Red rocket sean baker9/14/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Ironically or not, it takes a brilliant low-budget movie like Red Rocket to connect those dots more effectively than films with fifty times its budget. TV rubbish, low-rent smut, modern politics…. While Lexi and her mother watch their reality shows and Judge Judy knock-offs, sharing the TV screens is the campaigning Donald Trump. She sees Mikey as her ticket out of Texas, while Mikey sees Strawberry as his way back into fame and fortune.īut anyone looking at this modern Bonnie and Clyde would be unwise to bet on their prospects. Strawberry may be young but she’s not naïve. After years trawling the underworld of Z-grade independent movies, Rex takes hold of the character of Mikey Saber and runs with it.Įven a loser can get lucky sometimes, thinks Mikey when he runs into Strawberry. The other secret weapon of Red Rocket is star Rex. He knows how to make us interested in his characters and - even rarer - to like people who on the surface are totally unlikeable. The first is writer/director Baker.īaker has a gift – one you don’t learn in courses on “How to make movies that sell”. ![]() Having got this far – and I haven’t even mentioned young Strawberry who’s got trouble written all over her – I suspect some of you are wondering “Why should I care what happens to these unsavoury people?” So next he has to find paying work, and the only people hiring aren’t exactly legal.īut beggars can’t be choosers, so Mikey sets off down the Primrose Path on a borrowed girl’s bike, but always keeping an eye out for opportunity. Mikey lasted longer but got into trouble with too many people – hence the black eyes and the trip back home. Lexi lasted a couple of years in the “Adult Film Business” before she quit it – and Mikey - and went home. Not Tinseltown, Lala Land Hollywood - real Hollywood where you take whatever job is going. He ran away from Texas with Lexi and they ended up in Hollywood. Mikey’s been living off the books now for years. Mikey sweet-talks Lexi into putting him up – he can sleep on the couch in front of the TV – while he looks for work. He knocks at the door of his estranged wife Lexi, where she lives with her deadbeat mother Lil. Mikey Saber gets off the bus with nothing to his name but the clothes he’s standing up in and two black eyes. And his latest Red Rocket brings the action to hard-scrabble Texas. The follow up - the brilliant Florida Project with Willem Dafoe - centred on the 6-year-old daughter of another prostitute. “It was anamorphic and had the colors that are representative of Texas - the colors I knew we would get from shooting sunsets against refineries: that crazy mix of greens and oranges from the pipes with the natural beauty of the sunsets.Baker seems to have a thing about outsiders. “I particularly liked the way they shot the driving,” he says. “I wanted Drew to look at the snap zooms, certain ways of framing and dolly moves.”ĭaniels cites Steven Spielberg’s “The Sugarland Express” as visual inspiration for the scenic lensing. “I looked at them because of how they tackled sexploitation films and eroticism in cinema,” Baker says. Baker pointed Daniels to Italian genre films from the ’70s so he could pay homage to the craft and style of films by Fernando Di Leo (“The Italian Connection”) and Umberto Lenzi (“Spasmo”). Daniels was a good fit, since he hails from Texas, the setting for “Red Rocket.”īaker found the “sex shots” between Son and Rex the easiest to shoot because they were so detailed in choreography and he had definite ideas in mind. Cinematographer Drew Daniels came highly recommended to Baker by “Waves” filmmaker Trey Edward Shults. While Baker didn’t divulge how much the song cost, he did say it was not a part of their original movie budget.Įlsewhere, the film pays homage to Italian eroticism through its cinematography. ![]() “That meant they had to see the script and see the last scene of the film.” “We had to go through the process of all the members signing off on it,” Baker says. Then, Hearon-Smith (“The Florida Project”) had to secure the song right, which meant letting all five *NSYNC members, Chris Kirkpatrick, Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Joey Fatone and Lance Bass, read the script about a former porn star who winds up back home in Galveston, Tex, and catches the eye of a 17-year-old donut shop worker. ![]()
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