A trio of Sean Baker films

Notes on a trio of Sean Baker’s films:

Take Out (2004, co-directed with Shih-Ching Tsou)
Starlet (2012)
Red Rocket (2021)

As I await Sean Baker’s Anora, the Cannes 2024 Palme d’Or winner, I realized I had no notes on his earlier films that I had seen as Tangerine, The Florida Project and missed seeing a few of his other films. As a means of correction, here are notes on 3 films I had not seen previously.

Slice of American life

One aspect of Sean Baker’s cinema is his ability to show a slice of American life that commercial Hollywood studio ignores. He sheds light on those people / stories not covered by mainstream cinema and does so in a natural realistic manner. That doesn’t mean his films are devoid of drama but instead his film shows reality without any of the dressed up glamour that Hollywood indulges in. In addition, his films feature characters directly or indirectly involved in the adult film industry or associated with them. Take Out is an exception to that.

Food and Delivery

Take Out came out a year before Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart (2005) was released and both films shed light on different aspects of American food delivery in New York. While Man Push Cart highlights the one-man food cart, Take Out focuses its attention on door-to-door food delivery. The main character in the film, Ming Ding (Charles Jang), waits for the restaurant food to be made and immediately get on his bicycle to deliver that food, no matter the weather. Take Out is shown with a high degree of realism and approaches aspects of Cinéma vérité documentary style.

Take Out, co-directed with Shih-Ching Tsou, stands apart from the remaining Sean Baker films in not having any association with adult film industry/sex workers as his later films would. The film does contain Baker’s now expected signature in trying to humanize his characters and inviting audience a glimpse into the everyday harsh realities of people doing whatever it takes to make a living.

The Mikey connection

Starlet and Red Rocket are two different films but they are connected by the character Mikey even though the character is played by two different actors in each film and it is never truly spelled out that Red Rocket is the next chapter in Mikey’s life. As Red Rocket describes, the term Mikey is slang for “suitcase pimp” which captures the essence of both Mikey’s in the two films, the character played by James Ransone in Starlet and that by Simon Rex in Red Rocket. A few dialogues by Mikey in Red Rocket (such as installation of pole in living room) seem to indicate that he may be the same person who lived in LA in Starlet and has now left to move back to Texas City in Red Rocket. In Starlet, Mikey’s character is on the fringes even though he is indirectly pulling the strings which impact the lives of the two female characters Jane (Dree Hemingway), Melissa (Stella Maeve) who share an apartment with him. Starlet is Jane’s film about an unexpected friendship with Sadie (Besedka Johnson) while Mikey is in almost every frame of Red Rocket. Even though Red Rocket is about Mikey, the film shows the toxic and damaging impact he has on the female characters around him including his wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) and 17 year old Raylee (Suzanna Son).

Red Rocket's Mikey is a dangerous male who is the perfect description of a slime ball and whose predatory behaviour can wreck the lives of anyone in his path. The film shows how he impacted Lexi via the adult industry but Mikey never thinks about anyone else. He is only thinking of himself and his next pay check and that is why he tries to groom Raylee into being an adult movie star.

Other directors would have treated Mikey’s character (Red Rocket) in a different light and would have focused on his villainy right up front. However, Sean Baker’s style allows him to present situations and characters as naturally as possible. This way, audience can watch the characters go about their lives, their daily hustles, and then can form their own conclusions via the actions of the characters.