“It’s been a wild ride,” Sean Baker said with a grin. It, in this case, is “Anora,” Baker’s uproarious and affecting dramedy about a Brooklyn sex worker, Ani (Mikey Madison), who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn) and winds up battling Russian and Armenian henchmen and her spoiled man-child of a husband.
The $6 million production moved the director of gritty indie films like “Tangerine,” “The Florida Project” and “Red Rocket” to a different level of recognition: He won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, and “Anora” received six Oscar nominations, including four that went to Baker: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing.
That total tied the record for the most nominations anyone has received for a single movie, which Baker shares with “Emilia Pérez” director-producer-writer-songwriter Jacques Audiard this year and with a small and august group before that: Orson Welles for “Citizen Kane” (with his Best Picture nom officially going to his company), Warren Beatty for “Heaven Can Wait” and “Reds,” the Coen brothers for “No Country for Old Men” (the editing nod under a pseudonym), Alfonso Cuarón for “Roma” and Chloé Zhao for “Nomadland.”
This interview was conducted before the most remarkable weekend of awards season for Baker and “Anora,” which found the film winning Best Picture at the Critics Choice Awards on Friday night, Baker winning the Directors Guild Award on Saturday evening and the film winning the Producers Guild Award about an hour later and two blocks away.
You’ve been nominated for Independent Spirit Awards and Gotham Awards in the past, but does it feel different this time around with four Oscar nominations?
It feels very different. Starting with the Palme d’Or. Once you’re there, it’s like, oh, my God, we’re in a very different place. And also hearing from a lot of wonderful filmmakers who I have grown up with and who have influenced me. The fact that they’ve seen the film means everything in the world. The fact that Mike Leigh likes the movie, the fact that Almodóvar likes the movie. I mean, Spike Lee called me the other day just to say congrats. It’s surreal, quite honestly.
“Anora” has definite ties to the work you’ve done in the past, but it also feels different in certain ways, with traces of those great movies Jonathan Demme made in the ’80s in the way things escalate into craziness. Were you looking to explore new areas?
Well, not new areas. But I guess you could say it’s a further exploration of the stuff I’ve already been doing, with a slightly bigger budget and more tools. Overall, it’s me being able to do a little bit more of what I’ve always loved with each film and exploring topics that I’ve always been interested in exploring. I never want to say, “Oh, I want to make a Jonathan Demme film, I want to do this, I want to do that.” I think the opposite of that: I want to be original.
What led you to this setting, Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, and this story?
It was actually a fashion film that I made during post-production of “Red Rocket.” I took time off from editing and I was offered this little creative outlet of making a fashion film for Khaite, a little boutique label in New York, for Fashion Week. It was my homage to Walter Hill’s “The Warriors.” Alex Coco, who is one of the three “Anora”producers, produced it.
Alex and I were standing on the boardwalk in the winter in Coney Island looking around and saying, “This is gorgeous. Isn’t it cinematic?” It’s almost stuck in time. It feels and looks the same way it did when Walter Hill shot there in 1978. I’m like, “I think we’re gonna make our next film here. I have an idea of a Brighton Beach story on the back burner. Let’s pull that to the front burner and make that next.” Sometimes that’s what it takes, you know?
In the past, you’ve said that you don’t create detailed backstories for your characters, because the movies take place in the present tense. But I would imagine that for a character like Ani, Mikey Madison probably wanted to know a lot.
Definitely. And in this case, we had to know a bit more than usual. She’s obviously Russian diaspora, but what does that entail? We started saying, ‘OK, her grandmother probably came over with her teen mom around 1990, after the fall of the Soviet Union. How did they get by?”
Mikey wanted as much information as she could get, and she was incredible about absorbing it. With these social-realist films, as you said, they’re in the present tense. What’s on the page is what you’re seeing in the theater — we’re not hearing narration, backstory, et cetera. But the actors in my films appreciate any information I can give them, and the more information we can create together, the better.
At Sundance this year, we heard a lot about how hard the times are for independent film. As someone who’s been working in this area for a couple of decades, do you think independent film is in a tough spot?
It is. It’s never gotten easier. With inflation and everything, it costs more to make these little indies. Now, if you go completely guerrilla, you can still make your film for nothing. That actually is easier these days because of the tools like the iPhone and the fact that you can edit at home. But then you can’t afford stars. It’s very complicated, plus the streaming services have really changed things. There’s a lot more content now and a lot of competition.
I feel for up-and-coming filmmakers who have to deal with this new world. I feel like I got my foot in the door just as it was slamming shut — just in time, you know? And I’ve been able to keep doing it because I got established as a director who doesn’t work with stars and whose subject matter might not be mainstream-friendly. But I can’t imagine having to break in and do what I’m doing now.
A version of this story first appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
