Q&A: Director Sean Baker and the cast of ‘Red Rocket’

This Q&A was conducted following the Houston Cinema Arts Festival’s opening night screening of “Red Rocket” by Houston Cinema Arts Society Artistic Director Jessica Green. The panel featured Director Sean Baker, Producer Samantha Quan, Actresses Bree Elrod and Brittany Rodriguez, and Actor Ethan Darbone. This Q&A has been edited for length.

Jessica Green: Tell us how ‘Red Rocket’, the idea for it, the script, the notion, where did it come from? How did this come to be?

Sean Baker: My co-screenwriter and I, his name is Chris Bergoch. We were doing research on an earlier film that we made before ‘Tangerine’ called ‘Starlet’ where we were doing research in the adult film world and we came across a handful of men like Mikey Saber. There was like a certain archetype, and we actually realized there was a term applied to these guys, a “suitcase pimp” and so while we were making ‘Starlet’ we always said that doing a character study of one of these guys is a whole other film that we someday want to tackle. Years went by, we were working on another film that got killed because of COVID and we took ‘Red Rocket’ off the backburner just because it was small enough to be able to be tackled during COVID, and that’s really how it happened.

Jessica Green: Why is it important that this is happening in Houston? Why is this screening important to you?

Bree Elrod: I felt like it was such a privilege and a gift to be able to work in Texas City with the people that we met there, and it was such a wonderful and warm community and so of the festivals that we’ve been to, this is the one I was looking forward to the most because it’s like the hometown screening, so this really just means so much to me that I felt so welcomed into the community and I felt like because of that I was able to dive more fully into Lexi’s world.

Jessica Green: How did you and Simon Rex work together on creating a backstory? Everything isn’t spelled out, but you really get a sense of what the history of these characters is.

Bree Elrod: A lot of it was in the script and a lot of Sean brought to us about people he had talked to, who were in the industry, couples who get into the industry together and the backstory of them being teenagers in this town and going to LA and getting into the porn world together and what that all entailed and I think that we just kind of built from that, and so there was already a pretty firm foundation and then when we got on set we just had a really fun time playing and he’s such a playful actor and so we enjoyed finding that together. I think there are little beautiful moments that are not quite explained like when he wakes up and he sees the photograph of her son and he’s obviously affected by that and you’re not sure why, there’s something that’s happened between them that we don’t know all the answers to and that was kind of fun to explore.

Jessica Green: How much of that is you on the screen? How much of those characters are you and how much of them are characters?

Brittany Rodriguez: So for me, a lot of things were already on the script, but it was very playful. So a lot of times we would go over what was in the script and we’ll do a couple of takes and if it was something that I didn’t feel like rolled off my tongue too well and they could kind of see that, they would just stop me and be like “how would you say that?”, so I had had several moments where I was able to be like “this how I would say that”. I know one towards the end, it was like “Mom’s gonna kill me” but I don’t really say “mom” and stuff, that’s weird. For me it’s like “mama”, like “my mama”, so that’s an example. Or even just in the body action, I guess you could say that was kind of myself.

Ethan Darbone: For me it was just me being a person, not that Sean wanted to be but there were several moments when we were filming the movie where Sean would be like “okay, how would you say this?” and I’d be like “I would never say that.” So it was a lot of, I wouldn’t say improvisation but it was a lot of like understanding the culture that we live in here in southeast Texas. I mean, growing up here is a lot different than growing up in LA or growing up in provinces around the world. I just got back from my honeymoon in Georgia and it’s a whole other fuckin’ planet over there. I don’t even want to talk about it. So, it’s just understanding like he understood when he grabbed us from what we were doing. He found Brittany walking her dog, he found me at work. I was literally cooking at work and he walked up and was like “I want to talk to you about something”. It’s just one of those things, he understood us and he worked with us. At every moment of the movie, he would do the scene and then he would go ok, just do you, just be you, and he took a lot of that into the movie. That is one of the things that I respect about the movie, because there’s only a couple of people who have ever done anything like this before in the movie. I mean, I was flipping a fuckin’ hamburger man.   

Sean Baker: I am blessed with the most incredible cast. It’s just this like incredible thing to meet people who not only have this aura that they’re putting out, I’m talking like the first-timers who I see, they have this ‘it’ thing, then all of the sudden I learn they also have this amazing ability at you know, not just incredible performances, but the ability to do comic improvisation. Everyone was so funny and brought so many great lines to this film.

Jessica Green: Is there more acting in either of your futures?

Ethan Darbone: Actually, I want to say something. In 6 weeks, I have a podcast coming out called ‘The Donut Shop Murders’. It’s about a Texas family, I play Carl Taylor, the head of it, and I was found because of Sean, because of this movie. Right after we got done filming the movie, I started recording for that, so it’s going to come out.

Brittany Rodriguez: I definitely see more acting in my future.

Sean Baker: I have worked with a lot of first-timers, and I know when first-timers are ready to take it to the next level and these two are ready to go. They were incredibly professional on set to where you could just see that they had it. They understand. That’s rare, and so you know with Brittany and Ethan they were ready to go.

Samantha Quan: There’s also a lot of people in the audience today who were actors in it and crew and we are so happy they’re here today. 

[The people involved with the film in the audience stand, the audience claps for them].

Jessica Green: What was it like making this movie with so much local cast and crew, making such a locally made movie here?

Samantha Quan: We were super lucky because everyone was so open, and genuine and willing to participate. There were only ten of us in terms of crew in general, and everyone else we pulled from the community and they were so willing to participate, they were so nice, so open and generous and we had the most amazing time shooting in Texas. We are so happy to be here and so happy to have you all here.

Jessica Green: I have one last question for Sean and then I’ll open it up to audience questions. You have throughout your career depicted sex work in very non-judgmental and nuanced ways, and in this movie, this guy is kind of a prick. So how do you find that balance between representing the prick side of his character but also representing the sex industry in this way that is non-judgmental?

Sean Baker: We went into it knowing we were focusing on one very small archetype within the adult film world, and that it could come across as a slam on the adult film world altogether and I know people from that world and I don’t want to do that, I want to be respectful and so we actually had five consultants on the film, four of them from the adult film industry and one sex worker from outside of the adult film world. They read the script, they gave us notes, where most of the notes came from, which was interesting, and they were invaluable in the way that Mikey rants and the way he was talking about the other women who left the industry. They were very particular about how we represented them and just getting the thumbs up that this didn’t come across in a derogatory way towards the entire industry.

Jessica Green: I think it’s incredible the way you’ve been able to do that through so many of your films, to really represent sex work in this non-judgmental and nuanced way.

Sean Baker: It’s important. Such stigma is applied to sex work and I am hoping that with these films, little by little that it helps chip away at that stigma.

Audience Question #1: Sean, you’re editing the movie, so can you just talk about that process for a bit. Are you there in that room by yourself? Do you have collaborators in that space with you?

Sean Baker: I torture Samantha, she’s my wife. I try not to live at night but normally it happens where I just edit all night and then sleep during the day. The process is actually kind of unconventional. I do a fine cut from the beginning of the film, so I don’t move on to the next scene until I am happy with that scene. Totally sound designed, even if I have an effect in there, I won’t move on until I pretty much have a fine cut by the end of the process. Then it’s just going back and maybe tweaking this and that, but I am pretty happy with that initial cut. I hope I answered that. And I go crazy and I go insane. My chihuahua are my AEs.

Audience Question 2: Sean, I noticed the filmic pro logo at the end of the film, did you shoot the rollercoaster scene with the iPhone?  

Sean Baker: No, that was sixteen, and Chris Hill had that 16mm camera mounted. Pretty incredible and scary. The filmic pro stuff was the iPhone footage which was essentially just all of the news footage, the lawyer talking and that stuff.

Audience Question 3: I was curious how you picked your two main characters and also where the story began, how you picked the story.

Sean Baker: With Simon Rex, who plays Mikey, we’re about the same age and I’ve watched his career over the years and I’ve always been entertained by him and I never understood why he hasn’t been given a meatier role. And when we first thought of ‘Red Rocket’, we thought of Simon and it was like, if we ever make this movie it’s gonna be Simon. Then we forgot about it for a few years and then you know, six years later we gave him a call.

Bree Elrod: It was during the pandemic and I was doing a play that had been shut down due to COVID, so I was having an existential crisis about maybe I should just, I don’t know. And I got a call from Sammy, Sammy and I went to NYU grad acting together and we met there. She said she was working on a project and that she and Sean were working out and that she dropped a barbell and thought “I think I know who could do this, I think I know” and she’s like “so I had to call you” and I said ‘Okay, well what is the part?’ and she said ‘she’s a heroin addicted former porn star, and I said ‘yes, Sammy, yes. That sounds right.’ So she gave me a monologue that I worked on and then I submitted it to them, self-taped. I just did it myself.

Sean Baker: I saw that tape and I was like ‘we got Lexi. All good.’ They were so wonderful together from day one, I had them rehearse when Simon came into town and I just saw in that first hour, they were doing that first scene at the door when they were talking outside the house, and they were nailing it from day one. I knew they understood the characters, there was just maybe a few tweaks. I already knew at that moment that I could rely on them to really have my back. Because you know, again, we were working with a lot of first-timers and Simon and Bree were just so great about helping first-timers, being there for them, it was a wonderful experience.

Sean Baker: Samantha and I were seeing a film at the Arclight Hollywood, and Suzy was walking in as we were leaving and we saw her across the lobby and she had that thing, she had that ‘it’ quality that thing that I saw in these two [gestures to Ethan and Brittany]. We approached her and we said we street cast, we don’t have anything right now but let’s exchange information. She knew about ‘The Florida Project’ which helped, and didn’t make it so creepy. Then, two years later when ‘Red Rocket’ came up we were like ‘Suzy should play strawberry’ and we gave her a call and she was like ‘I’ve been waiting two freakin’ years for your call,’ and she is so great as you can see, and she’s the reason the NSYNC song is in the film. Because we discovered that she was a musician and could sing and taught piano and we were like ‘well we’re going to display that wonderful talent in the film’ so then we had to figure out a song and that led us to NSYNC. So, we have a wonderful cast.

Audience Question #4: What about the mom?

Sean Baker: Oh yeah, she couldn’t make it tonight, and we’re so upset. She is from Texas City, and she is incredible. We found her in a very unique way, but she came on board enthusiastic, gave an incredible performance, and was so sweet. She helped us in a consulting way as well, telling us about Texas City, the history of Texas City, her history. Just absolutely incredible, she was such a delight. I wish she could’ve been here tonight. 

Audience Question #5: Sean, what are your top five favorite films of all time, and do you think any of them have informed your filmmaking in a specific way?

Sean Baker: I can’t go through my top five, look up my letterboxd account, every once in a while I put up my new top five because they change, you know. I’ll answer the second part. For this film specifically, it was actually Drew Daniels, my wonderful cinematographer, who brought ‘Sugarland Express’ to my attention. I hadn’t seen it in 30 years, and he said you know the way that Vilmos Zsigmond and Spielberg shot this area of Houston, you should really look at it and absorb it, and I fell back in love with it and I think you can see that in the film. You know, those lateral driving shots, and some of the framing, it was definitely winking. Over the years there have definitely been different movements, different films and different filmmakers that have had major impacts. I got to have dinner with Richard Linklater the other night in Austin, and I finally got to tell him this. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think I would be making independent films, I would still be in films. I was already on my way with that but ‘Slacker’ made such a big impression and the way that he approached independent film, you know, means everything to me.

 

“Red Rocket” is in theaters now.