Sean Baker on Wanting to Direct an Erotic Film and Winning the Palme d’Or: ‘I’m Not Looking For it to Get Me a Marvel Film’

After realizing his dream of winning the Palme d’Or for “Anora,” what is next for Sean Baker? Maybe an erotic film, but certainly not a major studio project. 

Speaking at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, the latest stop for his Cannes breakout title, the director said winning the prize will “allow me to continue to make the films I want to make in the way I want to make them and continue getting budgets along the size of ‘Anora.’ It puts me in the place where I want to be. I’m not looking for it to get me a Marvel film or to open doors with studios. That is certainly not my intention.”

Despite “Anora” being yet another entry to Baker’s canon of stories about sex work — which includes films such as “Red Rocket” and “Tangerine” — the director is reluctant to say his movies are about sex. “I am definitely interested in sex but haven’t had the opportunity to make a sex movie yet. I made sex work movies — films about labor. Perhaps you can get turned on by them, but that’s not the main goal.”

“Someday, I’d love to make an erotic film where the intention is to turn the audience on, but now the interest is to show how sex is involved in actual livelihood,” he added.

While Baker is arguably in one of the greatest moments of his career, he still finds making films in the U.S. “very difficult,” emphasizing that his work still possesses “little commercial value” despite reaching great critical acclaim. “I don’t think about casting A-list actors. My films may have an A-Lister or a neighbor I thought was appropriate for the role.”

Casting is key to Baker, who is now responsible for choosing the actors for all his films alongside his wife and producer Samantha Quan. “Casting is the number one thing. It will make or break your movie,” he said, adding that he and Quan are constantly scouring through contemporary titles with an eye out for new talent while also relying on street and Instagram casting. “It is the credit I am most proud of,” he said.  

Baker had toyed with the idea of making a film about the Russian American community in Brooklyn for years, but it was only when he watched Mikey Madison in “Scream” that he knew the film in question was “Anora.” Madison would come to join “Compartment Number 6” breakout Yuriy Borisov and Baker’s longtime friend Karren Karagulian early in the project’s development stage, with Baker then taking six months to write the film specifically with the three actors in mind. 

While breaking down the making of “Anora,” Baker stressed the importance of playing with the audience’s expectations of his characters. “In my films, usually about an hour in, there is a twist of some sort that makes you reevaluate the character entirely, and that’s very important because you want to keep the audience engaged. And isn’t it fun to break stereotypes? Not everybody is what you think they are and it’s nice to have the audience connecting to characters they never expected to, people whose livelihoods are so different from theirs. That, to me, is the key to a good story.”

When discussing politics, the director brought up the reactions to “The Florida Project,” highlighting how American audiences had extremely different visions of the film’s main character, a single mother raising her six-year-old daughter in a Florida motel. “In the States, our media can be extremely partisan, and I had people with extremely opposing views on the mother. It was incredible to see that play out. Democracy Now liked [the film], and so did Ben Shapiro,” he said. 

Speaking to a mostly Spanish audience, the “Tangerine” director praised the country’s filmmakers at length, including Eloy de la Iglesia and JA Bayona, whose “Society of the Snow” was Baker’s favorite film of 2023. Of all Spaniards, however, it is recent Venice Golden Lion winner Pedro Almodóvar whose work is perhaps most pivotal to the American filmmaker. 

“Sometimes I try to push the envelope, but [Almodóvar] already did it. He gave me permission to go to places I probably wouldn’t go. Going into NYU, I didn’t have as much knowledge of world cinema. ‘Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!’ came out that year and you can see its influence in ‘Anora.’ I think Almodóvar has seen the film. I hear he likes it,” the filmmaker concluded with a grin. 

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