![]() ![]() There’s no doubt that I’m aware of the fact that guys like Mikey have had extreme negative effects on people, but I also find it fascinating that they’re unaware of it. I’ve been getting people who say they were rooting for Mikey and they don’t know why and they feel like the worst person in the world themselves. I’ve been getting a lot of reactions to it. That’s great because that person had that reaction to it. What do you think of that type of reaction? ![]() I went to a screening of “Red Rocket,” and a journalist later tweeted that it’s surprising that it’s the movie this year that’s not titled “The Worst Person in the World.” Joachim Trier beat you to that title. The way they approached the Kenny Powers character was similar, but we didn’t want to be as broad. I said at the end of this long Zoom call that at least the fans of “Eastbound and Down” will like this movie. It wasn’t really an inspiration, but I do remember using that during an initial pitch. This may sound strange, but was “Eastbound and Down” another inspiration? Kenny Powers returning to his hometown after leaving for bigger and better things seems analogous to Mikey Saber’s journey in “Red Rocket”? The way he shot that Houston landscape influenced “Red Rocket.” It’s hard to say it’s my favorite Spielberg, because he’s made so many masterpieces, but it may be the one I’d return to more than any other. I also looked at “Sugarland Express,” which I had not seen for 30 years, and I fell back in love with it. It’s not just a big bad wolf, little lamb story. They’re trying to turn the audience on and turn the audience off at different points. They’re not treating them just as morality tales. Their approach to large age gap relationships, Lolita type things, I found to be quite bold and tonally all over the place. I was watching a lot of early ’70s Italian genre films, sex comedies and erotic dramas. Were there movies that inspired “Red Rocket”? I find the film ultimately in the editing. They’d be asking, where’s the coverage and what are you doing? I feel like the editing is 15% of my directing. If I was a studio director for hire and I handed in my footage, I would be fired on the first day. Everyone is thinking about themselves and no one wants to think about the rights of drug users, because there’s so much stigma around that. audience to forget about COVID right now, which is a major thing. ![]() It’s like “Milk.” Imagine “Milk,” but about drug-user activists. It’s a bigger film, in the $12 million range. We want to get back to it, but unfortunately I think that COVID has to be an afterthought and who knows when that is going to happen. What was the other film you were planning to make? Will you make that next? If I have an opportunity to do anything, I should grab it. But I just decided, why not? We don’t even know the future of the film business at this point. I was mourning the temporary death of that project when my producer called me up and said, “I think I can find you a little bit of money to make a movie right now.” I asked how much and he said a quarter of the budget of “Florida Project” - every time you think you’re going to move forward and it’s a total step back. No, I was developing a film that was much larger up in Vancouver, which became a passion project of mine and then COVID killed that. Had you been planning to make the film before COVID hit? I was laughing along hearing their stories and then I went home and started to think, “Oh shit, this person has really had some negative effects on people’s lives.” I wanted to put the audience in the same mindset that I was in, which was this roller coaster of emotion. They’re essentially pimps and yet they win you over, because they have persona that’s entertaining and funny and designed to charm you. They had a psyche that I thought was so complex and made me question myself for hanging out with them. There’s a certain type of guy in the adult film world and they even have a slang term to describe them: “suitcase pimp.” Even though this is a niche part that’s buried within a niche part of sex work, it’s still very interesting and something I haven’t seen depicted before. I met a handful of Mikey Sabers when I was making my film “Starlet.” It’s an archetype, essentially. ![]()
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