by Gill Pringle
What’s a washed-up porn star meant to do when he’s burned all his bridges?
In the case of Red Rocket’s Mikey Saber, he finds the answer staring him in the face from behind the counter of his local donut cafe, in the small industrial hometown where he’s returned to lick his wounds.
Barely legal, “Strawberry” is charmed by Mikey’s promises of escaping to a new life, as the audience learns the meaning of the term “suitcase pimp”.
Rarely explored on film beyond perhaps Bob Fosse’s Star 80 [timely, considering that story allegedly involved Peter Bogdanovich, who passed away today], the suitcase pimp is a male hanger-on, often a loosely employed boyfriend or husband, who manages a more popular female porn star, grooming and using her.
After examining sex work through different prisms in his earlier films, Starlet (2012), Tangerine (2015) and The Florida Project (2017), director Sean Baker felt there might be a way to make a film about one of these players, provided the right person came along.
Certain of one thing, he had no desire to tell the story as dour drama or moralistic tragedy, but instead have the film flip flop between comedy to quiet poignancy and back again.
Aware of Rex since his MTV VJing days, Baker recalls, “I noticed that Simon had a presence. And you know what? He made me laugh on a daily basis. He could act. I saw that. Even in those six-second videos, he was shining.”
As a former porn star in real life [he appeared in a couple of films early in his career], Simon Rex, 47, is genius as Mikey in this darkly funny tragicomedy.
FilmInk gets a sex education and then some when we chat to Rex.
Given your background in porn, you understand Mikey’s hustle. What was your way into this role?
“Basically, I’m a survivor and I think Mikey is a survivor. The difference between us is that Mikey Saber will do whatever it takes to make it to the top. He’ll burn bridges, he’ll hurt people, he’s a narcissistic sociopath and a delusional, dangerous person. I’d like to believe that I’m the opposite of a lot of those traits. I might have been a bit of a narcissist back in the day. I think we’re all narcissists to a certain degree, but some are like malignant narcissists. I wouldn’t know how you diagnose it exactly, but he’s a dangerous person and he’s not self-aware.
“I basically pulled from seeing this kind of person around me all the time in Hollywood. We all know this kind of person from high school or relationships we’ve had with lovers or boyfriends and girlfriends, whatever. We’ve all had this person in our lives and that’s why I think it resonates, because it’s so toxic and dangerous, yet sometimes you get fooled by them.
“I just pulled from experiencing these dangerous people. Because I live in LA, they’re everywhere. Let’s be realistic. I’d say about 80% – I did the math – of people in LA are dangerous narcissistic sociopaths, and they think they’re going to make it. They just think that they’re “it”, and they’re just delusional. That’s funny to me and it’s also interesting and that’s what this character was.
“I just had to make him likeable, so the audiences rooted for me because otherwise who cares? If he’s just an asshole for two hours, you don’t care what happens to him at the end.”
Can you talk about the phenomenon of the “suitcase pimp”? Did you meet any of those guys back in the day?
“No, I never did. I didn’t even know what that was until Sean told me. I guess that’s a common thing from the ‘80s and it’s exactly the same thing with Mikey who’s using this woman to be in Playboy Magazine and keep all the benefits and go to the Playboy Mansion to make money.
“But I looked it up in the Urban Dictionary and it is a real thing and then at the LA Premiere, this guy comes up to me from the Adult film industry and he says, ‘I just want to thank you because you did an amazing job of portraying this world and the suitcase pimp. You nailed it’.
“It’s really Sean Baker who deserves credit because he’s the one who lived in this world for years and interviewed people, and he showed me some footage of the archetype of the “suitcase pimp” character, and after about 5 minutes of watching an interview with one of them, I was like ‘I got it. I totally understand it’.
“It doesn’t even really matter that they’re in that industry because it’s basically the same personality type that you meet everywhere. These people are all over the world and I think that’s why the film connects with people because it’s like, you’ve been hurt by this person; you know this person. And maybe some people watching this movie are this person. I don’t know if they’d be able to be aware of that, but I think it’s just a character study and a personality type as much as it is a career.”
Despite all your success on TV and film and with your rap alter ego Dirt Nasty, it seems like you’d moved away from Hollywood when Sean Baker came knocking on your door.
“Yes, I moved to Joshua Tree to get off the grid, just be in nature, hike, ride my little motorcycle around, read, shut it all off and just kinda strip everything away.
“I’m hypersensitive, not in a good way, I’m too sensitive so if I’m in the big city I get overwhelmed by everyone. You know… traffic… right now it’s a very tumultuous time in America, especially in LA. It feels very wild and lawless and crazy right now, so that affects me. So, if I go out to the desert, I can breathe and just think clearly and reset so that I can come back into the chaos and handle it a little bit better. Especially right now, things have been a little crazy for me with the attention for this movie, not in a bad way, it’s just a lot. A lot of people coming at me, and everyone wants something and I’m just getting pulled in a million directions and it’s a lot coming out of this pandemic and being alone in the desert, so I need the balance of getting out into nature once a month because I couldn’t live there full time either, but we’re in a pandemic so it’s good right now.”
Has it been lonely living there?
“Extremely, I’d be lying if I said you didn’t go through some really heavy shit out there. I dare anyone to go out there by yourself for three days, much less months on end, by yourself in the middle of nowhere and see what comes up. But sometimes, you have to break down to break through and I think it’s good to deal with that and I don’t think most people can sit with themselves for five minutes alone and that’s the problem right now, with our phones and stuff. Most people can’t just sit with themself. So, I think that in the past couple of years that I’ve been spending out there, I’ve grown more than ever. Go outside your comfort zone and strip it all away and you realise that when you’re not stimulated by constant noise, it’s really interesting.
“But it needs to be done in small doses because we’re social monkeys and we need each other so it’s not good to do it too much, but everything is balance. It’s just a matter of going out there and finding that balance which I’m learning how to juggle.”
You have a great screen rapport with Suzanna Son who plays Strawberry. Can you talk about working together?
“She’s just a natural. She had never done anything before, but she’s a star. She moved to LA to make it, she wasn’t just someone randomly plucked off the street like a lot of the cast, so she was destined to be a star. She’s a singer, an entertainer, she teaches piano, she’s just got the thing – but between takes she was really nervous because she had never done this before.
“It’s a lot being thrown into a Sean Baker movie during a pandemic and it was stressful and as soon as the cameras rolled, she just lit it up and transformed and then it would cut and she would kind of be, in a cute way, ‘was that okay? Was that good? And I was like, ‘You’re nailing it’.
“I’ve worked with enough people in this business to have a gut instinct whether or not they have the thing or not. You’ve got it or you don’t; you can go to acting school as long as you want, but if you don’t have the thing, that’s it. And she’s got the thing! So, it was great working with her, and like with everyone on this movie, happy to be there and working and it was just one of those magical movies where everything was really special, and everyone was in the same boat together just wanting to make a good movie.”
You’ve featured on TV shows Felicity, Jack and Jill, and What I Like About You, and also a lot of films including Scary Movie 3, 4, and 5, Hotel California and Superhero Movie. Have you ever worked in Australia?
“Yeah, I actually did a TV show there six or seven years ago, a TV show for Lifetime, the name is escaping me right now [Monarch Cove]. But I got to live on the Gold Coast for months and I loved it. I’ve been to Australia several times and I love it out there and obviously, I love shooting up to Bali when I’m there. I love Australia, it’s like a nicer, cleaner America. You have 30 million people in a country the same size as America, and we have 30 million people in California alone, so Australia feels a lot more open with a lot of space.”
What’s next?
“I think I wanna play Aussie Rules Football, but I might be too old. I wanna move there and pursue a career in athletics. No, but seriously, I think I want to continue to work and be surprising people with things like this. I don’t think anybody knew I had this in me and that’s pretty cool because Sean Baker gave me the shot to do some dramatic acting. I’ve done plenty of comedy, but here I needed to be very grounded and real. And I think the phones are ringing and giving me offers and it’s just a matter of choosing the right projects.
“I’m confident that me and my team will be able to do that, so I just wanna continue to do movies that I wanna watch and characters that are interesting. Whereas a year ago I would’ve killed to just do some shitty TV show or a movie that sucked just to get money. Now, for the first time in 20 years, I’m able to say no to things and all I wanna do is to continue to do good work.
“All this award buzz is so flattering and is so cool but just whatever it takes to help me continue to work and I think this movie is enough to make that happen.”
Red Rocket is in cinemas January 6, 2022
