Mr. Baker, how has your process of filmmaking changed over the last 20 years?
I try to keep it the same! I try to keep it small, I try to keep us always in a sort of guerilla, indie, shoot from the hip sort of mentality, keeping open to serendipity and happy accidents. The only way to do that is to be controlled — you have a job to do, and you're spending people's money, and you have a limited amount of time — but you can't be too controlled. So what I always like to say is: you control 90 percent but then you leave 10 percent up to the film gods, because those happy accidents are what make these movies. You have to be open to real life! You try for minimal lighting, you try for real location, you take the actors and you throw them into real life and see what happens. I try my best to retain that.
Does that indie mentality get harder to maintain when your success in this industry increases?
It does get harder because I'm a higher profile now. It's a little bit harder. But I also work with an incredible crew that really understands that sort of DIY filmmaking and wanting to stay on the fringe and and stay out of the Hollywood machine. These are lessons I learned from Jim Jarmusch! You don't have to apply everything film school taught you. That’s just one way to do this. There's not only one way of making a film, anybody can make a film, and there's a million different ways of doing it. We try to mix it up and break the rules.
“I have to take baby steps, and that’s what I’ve been doing. I have started to lean more into comedy, allowing more absurd moments... Now I can play with different tones and genres.”
Would breaking the rules also mean potentially shifting to a completely different kind of filmmaking, like a big studio production or an action film?
I would like to take a swing at action, sure! But it’s also baby steps, you know? I don't want to, suddenly, tomorrow, deliver a sci-fi epic that takes place on another planet. It would be shocking to my fans — and to me too. So I have to take baby steps, and that's what I've been doing. If you watch the last five films I've made, they have actually started to lean more into comedy, allowing more absurd moments, they’re slightly elevated above reality, where I used to be incredibly grounded in reality. Now I can play with different tones and genres. So I'm continuing to do that. I guess let's see what happens on the next one.
Do you have any future ideas brewing now? Or are you the type of filmmaker who has to fully complete a project before embarking on the next one?
I can't creatively juggle. So once I decide what's happening with one project, then I can't think of anything else. I’ve got some ideas from my back burner, but this past while, I’ve needed to focus on putting Anora out into the world… But soon I’ll start on my new process, which usually requires some research, and I'm going to have to take a few months to go to a location and see if there's a story there, see if I connect with the community.
Connecting with the community seems like an integral part of your process, at least where Anora was concerned.
With Anora, the film centers around Brooklyn, neighborhoods like Brighton Beach and Coney Island, which are visually very exciting. People have been shooting in Coney Island forever. Many filmmakers have done it, so it was a challenge of mine to try to capture that world in a slightly different way than filmmakers like Walter Hill or James Gray have. That area is really culturally rich and exciting, it’s this pocket far outside of Manhattan, that has a very rich community of Slavic people; Russian Ukrainian, Georgian, Uzbek. It's very culturally rich. You walk up and down Brighton Beach Boulevard, and you don't really hear a lot of English, it’s mostly Russian. It's a community that has retained its cultural heritage, and I love that and wanted to highlight that. I didn’t want to tell the typical Russian gangster story.
I really appreciate that you try to break out of some of those tropes.
Yeah, I just thought that was a little too overdone, and I'm trying to break a lot of stereotypes with my films! The last thing I wanted to do is put Russians in yet another mafia film. I also wanted to put my young female protagonist, a sex worker called Anora played by Mikey Madison, in this situation, because one of the seeds of the first idea I had was based on some stories I had heard about young women being held for collateral because their husbands owed money to the mafia, and starting to realize that they may have married the wrong man. So we kind of flipped that on its head: we had that idea that she can marry into a rich family.
“It was just surreal. It took me a while to realize what winning the Palme d’Or has done for me — but it’s allowing me to make the type of films I want to make, the way I want to make them.”
You also have always been fond of telling stories of sex workers in a very un-cliched way, ever since your 2012 film Starlet.
My interest in this topic stemmed from Starlet. That was my first film in which I covered an aspect of sex work, and while I was doing it, I got to know sex workers and heard their stories and saw that everybody is an individual, that not one single film can represent all of sex work. So I realized I could keep telling these stories, and they would be hopefully unique and fresh, and say something new, that they would bring something new to the subject. One film led to the next, which led to the next. I honestly did not think I would have made five films in a row covering this subject matter… It just happened to turn out that way.
What does your research process look like for this kind of storytelling?
Each film is different. For Anora, I had to really do research on what it was like to be an escort and a dancer, especially at a lap dance club, which is this whole new wave of gentlemen's clubs that are very different from what we saw in Hustlers, or Zola, or Show Girls. Andrea Warehn was our chief consultant, she wrote a memoir called Modern Whore, which focused on her life as an escort and dancer, so we could apply a lot of those details, Mikey and Andrea were able to really collaborate via Zoom. Andrea read my screenplay and gave me notes, told me what was accurate, what wasn't, and what details I should apply or should add. So it was really wonderful. And then with the dancers, we worked with a lot of dancers, and a lot of actors in the film are actors slash dancers. That was incredibly invaluable for us.
The reception to this film has been incredible. Were you surprised at how much the story resonated?
I didn't expect it! You know, I never thought this film would win the Palme d’Or because it's almost an overt comedy on the surface. But that moment was my dream come true, and suddenly it's happening, and I'm up on stage, and the cherry on top is that George Lucas was the one presenting me with the award. And I think any filmmaker my age is pretty much making films because of him so it was just surreal. It took me a while to realize what winning the Palme d’Or has done for me — but it’s allowing me to make the type of films I want to make, the way I want to make them. So it's allowing me to stay on this course.