Sean Baker on Making Future Films About Sex Work: ‘I Never Wanted It to Become a Shtick of Mine’

It’s fair to say Sean Baker is trying to change how people look at sex workers.

In his iPhone-shot 2015 indie “Tangerine” he explored a friendship between two transgender sex workers who find solace in their support of one another. In “Starlet” and “Red Rocket,” he used the porn industry as a way of dissecting issues around finding connection and building trust. Most recently, in his Palme d’Or winning “Anora,” Baker follows an exotic dancer given the chance at a fairytale lifestyle free of gentlemen’s clubs and scuzzy men…or, at least, so she thinks. Despite a deep, grounded understanding of these stigmatized and marginalized communities, Baker isn’t placing all his chips on these stories and doesn’t want to be tied to only making films about this group.

“I never wanted it to become a shtick of mine or anything like that,” Baker told the crowd at IndieWire’s Future of Filmmaking Summit in Los Angeles November 2. “I want these to be stories that I am passionate about telling and feel I can do it in the most respectful and responsible way.”

Even so, he understands the importance of giving sex workers a platform and having their stories told in a way that doesn’t demean them or the work they engage in. Especially around the time he made “Tangerine,” Baker realized the responsibility he had in not only crafting entertaining stories, but also in undoing much of the negative characterization sex workers have been given in media representations.

“I hope by presenting our characters in a way that allows for empathy and has the audience rooting for our protagonists that it will help chip away at what I think is a very unfair stigma that’s applied to this livelihood,” said Baker.

IndieWire’s Editor-in-Chief, Dana Harris-Bridson, went on to ask Baker about his addiction to opioids during his 20s and how that may have inspired his interest in these communities. In fact, Baker had been planning to make a film about this period in his life (he’s clean now, though did admit he enjoys his THC), but unfortunately, it fell through during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Describing the project, Baker said, “It was my tackling of that world and it was about drug user activism up in Vancouver because it actually made me — I think going through it — understand an insider’s point of view of that and know that these aren’t evil people, these are people who unfortunately are just stuck in active addiction.” 

Baker explained how, like sex work, drug use and the drug trade are far too stigmatized, especially in America and he views that as “incredibly unfair,” especially because most people facing active addiction would much rather be clean. He admitted that the decade he spent doing heroin set him behind many of the filmmakers viewed as his peers.

“I’m 10 years older than the Safdies, I’m 10 years older than Barry Jenkins and Chloe Zhao,” said Baker. “It’s because I was 10 years doing heroin in New York by myself and it’s something that I don’t recommend. It’s not good for filmmaking.”