‘Red Rocket’ Director Sean Baker On His Indie Career And The Stress Of Stretching A Budget During COVID: “All That Manic Energy, Somehow, Was Captured”
Sean Baker used to be the indie world’s best-kept secret, until 2017’s The Florida Project—a study of a struggling single mom in the shadow of Disney World—took the director first to Cannes and later to the Oscars, after Willem Dafoe was nominated for his role as a kind-hearted motel janitor. The career boost was short-lived; as Baker prepared to shoot a passion project about drug activism, the COVID pandemic forced him to pivot to something smaller—much smaller. Ironically, the result, Red Rocket, is one of his best-received films to date, telling the story of hustler Mikey Saber (Simon Rex), who returns to his ex-wife in Texas and obsesses over the teenage jailbait, Strawberry, who works in the local donut shop. Here, he discusses his 20-year journey…