Talking Red Rocket With A Sean Baker Hater
A conversation between The Film Mufti and I about Red Rocket and how it is his best film, according to him (although that's not saying much).
A lot have been said about Red Rocket. Actually, not a lot have been said. It has typically won the glowing plaudits from critics, but has missed out a lot on awards season, primarily a shot at Best Actor for Simon Rex, a former MTV VJ and Scary Movie alumni. For me, I thought it would be best to discuss this with Sean Baker’s 325194th biggest fan The Film Mufti, whose musings on film I have recommended before. If you haven’t heard of him, I am recommending again that you should check him out. He wrote the biggest screeds on his previous efforts The Florida Project and Tangerine. I asked if he would be willing to watch another Sean Baker flick and hash it out for this newsletter. Needless to say, it was pretty cathartic for both of us.
Enjoy!
LoT: I have a controversial opinion about Sean Baker, the guy behind Red Rocket. I think Sean Baker is a decent human being. I haven't met the guy in person, nor have I ever interacted with him on social media. But considering his movies, which are about the underclass featuring people making really objectionable lifestyles, I sense a growing backlash made against him, based on his surprising Twitter likes so that you can't enjoy his films anymore. Since you are the biggest Sean Baker hater that I know, do you think that's likely to happen? But before you answer that question, why are you the biggest Sean Baker hater that I know?
The Film Mufti: Well, first of all, I don’t hate *Sean Baker*. Who knows, I might get along with him really well in person—at least until he read my reviews of his work. I don’t know the chap. I hate his *movies*. Tangerine and The Florida Project were two of the most torturous, excruciating filmgoing experiences of my entire life. Tangerine especially I find deficient in almost every aspect we associate with moviemaking craft—acting, writing, basic blocking and composition, photography… But I don’t want to rehash everything here, since I’ve written very detailed explanations on Letterboxd explaining why they don’t work for me, and received the lowest grade possible. But… what’s the deal with his Twitter likes? I’m guessing people have a problem with him liking tweets that haven’t been approved by the left-of-centre chattering classes? Well, maybe this will lead some audiences to reassess his last three films, which to me read vaguely like paranoid right-wing fantasies.
LoT: I do agree that whatever he likes on Twitter is his own business and not a confectionary for outrage that only our current movie culture feeds. But on that note, Baker is a politically weird filmmaker; his films centre around people on the fringes of society (Tangerine; transgendered sex workers, Starlets; sex workers and The Florida Project, single mother welfare queens). It also has a bit of an on-ya-bootstraps streak, which is pretty apparent in The Florida Project, so I can see why it has that interpretation. In fact, there's a glowing review in National Review, a conservative magazine, that says it affirms the idea that bad behaviour leads to poverty. Baker doesn't see any of these characters as victims unable to lift themselves up. But for you, you see a sense of exploitation that these films don't deserve.
The Film Mufti: Yes, you’re right of course—‘paranoid’ is not the right word. That’s just hyperbole on my part. I admit that some of my rhetoric about Baker is coloured by how liberal critics respond to him—which, not to put too fine a point on it, I’d describe as ‘fawning.’ He gets points for making movies about marginalised people, but is anyone listening to what he’s saying about them? Is he saying anything? That might be why his films read as ‘politically weird’ to you; even they don’t seem to know what they’re about. I’ve gone on record as saying I don’t believe that Baker has a point of view about any of his subjects, but that might be giving him the benefit of the doubt. You’ve already mentioned The Florida Project, which might as well be titled Every Negative Stereotype About Poor People: The Movie. (I can see Roman Roy from Succession watching it on a loop, laughing his ass off.) The praise for Tangerine I especially cannot wrap my head around. I’ve thought about this quite a bit, and if I hated trans women, and wanted to make a movie about it, Tangerine is, frame-for-frame, exactly the movie that I’d make. You could call it Every Negative Stereotype About Trans Women: The Movie. Think about it. Transwomen are prostitutes. They’re severely mentally ill (how else to describe all the casual violence they inflict in the ‘film’, like pulling a woman from one LA location to another by her hair). They’re drug addicts. They’re comically affected, with the locus of their identities not in their wishes or desires or personalities, but rather their hair. I mean, seriously, the greatest gesture of friendship between transwomen on display in the entire ‘movie’ is one giving the other her fucking hair. I still get a good chuckle thinking of that last scene, to be honest. And I’m not pulling these from thin air; you can read this article by a transwoman identifying them. Now I just want to be clear, I really don’t give a shit about representation; whatever else it might be, it’s a moronic rubric by which to judge the quality of a film. I despise TANGERINE and the others purely for *aesthetic* reasons. But if I *did* care about representation… well, I just don’t understand how I could justify liking it, or The Florida Project, or Red Rocket. …Actually, that’s a lie. If I were someone who cared about the poor and marginalised abstractly, without wanting to have to do anything about it *myself* except tweet, maybe I would like Baker’s films. It’s nice watching a degenerate sideshow from the comfort of a cushioned seat at the Odeon, especially if I can go back to my quiet life after two hours. I’m reminded of Lee Daniels premiering Precious at Cannes. ‘To be honest, I was embarrassed to show this movie…,’ Daniels said. ‘I didn’t want to exploit black people. And I wasn’t sure I wanted white French people to see our world.’ Like, dude, then why did you make it the way you did? But Baker doesn’t even have *that* level of shame. He appears proud of his movies. What’s the deal: is he making his films purposefully for a bougie audience, or is he really so shallow that this is how he sees his subjects? Or does he not even put this level of thought into his work? Given his one-note screenplays, I’m inclined toward option three. So maybe Baker doesn’t *exploit* his subjects. But does he really do much more than gawk at their worst possible qualities?
LoT: So let's talk Red Rocket, which I find to be Baker's most challenging film. it's not centred around a marginalized character that he would usually centre. Instead, it's a study of a pervert, who is past his sexual prime and trying to revitalize it by predating on a small-town environment populated by ounces of familiarity: his estranged porn star wife, her oddly-tolerant mother and their neighbour who's essentially a less charismatic version of him. It's challenging because there are plenty of norms this violates thanks to Simon Rex's magnetic performance, which is a matter of charm and anti-charm colliding with each other. Centring around a former porn star is a good move, bc that allows Baker to have some form of judgement, in ways that he couldn't in previous films. Watching this one, I understood the problems that you laid out with how he depicts his actors then, where there's a false sense of non-judgemental moralism that he tries to pass off because they come from a burdened class. But if he is doing this here, then this is more convincing. There are other problems that I can see from the get-go, which we'll talk about later. But admit it. You were a bit surprised by this movie, weren't you?
The Film Mufti: Well, I was surprised I was able to make it all the way through without closing my eyes for long periods of time. *Does* he think Simon Rex’s character is a pervert? The relationship seems positive in the film, and Baker flinches from showing negative consequences. I don’t see evidence that he endorses it necessarily, though that would at least be a challenging artistic stance. (Incidentally, there are many Letterboxd reviews denouncing the movie for *not* explicitly depicting the central relationship as exploitative.) But I guess it could depend on how you interpret the ending. You’ve probably seen my thoughts on it on Letterboxd, but how did you interpret it?
LoT: I think we see Mikey as the personification of what Betsy in Taxi Driver describes Travis Bickle. "He’s a Pusher and a prophet. Partly Truth. Partly fiction". Mikey has a lot of swaggers that he can back up, whether it's his bona fides in the industry (he keeps mentioning that he's a three-time AVN Awards winner, which is the porn's version of the Oscars) or his personality that comes across like the adult version of snake oil. But he has been washed up because the industry no longer requires his 'services'. So far, he is motivated by self-interest, much of which consists of get-rich-quick schemes that could put him back to good graces with anybody. His estranged wife (who also worked in the porn industry) doesn't want him around, and once he is able to earn, she sees him as the husband she wants to have. Once he meets Strawberry, the movie's Iris, we know that it's in part, a genuine affection, and in another way, a potential business relationship, and it turns out that she's really eager to do it, as soon as she finds out who she is. It's a testament to Simon Rex's magnetism that these factors are illustrated, but it also shows how far technology and individualism have changed America. There is a hint that Strawberry, age aside, has some agency. She likes to do something for herself that she's able to go by the night without him. The film is set in 2016, and it's around the time that Onlyfans and other similar websites emerged, which monetises sex quite easily. Those are negative consequences we observe as viewers, but Baker has been ambivalent about it when trying to weigh the pros and cons. This is all wrapped up quite roughly by the film's final shots (which you said in your Letterboxd take), where Mikey feels morally battered, but Strawberry, in a tiny red bikini, feels far more confident. That should have been the landing, but I guess it took it far to the landing that it looked like it has overcompensated.
The Film Mufti: Well the ending didn’t read as literal to me, at all. At least in The Florida Project, you can read it as symbolic while also believing the character physically went into Disney World. Maybe the ending is how Mikey sees her, maybe it’s the potential he sees in her, maybe it’s how she could be on her own selling *herself*, maybe it’s just a bunt in Baker’s part. Also, sure, Mikey won three porn awards, but characters specifically mention that he just sat there getting blown while the women did all the work, so the awards are kind of incidental. There’s definitely the idea that Mikey sees every relationship as transactional in a way, probably as a result of doing so much porn. But Baker doesn’t really *do* anything with this idea. His ending sure doesn’t take it and spike it in the end zone.
LoT: There is significant Trump-esque imagery in what is basically small-town Texas. From a big MAGA billboard to the former President making speeches where Mikey's family watches. I began this convo about how Sean Baker is politically weird, but this is where I realize the way he depicts, what Chris Arnade would call, the 'non-front row'. It feels like how glossy magazines would go to flyover country bc they missed the mark on Trump winning, and just not really getting it. Parts of it does feel patronizing, coming from a middle-class family myself, not everyone there that are below the rungs of society I know is as parasitic, or intend to be parasitic as he is. But that imagery has some of Baker's best filmmaking. The vast scenery of industrial Texas just illuminates the underlying issues that he's trying to convey. The America that Mikey grew up in has changed. Whether it feels good or bad, it does show the change wonderfully where it's no longer the country he grew up in, but it's Mikey's America.
The Film Mufti: Well, it might be some of Baker’s best filmmaking, but I don’t think it’s particularly interesting. We already know that these characters are in poverty and can’t work the system as it’s designed. The industrial structure itself is visually interesting, sure, but that doesn’t make the sequences interesting. (Incidentally, this was my problem with Kogonada’s COLUMBUS: having dull characters discuss nothing of interest in front of visually-striking structures does not actually make your film visually striking.) But again, where you see political weirdness, I just see vacuity. Are the industrial shots meant to convey the point that American capitalism failed these people? Then how does it help his point to make his characters into the nightmare vision the average NPR listener probably has about them? You already called it patronising, which I agree with wholeheartedly. That big industrial complex looks to me like a signpost that doesn’t point anywhere. It really seems like these characters, as Baker depicts them, would be living the way they do no matter what.
LoT: Well I end on this note. Red Rocket has avoided one kind of discourse that would have been incredibly excruciating: the age-gap-is-too-wide-to-even-like-it discourse. On social media, I've seen this with Licorice Pizza which I disagree strongly that it was pandering to pedophiles (or Minor Attracted Persons [or MAPs] if you really want to be blasé about it], and it did dent its image very unfairly. Red Rocket is small enough, not to get the attention from these naysayers who are loud in numbers. But I think the film has been very explicit about how they don't condone anything that's happening. So anyone who doesn't see that is not coming in good faith.
By the way, there are so many sex scenes that advance the plot (no pun intended) that brings the crescendo up to a higher standard so I don't know what ideas these Tiktokers would have.
The Film Mufti: Well, I *have* seen reviews on Letterboxd that knock RR precisely because it doesn’t explicitly condemn the relationship. I agree it doesn’t condone it, though I don’t think the film has a point of view about it either way—it seems incidental. I think certain critics didn’t bring it up because Baker has ‘cred,’ or cultural capital or however you’d like to put it. But that discourse would have been insufferable, yes. I don’t even know if it’s bad faith as much as they just aren’t cinematically literate. That probably makes me sound like an elitist gatekeeper but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯