stories in a way that
18:25cinematography, everything else, it's not dark and depressing like their lives might be in other
18:31movies.
18:32Yeah. Well, I always think of it like this. If somebody came into my life and said, I want to
18:38make a film about, a narrative fiction film about your lives, I would hope that they wouldn't make
18:44it bleak and gray. And no matter how much hardship I might be going through, I don't want
18:49them to paint my life as just a colorless-
18:54I might slit your wrist sometimes watching these movies where they look at life that way.
18:58Right. And plus, we also were leaning into the fact that this summer, we wanted to see the summer
19:04through the eyes of a child. And when you're younger, your senses are stronger. Colors are
19:13brighter, and sounds are louder. And we leaned into the style intentionally because it was a
19:20children's story.
19:20Well, she was great. A great find, Brooklyn.
19:23Brooklyn Prince.
19:23Prince.
19:24Yeah. I was in Cannes at Director's Fortnight when that premiered. I went to the morning
19:29thing, and she came up in her dress, was there, and was like, oh, Star is Born.
19:33Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And she's been continuing to act. She's had a few series, and she's been
19:40doing films. It's really wonderful to see her. And directing. She's directing, too.
19:44And directing. Wow.
19:45She directed a short.
19:46How old is she?
19:47She directed a short, and I believe she's 14 right now.
19:50Oh, wow.
19:51And she also created a graphic novel, a comic book. She created a comic book. It's crazy.
19:58A little discoveries along the way. You always knew, like me, you were always into movies,
20:03I understand, from a very early age. We're lucky because we always knew what we wanted to do,
20:09I think. A lot of people think, oh, wow, you knew that at seven years old? Yeah,
20:13I had movie theaters in my room, and I was cutting out the ads and all of that. That was you, right?
20:19Yeah, it was.
20:20And all of that.
20:22Yeah, my-
20:22How did you know?
20:24My mother brought me to the local library in, I think, Milburn, New Jersey. And they were showing,
20:30I was five years old, and they were showing clips from the Universal Monster films. Now,
20:37I don't remember all the details, obviously, I was five, but it must have been a Super 8 or
20:4116 millimeter, like these little loops. And not loops, but they would show scenes from
20:48usually the climactic moments of these monster movies. So, you had The Mummy, and they had
20:54Bela Lugosi as Dracula rising from the grave. But the one that got me was the burning windmill
21:00sequence at the end of James Whale's Frankenstein. I just remember Karloff's face in the
21:06internal mechanism of the burning windmill. And the next morning I said to my mother,
21:12I want to make movies. So, it was that, that's when it happened. And then I did the cliche route
21:19of making my Super 8 movies, my home movies, and then graduating to VHS, and hoping to go
21:25to film school at some point, and I did. So, that route.
21:28You followed the path and were successful about it.
21:33Not everybody is in doing that and being able to transfer that. I like with Tangerine,
21:38you were positively innovative, I think, using the iPhone and the way you shot that.
21:45Thanks.
21:45All kinds of things, you're constantly experimenting in ways to shoot these pictures.
21:50Well, I think cinema is always evolving, and it's good for filmmakers to try new things.
21:56I have to be honest, though, with Tangerine, it did come from a budgetary constraint.
22:03I thought after making a film called Starlet, that I was going to have, that I was going to,
22:09that was going to be my breakout, meaning I was going to be able to easily find a
22:13financier for my next film. It didn't happen. So, Mark Duplass, Mark and Jay Duplass,
22:21were nice enough to reach out to me and offer me a certain amount of money, and it was small.
22:28It was actually a much smaller, much less money than I had on my previous film,
22:32but the opportunity was there, and I said, okay, I move forward with it.
22:37But there wasn't enough money to shoot on even the cameras that were probably being shot on now.
22:42I mean, like, no, I said, the only way to do this is if I shoot on something that I already have,
22:49and what do I have? An iPhone. And it was just at that time where the iPhone had jumped from
22:53version, or the model 5 to the 5S, where it became HD. And there were some third-party,
23:01there was an app and an anamorphic lens that a third party had made for the iPhone. So,
23:06it was just the right year for it. And I went ahead and made Tangerine. We got into Sundance,
23:13and I honestly was expecting about 20 films that year to be shot on the iPhone, because it just
23:19seemed, why not? The tools were now available to everybody, but we were the only ones. And I think
23:24we made a splash because of it. It became, it wasn't meant as a stunt, but it kind of worked
23:31as a stunt. No, it was, it became a story, you know, on its own, you know, that you were able
23:38to do that. But that's what, in the history of movies, it's always, you know, Orson Welles with
23:43Citizen Kane, trying something new, other than just doing the same old thing over and over and
23:49over again. That's not, movies aren't going to advance. Exactly. And at the same time, though,
23:55I am trying to be an advocate for celluloid. You know, I've shot, yeah, my last three films have
24:01been shot on film, 35, 16, and 35 again, because I've had the budget to do it. And I do appreciate
24:08the aesthetic look of film over anything else. And it's like, if you're going to, a lot of films
24:13these days are being shot digitally, but trying to look like film. And I really don't understand
24:17that. I mean, I understand that, yes, film is a little more expensive. But for me, you either
24:24shoot on film, or if you're shooting digitally, shoot on something very different. Shoot on
24:28something that doesn't look like film, like the iPhone or some other prosumer camera or something
24:35that really can do something that film can't, you know, if you shoot on the iPhone, you can take
24:40this little iPhone and put it into corners and get shots that you would never be able to do with
24:45a big 35 millimeter camera to take advantage of that. That's how, that's what I like to,
24:51when I give advice to like up and coming filmmakers, that's what I say. I mean,
24:55like you either shoot on film or shoot on something so different in the digital world.
24:59So are we ever going to see you move into the major studio kind of movies?
25:05I don't really see the need to, meaning that I am very lucky to be in a place right now where
25:13I'm able to make the type of movies I want to make the way I want to make them. You know,
25:17it's very, I don't even know if my, if the scripper and Nora would get past one stage
25:22of notes from the studio, right? I mean, look at the subject matter. It's a little,
25:26yeah. And so I've been lucky enough to be here. And I think that the Pomodoro has really helped
25:34me stay here in this lane without hearing a lot of the noise. You know, I, I, I have been seduced
25:40many, almost seduced many times, but yeah. And it's only been fate that has gotten in the way
25:45of me taking on a big series or something like that. Yeah. But now I'm here and I'm like, okay,
25:51I can stay in my lane without here, without the resistance. Yeah. Yeah.
25:55Well, I hope you do. Yeah. Thanks.
25:59As a film critic, you know, you see so many things that are just so derivative
26:04that's what people are going to. And so when you make a movie like this and you watch
26:08incrementally, the grosses go up week after week, that means people are telling their friends
26:13and they're seeing something we're seeing. And then these movies can continue to get made.
26:18Yeah. I, it's it's real. It's been wonderful to see, to, to, to feel this word of mouth that's
26:25been happening with the Nora people are, the word is spreading. And I, and I think it's because,
26:31you know, um, I think audiences are, are happy to see this sort of movie in theaters again.
26:37I mean, if it's a, it's definitely a theatrical experience. You want to share it with people.
26:42That's what I've been hearing. And I haven't seen an audiences seem to be, you know, they're,
26:48they're laughing. The energy is there in the room. It's a very, uh, it's a communal experience,
26:54you know, and, and people are, I think, enjoying seeing it with a crowd. Yeah.
27:00It's great. Yeah. And the posters are great too. Oh, uh, I think I'll board up going down
27:05La Cienega. I saw it and you know, it's eye popping. It is, it's, it's some provocative
27:11imagery and Neon has been wonderful. I mean, they really understood my vision for the film and even
27:17how I would like to sell the film because the film does harken back to films of the seventies,
27:22you know, um, sometimes, sometimes, uh, using the imagery from like the sexploitation films
27:29of that time. And, um, yeah, it's incredible to see what billboards all around town. Yeah.
27:36Um, it's working. Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us on behind the lens.
27:40Thank you very much. It's been wonderful. Thanks.