Interview: Sean Baker and Simon Rex are in synch with ‘Red Rocket’

Director Sean Baker and actor Simon Rex are the dream duo of 2021. You can tell from just sitting with them for five, let alone fifteen minutes, that these two guys really enjoy spending time together and talking about their collaboration on Red Rocket, a wild, cautionary dark comedy which follows Rex’s Mikey Saber, a washed up porn star return to his former home in Texas after not making it in Hollywood. But once he comes back, it’s only a matter of time before Saber is planning his next big move to break out of his situation all over again. It’s as funny as it is uncomfortable, making it one of the most captivating films of the year. Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in the year, Red Rocket made the festival rounds this fall and audiences got to see a side from both of these men that they’ve never seen before.

For Baker, this is a departure from his previous efforts, which included the hang out dramedy, Tangerines and the coming of age drama, The Florida Project, which both were considered two of the best films of the year and landed many accolades for the indie director, who specializes in telling stories of lesser known people who make up America. In making a straight up comedy, we see Baker stretch his already glowing talents into a genre he should return to offend from here on out. For Rex, this is the ultimate comeback story, as this once laded comedy actor turn Hollywood afterthought delivers a layered, devilish performance in the meatiest role of his career. While he is the lead of this movie, and you are supposed to root for him, his Saber is a mean, manipulative con artist, thus making him a fascinating anti-hero to lead this sex comedy. By the time Red Rocket is over, you are in awe of what Baker and Rex have done.

In my conversation with these two gentlemen, we discuss bringing this picture together, the inspirations to shoot in Texas, how COVID-19 played a role in the shooting process, and much more. The two smiled the whole time I was with them, and it stayed that way when the conversation stopped. It was infectious speaking to them, as they are both two really good men making a movie that they are extremely proud of and have every right to be, and you want to root for these guys, as Red Rocket is one of the best comedies of 2021.

This interview took place in October at the Middleburg Film Festival. It was an absolute joy to speak with Sean Baker and Simon Rex, who we all can hope will work together again and continue this passionate bromance between these two artists.

Ryan McQuade: I want to start off with you, Sean. Last night at the Q and A, you talked about this being on the back burner for five years. Within those five years, did you think about this man (Simon Rex) being your lead pretty much at the early stages?

Sean Baker: Yes, very early.

RM: Before you called him, had you guys had conversations about it?

Simon Rex: No.

SB: We waited until the last second to contact him, but I remember… right after The Florida Project, when we were throwing around ideas of what to do next and Red Rocket came up, I remember telling one of my producers, “oh, and if we ever make Red Rocket, it’s Simon Rex, and sending Simon’s, I believe, at the time, his Instagram or his Vine, if Vine was still around at that time, to them and saying, “There you go, this guy could play Mike Saber.” But then it was forgotten about because we were developing another film. So when pre-production was far enough along where we knew we were actually making this movie that we reached out to Simon.

RM: Simon, you have a ton of monologues in this, and the fact that you learned all of these on the trip to Texas, and you were learning about sort of being a Californian that was a former Texan and everything about the character on a drive from California to Texas is incredible. Was there any research into the area and dialect that you then brought back into the performance while you were shooting?

SR: Well, it’s interesting because that first day, without Sean knowing… I don’t know how this happened. Everything just kind of was moving really fast, and one of the producers had set me up with a dialect coach that I was Zooming with working on a Texas accent. After about two sessions, I talked to Sean about it. He goes, “No, no, no.” He’s like I don’t want you to… You lost the accent. Just do you. That took that off the plate, so I didn’t have to work on accent. But I do notice that, in the movie, sometimes there’s the kind of… It’s almost like after living there for a while, there’ll be certain times where a little Southern drawl will come out. I didn’t mean to, but watching it, it’s like, oh, that happens to me when I go home to San Francisco, I start talking like my friends again.

So it kind of worked that Mikey… There’s a one time where he actually quotes Ethan. He’s like, “Oh, is that what you thought?” and he kind of mocks his accent. But, besides that, there is points where he’ll say “I was fixin to”… like little things come out, and it just happened naturally. That wasn’t planned, but it works. So, it’s almost like little times you’ll hear it come out here and there, but that was not on purpose. That was just a happy accident, but, no, I didn’t do a lot it.

SB: No, I think you knew what you were doing because it’s obvious that…

SR: With little twangs here and there that I noticed, I’m like, oh, I kind of was hanging around these Texans and it comes out. No, I didn’t do a lot of… I’ll be honest. I didn’t have time. It was really just go, go, go, go, go.

The only downtime I had was after getting home from working all day, I had a lot of dialogue the next day, so I would just study my lines and memorize them. That was really all I had the attention span to do. I’d like to tell you there was a bunch of character research and the study of Texas, but I’d be lying. It was mostly just going off instinct and playing with it.

RM: Yeah, and I mean… and you nailed it.

SR: Thanks man.

RM: I mean, beyond your dialogue, there’s a lot of obviously physicality that goes into this performance and obviously with shooting under COVID,  you had to have a very locked down set-

SR: Right. We were following all guidelines.

RM: Yes. But, there is sex scenes in this. There’s a lot of close-ups with these characters and everything. Was there ever a moment of some sort of trepidation or nervousness about shooting this? Even though you’re all tested, this is still so much different than before COVID.

SB: Oh, it was definitely abnormal. We essentially had to work in a pod to a certain degree, and the only time got hairy was when we would have somewhat larger scenes, like the party scene that took place in the backyard. Every one of those people had to be… for the birthday party scene, every one of those people had to be tested in advance. There was one or two moments where we skirted disaster realizing that somebody had COVID was about to come to set, and that would’ve been a disaster, but, no, it was done in a very proper safe way. What do you think? (Looks at Simon)

SR: Yeah, yeah. It definitely added to the already… Like he said before in an interview once about it, it’s hard enough to shoot a movie in that amount of days with the budget that we had and the amount of 10-person crew. It was ambitious, but you add COVID to it, and it’s just another factor that I… I just really was convinced… I’m like I don’t know how mathematically we’re going to get through this and not. One person is going to come to set with it in Texas during the heat of a pandemic.

SB: We had three false positives, which really a blessing. But, I think we were so small that we became comfortable after a while.

SR: But as far to answer any… to go back to your question a little bit about the… I really just wanted to make it comfortable for the girls, and by the time we shot these sex scenes, we kind of just jumped into the deep end of the pool together pretty quick and got to know each other. I just wanted them to feel comfortable, so we just communicated and Sean had those shots very strategically planned out so there was no just kind of messing around. It was just very quick. It was actually very quick. If you add up the amount of time of actual sexual intercourse in the movie, it’s probably not even one minute long.

SB: Yeah, it’s like a minute because they’re not sex scenes. They’re sex shots more than scenes.

SR: It’s not gratuitous, and we shot them really… We shot them really, so he (Baker) had that planned and it was pretty quick, and it was fine.

RM: Absolutely. Sean, why Texas for the setting? Why was Texas City for the setting for the film? Why here during this time period, the 2016 election, also?

SB: It’s the summer before the election. We were tackling many themes, but one being division and I kind of see that the election, the 2016 election, as one that really politicized the United States because everybody was watching the coverage of that election because it was more like a reality show than an actual… felt more like a reality show than an election, right?

So, I decided I wanted to tackle that, put it in that time period, but then also tackle some of the other issues that come within division, such as the fossil fuel industry and the controversy behind that and the oil and gas industry. So, setting it against the refineries not only allowed for that, but also gave me an incredible visual backdrop. I mean, I wanted to make Texas City, or I wanted to make one of these refinery cities a character in the film.

When I found Texas City, I just absolutely fell in love because, well, I learned about its history, the city surrounding it, the history the city surrounding it, and it just felt right. It felt right… and we were very welcomed. We are welcomed by the locals, and we settled in and got to work.

RM: Simon, your performance is tricky. I mean, you can be seen a little bit of an antagonist, an anti-hero, but then you can’t help but root for him because you’re such a great actor-

SR: Oh, thanks.

RM: … and you have such a great presence on the screen. My question to you would just be is how tough was that for you, as you’re learning all this dialogue quickly and everything, to still strike that balance with Mikey for the audience of you don’t want him to be this over sympathetic character because he is doing highly questionable things throughout the film?

SR: I basically just had to make him boyish and charming, and he is kind of like a conman, and he’s fooling everyone along the way to get what he wants. Basically, I remember David Zucker… Mind you, this is a very different type of movie, but David Zucker, who did Airplane, Naked Gun, Scary Movie… I remember I was the lead in Scary Movie, and he said to me once… and this always stuck with me because I might go off script and say something that made the character not likable, and he goes, cut. He’s like, “Simon, we can’t lose your likability for a minute because then the audience doesn’t root for you and the movie’s over, and no one cares what happens at the end of the movie. So, trust me, just remain likable.”

In this, he’s so unlikable that I really just had to make him maybe be like a boy who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and then the audience might feel a little conflicted. But, I’ll be honest. It wasn’t even… I wasn’t like planning this thing where it was like, oh… It just kind of flowed. I think whatever I brought and Sean saw of my take on it… He’s like, “That’s it, just keep doing what you’re doing,” and it just sort of worked. But there was not really some big plan of attack. I just wanted to-

He got it because, from the beginning, one of the character traits of these types of guys is that they have to be… They’re low-level pimps, so they have to win people over. They have to be on the surface. They have to be charming and appealing and even use humor to win people over and be motor mouths and be extroverted. So, I saw that and he was getting it right off the bat.

RM: I’ve been sort of following you throughout the awards season on social media, and you guys are buddies. I mean, the two of you and your smiles are infectious amongst each other. I know how personal this project is to both of you, and finally getting to work with each other. What is the one thing that you learned from each other that you didn’t know you were going to learn or expected to learn about each other that you can carry forward maybe in another collaboration, maybe in other projects that meant so much to you as a director and actor?

SR: It’s a very thoughtful question. I’ll start, if you don’t mind. (Baker nods) So, I guess the answer to that that he gave me the confidence and the opportunity to do more than just do comedy because I think this character was more than just cracking jokes. There was a lot of depth and nuance and drama and serious moments that had to be played very real and not hide behind a joke, which I’ve done most of my career… is just be the funny guy.

But this required those real moments where you’re breaking up with the girl and leaving her, and it has to be believable. The audience isn’t going to do… So, I think I took away the confidence that now that I always knew I could, but never was given the chance to go more deep and do something more real and nuanced than just ha ha.

SB: For me, it was a nice reassurance that there are good people out there because Simon… I was asking him to come in last minute, work with a lot of non-professionals in conditions that were not really far above a student film level, and there was no diva quality about Simon. He rolled with everything. Not only that, he put my non-professionals and first-timers at ease and really helped. I mean, there were nights that went long because first-timers didn’t exactly know how to memorize lines and needed help. Simon was there as to… and never was like, okay, you can get their coverage, and I’ll be over there making a phone call. He was there always for the other actor on the other side of the camera to play to, to collaborate with, and, so…

RM: Well, it’s a beautiful collaboration on a wonderful film. As somebody from South Texas that lives in south Texas-

SB: Oh, you live there currently?

RM: Yes, sir. I’m from San Antonio.

SB: Oh, that’s very cool.

RM: You guys nailed this whole area and world. I swear I was sitting there watching the film going, “All right. Somebody needs to give me a Big Red (soda made in Texas) because this is ridiculous.” When can I get one?

SB: Oh, so nice to hear. Did you like the Stripes reference?

RM: I did. I did. I was like, God, they really nailed the aesthetic of my state.

SB:I kept back a couple of those cups. They’re back with me in LA because I think I brought them with me.

RM: They’re so huge!

SB: What does Lexi say in the film? That’s my 64 ounces. (everyone laughs)

RM: Thank you, guys, so much for your time and safe travels.

Both: Thank you so much.

A24 will release Red Rocket only in theaters on December 10.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.