There’s a moment in “The Florida Project,” the Willem Dafoe-starring drama from Sean Baker about a six-year-old girl named Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) living in a motel with her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite), that I think about daily. Halley and one of her friends go out to eat one night and get food from a stand. We know that Halley doesn’t have a lot of money — we’ve watched her steal, scam, and engage in sex work to make ends meet — but she still puts a tip in the jar for the food stand worker. To those who have never grown up poor, it’s a moment that likely went unnoticed. But to those of us who have, it was a signal that this film came from someone who genuinely wanted to present an authentic look at how people living in poverty make joy in their lives without financial security. That includes always tipping service industry workers, because the folks who work those jobs are often in the same tax bracket, and we take care of our own.
Baker did not grow up poor in Kissimmee, Florida, but he and his frequent collaborator Chris Bergoch spent time with the real people impacted by the recession and systemic failures leading to the crisis of families living in motels in the Kissimmee-Orlando area, and let their stories guide the final script that would become “The Florida Project.” Baker’s filmography has a running theme: The main characters are often looked down upon in some way by “polite society.” He’s made audiences fall in love with undocumented immigrants, porn stars, the poor, the elderly, Black transgender sex workers, and drug dealers — all marginalized subcultures the world treats like scum and encourages others to shun.
His approach reminds me of the late Robert Vincent O’Neil, who, through films like “Angel” and “Vice Squad,” gave an empathetic spotlight to the alleged “underbelly” of Los Angeles without ever deifying or making moral judgments against his subjects. In Baker’s latest film, the Palme d’Or-winning “Anora,” Mikey Madison plays Anora/Ani, a stripper and sometimes escort who is nothing like the squeaky clean “Pretty Woman” archetypes of a “hooker with a heart of gold,” and Baker once again succeeds where so much of the industry fails.
Sean Baker explains the key to portraying people that Hollywood frequently fails
Ahead of the theatrical release of “Anora,” /Film’s Bill Bria was able to speak with Baker about this trend in his filmography, and asked the writer/director what he thinks could help Hollywood be better about tackling stories from stigmatized groups. He’s seemingly discovered the secret, so what’s keeping the rest of the industry from doing the same? “I think it’s really just about approaching the representation in a more respectful way,” Baker answered, “and what I mean by that is, let’s stop with the caricatures, number one.” Archetypes and stock characters can be beneficial when you’re intentionally trying to follow a formula, but relying on tired old stereotypes and baseless assumptions instead of actual people is creatively bankrupt. “Let’s use, meaning employ, sex workers as consultants,” Baker continued. “It’s their stories, it’s their voice. You need to have them involved when you’re doing this sort of thing.” This is an approach he has taken across all of his works, most notably, with the brilliant Christmas classic, “Tangerine.”
“And then lastly, these characters should be human,” he declared. “They should be three-dimensional, fully fleshed out, so that the audience can connect and identify and root for [them].” This is where Baker’s characters truly shine above all else, because he allows them all the space to be fallible. There’s an awful trend these days where people are confusing depiction with endorsement and are therefore incapable of recognizing that a character doing a bad thing doesn’t make them a bad person — but there’s also the trend of overcorrection, where a character from a marginalized group is presented as almost a Christlike figure to compensate for whatever imagined mark against them might offend or freak out dominant society (see: rich, white, cisgender, straight, able-bodied, Christian men). Baker told us that a fully fleshed-out human is one that “isn’t sanctified” or “put on a pedestal,” and it’s vital that the characters are flawed.
Anora joins a roster of greats
The titular Anora is just the latest of Baker’s gallery of fantastic sex worker characters. In “Starlet,” a young woman named Jane/Tess (Dree Hemingway) is a working porn star who befriends an elderly woman in her neighborhood, but this modern “Harold and Maude” is also unflinching about the transactional benefits often provided by adult friendships. “Tangerine” focuses on Black transgender full-service street sex workers Sin-Dee Rella (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor), who are warm and hilarious but also bring the drama despite claiming to be against it.
Halley in “The Florida Project” performs survival sex work to make ends meet so she can give her daughter the best possible life … and she’s also combative as hell and too impulsive for her own good. Mikey Saber in “Red Rocket” is a total grifter dirtbag, but you can’t help but immediately see why so many people have fallen for his charms. Ani is a hard worker and full of personality, but there’s a bit of naïveté seldom shown in fictional sex worker characters.
“They make mistakes like all of us, and when we see that, when people outside that world see that, they really see themselves,” Baker told us. “So I think that’s the way to go about doing it.” Film critic Roger Ebert famously described movies as “a machine that generates empathy,” and this is precisely what Baker does with each of his films and all of his characters. He wants us to give ourselves over fully to the people he’s crafted, and the only way to do that is by providing characters we can connect to — like sex workers — on an intimate level.
Sean Baker has pulled it off for an entire filmography. There’s no excuse for the rest of the industry to not follow his leadership.
You can hear our full interview with Baker on today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast:
“Anora” is playing in theaters now.
This post was originally published on here
