From writer/director Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine), the indie dramedy Red Rocket tells the story of man-child Mikey Saber (Simon Rex), a washed-up porn star who returns to his tiny hometown in Texas, after leaving Hollywood behind. Once back in a town that’s not so welcoming or happy to see him, his hustle brings him back to the doorstep of his estranged wife (Bree Elrod) and into the path of a teenager known as Strawberry (Suzanna Son), who he sees as his ticket straight back into the adult industry.
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Rex, whose performance in the film is part of the conversation during the current awards season, talked about the unorthodox way that he got the role, why he felt Red Rocket was a great opportunity, the advantage of performing with non-professional actors, whether he thought Mikey was a bad guy, the experience of shooting the scene where he runs naked down the street, and how he feels the film’s ambiguous ending leaves things open to audience interpretation.
Collider: It sounds like a Hollywood story that one day you just hear, out of the blue, from a director you don’t know, who says that he wants you to audition for the lead role of a movie. What was your reaction when Sean Baker contacted you? Were you hesitant at all?
SIMON REX: It was an unorthodox way to get a job because it wasn’t through an agent and there were no managers. This is the first time this has ever happened to me like this. To me, it does sound like a story in itself, but it’s pretty rare to have the director reach out to you, not through an agent, and book you. This was the end of July 2020, so not only was the pandemic new for everybody, but there was all this civil unrest. It felt like the world was ending. Everything was upside down and just really weird. Everything was like a weird dream already, so when that happened, it was just a part of the weirdness that was happening. I was just like, “Okay, what else is gonna be weird now? This fits the narrative of the strange world that we’re in.” And I remember thinking, “This is a great opportunity.” He made it pretty clear that it was gonna be an ambitious shoot, that it would be low-budget, and that I wasn’t gonna make any money, no one was. We’d have to shoot with COVID protocols and just try to make the movie. The whole thing felt like a longshot to me. I didn’t expect us to get through the movie really, much less have the attention that it’s gotten. The whole thing has been bizarre. In a weird way, it makes no sense, but then it also makes perfect sense because nothing makes sense anymore.
At least it wasn’t a total stranger who has never made a movie that was contacting you. Sean Baker had already made Tangerine and The Florida Project.
REX: Yeah, totally. Exactly. If it had just been some random guy, I don’t think I would have done it for essentially no money. It wasn’t even a union job. It was really low-budget. I’ve done enough of those in my life, and then they turn out so horrible that you don’t even want them to come out. It just sucks and you’re like, “What am I doing?” I knew it would be a good movie, if we got through it, but that’s all I really thought about, at that time.
You got this job and it sounds like you immediately had to be there for the shoot within a matter of days with what sounds like no time to prep. How did you figure this character out? Do you even feel like you had time to figure this character out, or did you just have to jump straight in?
REX: We just had to jump straight in and wing it, and use my imagination and pretend, and not overthink it and over rehearse it, which I think sometimes is better, especially maybe in this case. Sean showed me some interviews he had done with people of the archetype of this character from this world that he had researched over the years and he showed me an interview of a guy that he said this is loosely based on. I can’t say who the person is for legal reasons, but I watched a few minutes of an interview and I was like, “I got it. I totally get what you need. I know this type of person.” I live in L.A., so there are a lot of these types of delusional, narcissists everywhere. It’s quite easy for me to portray that person, as everybody knows this person. They’re everywhere. That’s why this role works. It’s a character study on the frustrating assholes that are out there in the world that will do whatever it takes and walk all over you. It was actually easy for me to just click in, and then just play with it in a real world that Sean created for me. We went to a real area of Texas and rented a real house and had real local actors around me that were first-time actors. It actually made my job a lot easier and I just went with my instinct. Sometimes I think that’s better.
What was it like performing with some of those non-professional actors? How do you think that really added to your performance, especially for something like this?
REX: I think it made my job easier because, instead of being around a bunch of actors who come to L.A. from all over the world with bad Texas accents, we were surrounded by locals in their environment, in a real place. I was in the world with the locals, smelling the smells and feeling the heat of Texas. It actually made my job a lot easier, to play in that. I think more films should be made that way, but I don’t think a lot of filmmakers know how to do it. Sean has an amazing gift for casting people in these locations that bring it to life and that he knows have that thing that he can pull from them. And then, his wife, Samantha Quan, who’s a producer, gives these locals a crash course in acting. In a few days, they learn their lines with her, and then they throw them on set and we do it.
Because everyone in porn is using a fake name and porn stars create a persona for who they are that’s often separate from who they are in life, when they’re not on a porn set, did it feel to you like the Mikey who’s back in his hometown in Texas is the same Mikey who’s Mikey Saber out in Hollywood? Does it feel like he even knew where one begins and ends because he’s selling this persona to everybody else?
REX: I think he’s a big fish in a small pond. He goes back to this little town where he at least thinks he’s the biggest shit, and he probably is the only person in that small town who’s made it out, albeit nobody else cares. He’s the only one who thinks he’s amazing, and no one else gives a fuck. In his mind, he’s the biggest deal, but everybody else is rolling their eyes. They don’t give a shit. It’s just complete delusion, which is fun to play. He’s an antihero. He’s a shitty person, and there are not enough lead roles like this. He just buys his own bullshit. In L.A., he’s a loser. He even says, “When I first got to L.A., they made fun of me about my accent, so I lost it.” There are little lines like that, that show that he was probably just a joke out there. It’s like all of these people that come to L.A. and think that they’re gonna be a star and that they’re gonna make it, and the odds are that they’re not. You’ve gotta be a little crazy to think that way, so he’s a little crazy.
How did you view him while you were playing him? Did you view him as bad or good when you were playing him, and now that you’ve finished playing him, do you look at him any differently?
REX: I just made the choice that maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing and he doesn’t have bad intentions. That’s what’s going on right now. So many people are getting triggered and offended by things, when they read a tweet or they don’t hear the context of the tone of voice. It’s like if someone’s joking and they don’t mean bad, but people get offended. I don’t think he means bad. That’s why he gets away with it a little more, at least on screen, and the audience stays on board with him a little bit. He’s like a cute dog that pees on the rug and doesn’t know what they’re doing. He just blindly walks through life, fucking shit up, but I don’t really think he has horrible intentions. He’s just surviving. He’s just a hustler and this is how he operates. I think he’s just on autopilot. When I read the script, I was like, “Okay, this guy is a horrible person. Nobody is gonna root for him. Why is anyone gonna care to watch this two hour movie and see what happens to him, at the end?” So, I made him boyishly charming and somewhat likable, and maybe he doesn’t mean all of these things, he’s just doing it without thinking. He’s just going. I think that’s enough.
What was it like to actually have to shoot the scene where you’re running naked and barefoot down the street? Did you have to do anything to prepare yourself for that moment? Did you give yourself some sort of pep talk, or were you just game for it, once you were on set?
REX: It was a little of both. I read the script and was like, “Okay, let’s do this.” When we shot that scene, it was in the middle of the night in a sketchy neighborhood. We were shooting without permits a lot. I remember the cops rolled up on us once, as I was about to run down the street naked, and I had to hide in the van with a robe. The cops pulled up and were like, “What are you guys doing here? Why are you guys here in the middle of the night? What’s going on?” We explained, “We’re shooting this movie.” And they were like, “Oh, yeah, we know you’re in town. It’s all good.” I think they’re used to worst crime happening. It was sketchy because we were hiding from cops and hoping the neighbors didn’t wake up and see us. We were doing this clandestine stealth operation in the middle of the night to get those shots. If anything, to run barefoot on this shitty road that was gravel, it hurt my feet, so they had to duct tape the bottom of my feet. That’s why I’m running funny. It looks comedic, like a Jerry Lewis run, because it was hard to run barefoot. That was actually the hardest part. I was barefoot on the gravel because we had to do it on the street. There were a lot of challenges. The whole movie was a challenge like that. We were just working against all of these things. We had barely any money. We were shooting on film, so we had to get it because it was on film. And then, there was COVID. It was a lot of chaos.
Did you have specific conversations about that scene and what it would be, how it would come out and how it would be shot?
REX: Yeah, Sean made it very clear. He was very good at making us feel comfortable with the sex scenes and with the nudity and with how he was shooting it. He explained, “This is how it’s gonna be. I know this feels long and uncomfortable because you’re gonna be running for a minute down the street, but I’m gonna use seven seconds.” Sean knows what he wants. He wrote it, he’s directing it, and he’s editing it. He already knows how he’s gonna cut it, so he’s very clear with you about what he’s gonna do. It puts you at ease to have the captain of the ship be so clear on what he wants. He’s not blindly just running around. Everything was very, very thought out in his brain and he makes it very clear, and that puts you at ease. You’re just like, “Okay, he knows what he’s doing.” I just went for it. I didn’t really have anything to lose. It’s not like I had some career that this was gonna fuck up. I had gotten a really good job in a long time. I had little roles, here and there, and worked a little bit on shit, but nothing like this, not the lead in a Sean Baker movie. So, I just had to go for it. I just said, “Fuck it.”
What was your reaction to seeing the scene in the finished film with the music and with the way it was cut together?
REX: I think it’s brilliant. Obviously, it’s hard to watch yourself for two hours. It’s hard enough to watch yourself on a Zoom or a FaceTime. That’s just human nature. It’s hard to just watch the movie objectively because I’m in almost every frame of this two hour and four minute movie, and it’s all of me. It’s a lot, but once I got past that and I found all of these other parts of the movie and could really just zone out and watch it, as a whole, and get over my ego about myself, I could appreciate it. It was definitely challenging to watch it and not think, “I wonder why we didn’t use that take.” There are all of these things because you lived it. But once that all goes away and you watch it as a whole, the movie gets better and better. It gets better and better, the more you watch it. I’m just very happy with the movie and proud of it.
This film has a bit of an ambiguous ending to it. How did you feel about the ending? What does the ending mean to you?
REX: We didn’t discuss it and I’m glad we didn’t because he leaves it open to interpretation. I just committed to the fact that I was showing up at her place, at the end. Usually in a movie, a character has an arc. He or she begins somewhere, and then ends somewhere different, and you watch the change. But in this movie, Mikey starts the movie showing up with nothing and beat up, and then he ends the movie getting kicked out and basically being beat up and nothing but his clothes in a bag. It’s full circle. His life is cyclical. It’s this pattern that he keeps doing, showing up and getting kicked out of places. I think, in the end, he was just beat down and he didn’t have enough money to get back home. He was just completely exhausted and defeated. I just made it basically a blank look at the end, of defeat. However, the audience wants to interpret it, you go ahead. Was she real? Maybe, maybe not. Are they gonna go back and live happily ever after? I don’t know. I just kept it vague, as far as where it’s going from there. It’s however you wanna interpret it. That’s what a good movie should be. It doesn’t give you a tightly wrapped bow, at the end. It’s up to you to decide.
Red Rocket is now playing in theaters.