Upstairs at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, Sean Baker is talking shop with veteran projectionist Ivan Rothberg as he’s threading the fifth reel of “Anora,” Baker’s Oscar-nominated crowd-pleaser that won top honors from the directors and producers guilds over the weekend.
Looking out the booth’s window onto the sold-out theater’s screen, we see that Igor (Yura Borisov) has just handed a red scarf to Ani (Mikey Madison) to buffer the frigid night air, so we have some time before Ani’s journey ends. We head to a tiny office around the corner where Baker plops down next to his wife and producing partner, Samantha Quan, and fellow producer Alex Coco. We’re surrounded by shelves stacked with boxes of Red Vines, Kit Kats and sparkling water. Quan grabs a pack of Cheez-Its. You take sustenance where you find it.
It’s been more than 48 hours since “Anora” swept top prizes at the Directors Guild of America and Producers Guild of America awards, and they still can’t believe it happened.
“When we got to the producers, I was just shut down for the night,” Baker says, noting the stress that came with winning the DGA and having to make a speech he wasn’t at all prepared to deliver. He won the DGA prize at 9 p.m., posed for pictures and then hopped in a car for the mile-long trip from Beverly Hills to Century City for the final moments of the PGA ceremony. “It was extremely weird to hear them call out ‘Anora.’”
From left, moderator Jim Hemphill, writer-director Sean Baker, co-producer Samantha Quan and co-producer Alex Coco, speaking after Tuesday’s Aero screening of “Anora.”
(Kay Qiao / American Cinematheque at Aero Theatre)
“I thought we were going to blank the whole weekend,” producer Coco says. Referring to the Critics Choice Awards held Friday, he adds, “I figured it we didn’t win there, that’s our obituary.”
“I didn’t think of it that way,” Baker says, “because I don’t really know the game that well. People are telling me now that we’re actually in the conversation again because of these wins. See, I didn’t know these wins would get us back into the conversation.”
But then Baker, two weeks shy of his 54th birthday, never expected to be in the awards conversation in the first place. Adept at making movies illuminating the underrepresented, Baker broke through in 2015 with “Tangerine,” the micro-budgeted tale of two trans sex workers working at the seedy intersection of Santa Monica and Highland in Hollywood. Baker famously shot the movie on iPhone 5s.
He followed that two years later with “The Florida Project,” another look at people on the margins, in this case, the residents of a rundown motel in the shadow of Disney World. Willem Dafoe, playing the motel’s beleaguered manager, earned the movie’s only Oscar nomination.
“I thought, ‘OK, I don’t think I’m going to get any more higher-brow than ‘The Florida Project,’” Baker says. “Like, that’s the top of my brow there. So if they’re not into that, if I’m scaring people off with that, then I’m not meant for this world.”
Mikey Madison and Mark Eydelshteyn in the movie “Anora.”
(Neon)
Baker followed “The Florida Project” with “Red Rocket,” again mixing hilarity, honesty and heartbreak in its story of a middle-aged porn star fleeing Los Angeles for his small Texas hometown. And then came “Anora,” the fractured fairy tale about a Brooklyn sex worker’s heady and, ultimately, devastating relationship with the son of a Russian oligarch.
“There was not one moment when we were making ‘Anora’ that I was like, ‘I’m doing this for a mainstream audience,’” Baker says. “To tell you the truth, it was very like, ‘I’m making this for the people who like my crazy stuff. I’m making this for the people who like “Red Rocket.” I’m going to be giving it to them.’”
“Except for when we were leaving for Cannes and you said, ‘This is going to be a nice relaxing trip,’” Quan reminds him, teasing. “You thought it was too commercial, so it wasn’t going to win anything.”
“I also thought it was too funny,” Baker replies. “Historically, comedies haven’t won too many awards there.”
“Anora” ended up taking the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. And Baker finds himself nominated for four Oscars, as a producer, director, writer and editor.
Which raises the question: Why, out of all of Baker’s films, is “Anora” the one that’s connecting with moviegoers and awards voters?
Baker shrugs his shoulders. “It’s very difficult to say. Maybe it’ll take a few years where you can look back at an era and have perspective on what was going on, culturally and politically.”
Coco thinks people are responding to the title character. Quan offers that it might be the “strange family” that forms between the film’s characters, all of whom are recognizable and human.
“And they’re all of a similar class,” Coco says, “all beholden to this family that has all the money. They’re trying to survive that.”
When Baker won the Palme d’Or, he shared a stage with George Lucas, one of his many heroes whom he has met the past few months, a list that includes Pedro Almodóvar and Christopher Nolan, the latter who presented him with the DGA award.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Baker says, noting how much he appreciates Nolan’s movies and work in film preservation. “So when I went up there, I was thinking I was definitely going to try to make him happy and talk about theatrical windows and shooting on film.” We all laugh. He turns to Quan. “Was he smiling back there?” She assures him he was.
Baker, left, speaks with fans after the screening.
(Kay Qiao / American Cinematheque at Aero Theatre)
Baker met another one of his idols a few days ago when he picked up the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Assn.‘s best picture award on the night that the group honored John Carpenter’s career. He didn’t know Carpenter would be there and Quan says her husband was “freaking out.”
“I’m never fully informing myself, so I didn’t know he was getting the career honor that night,” Baker says. “He’s such a hero. I still have the ‘Escape From New York’ poster on my wall. I had ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ above my bed in seventh and eighth grade. And, of course, ‘The Thing’ means so much to me.”
When the evening ended, Baker approached Carpenter and asked for a photo. The two posed together, giddily making metal signs with their fingers. If it’s not Baker’s most cherished moment from the past few months, it’s high on the list.
When I suggest that “Anora’s” ending, a perfect, ambiguous moment of release for its title character, might be another reason for its appeal, Baker circles back to Carpenter, saying he wished he had mentioned that aspect of the genre master’s filmmaking. Carpenter had a way with ambiguous endings.
“He taught me that,” Baker says. “All of my favorite movies have open endings. You’re putting the audience in an uncomfortable place where they’re asked to do the work. But too bad. It’s like, ‘I’m trying respect you guys. I know you can do it.’”
The night they won the DGA and PGA honors, Coco headed to Akbar in Silver Lake with some friends. Baker and Quan went straight home to bed. The director had an early morning photo shoot he was leading the next day for W Magazine.
“I was buzzing,” Baker says. “It was hard to settle down.”
So how did you go to sleep?
Quan looks at me like I’m a child. She closes her eyes and mimes her head hitting a pillow. “I gotta to go to sleep. If I don’t, I’m dead.”
“We’re trained to do that,” Baker says. “My brain is like, ‘If you don’t fall asleep, there’s going to be a domino effect.”
This ability will come in handy over weekend. Baker will be traveling to San Francisco Thursday for an academy screening of “Anora,” then to New York Saturday for the Writers Guild Awards and finally to London the next day for the British Academy Film Awards — though, apparently, much of this is news to Baker. (Remember that earlier comment about “never fully informing” himself?)
“Wait a minute,” he says, looking at Quan and Coco. “I’m doing WGA?”
“Yes, Saturday,” Coco tells him. “Then BAFTA Sunday.”
Baker slumps in his seat and starts laughing. Or is he weeping?
“Oh, God! Oh, God!” he says. He’s editing a movie he produced and co-wrote with Taiwanese filmmaker Tsou Shih-Ching titled “Left-Handed Girl,” and they’re trying to finish to make festival deadlines.
“I have like another 10 days,” he says, shaking his head.
“He’s had another 10 days for like 100 days,” Coco tells me.
“No, this is really pushing it,” Baker says. “It’s incredibly scary.”
This is scary? What about the Oscars?
“Well, one step at a time,” Baker says.
Rothberg doesn’t have any more reels to change. It’s time to head down to the theater for the Q&A. “Anora’s” journey is almost at an end.