THE FLORIDA PROJECT DISNEY MATTER
Revolving around a crazy story of homelessness, The Florida Project is the latest vibrant movie from Sean Baker. He tells Katherine McLaughlin about his journalistic research and why
he chose not to record this fi lm digitally
T he latest i lm in Sean Baker’s compassionate oeuvre is a vivid slice of life about the hidden homeless who live in motels close to Florida’s Disney World. The Florida Project follows a bunch of mischievous kids as they explore the local neighbourhood, getting into trouble and winding up a kindly manager played by Willem Dafoe. Baker’s spirited directorial style, paired with cinematography by Alexis Zabe, results in a i lm that soars with anarchic beauty and pops with gorgeous candy colours – just like his 2015 hit Tangerine, a kaleidoscopic romp through the streets of LA, famously shot on three iPhone 5s. We caught up with Baker at the London Film Festival.
On the moment he decided to become a i lmmaker . . . It’s a distinct moment. My mother brought me to the local library when I was in i rst grade and they were showing clips from the Universal monster movies. They would show the big scenes like Dracula rising from the grave, the Creature from the Black Lagoon stealing the girl and then of course the burning windmill sequence in James Whale’s Frankenstein. For some reason the [Boris] Karloff image in the internal mechanics of the windmill just stuck with me. I remember the next morning saying that I wanted to make i lms. On researching Orlando’s motel communities . . . The motels were brought to my attention by my co- screenwriter [Chris Bergoch], whose mother had moved to Orlando. The local media had been focusing in on it in the same way we had in our i lm, regarding the juxtaposition and the irony of what was going on there. It was eye-opening on the hidden homeless. We had started writing this before Tangerine, so it was all based on the news articles we were reading. It wasn’t until we got a grant that we were able to go
there and interview people from a very journalistic approach. We talked to as many people as possible including residents and motel managers. We met this one guy in particular who really helped inspire the Bobby character [played by Dafoe]. Eventually it was about absorbing the environment, so we felt like we could properly l esh out these characters and do it in a way that would be truthful. On the i lms that inspired The Florida Project’s young performances . . . I don’t know how known it is over here but The Little Rascals series in particular, the ones that Hal Roach produced in the 1920s and 30s. They reached heights with child performances in comedy that haven’t been matched in the years since. I always looked at those as the model. We made sure we looked at as much as we could in terms of child performances that were realistic and grounded. So, from P’tit Quinquin to a Korean i lm called Miracle on 1st Street, Ken Loach’s Kes and, of course, The 400 Blows.
On shooting on 35mm . . . I decided to shoot on it for many reasons. First the aesthetic: there’s this organic nature you achieve through the photo chemical process that you simply can’t duplicate on digital. I can always distinctly tell when something is shot on i lm. There was also the fact that I was becoming ‘the iPhone guy’ so I wanted to go 180 degrees in the other direction. And then there’s also the fact that we’re living in an age where the death of i lm is a real thing. This is my little contribution to help keep Kodak in business. At the same time, I don’t want to downplay the real positive impact the iPhone had. I have to be an advocate for all mediums. You can i nd beauty in all mediums.
The Florida Project is out Fri 10 Nov. See review, page 87.
48 THE LIST 1 Nov 2017–31 Jan 2018