Issue 28: Anora

Currently on Mikey, McDonald's, Morty, and McConaughey.

📝 Reviewing: Anora

People see what they want to see. They never ask who you really are.

Sean Baker has a history of creating films that explore the nuanced lives of sex workers. His latest film, Anora, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, continues with that trend.

The film centers on Ani (Mikey Madison), a young sex worker in New York who marries the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. Marketed as “a modern-day Cinderella story,” I don’t feel that Anora delivers on that comparison. Cinderella’s tale is one of hope, kindness, and transformation, yet this film devolves into a silly, tedious buddy comedy.

While Anora does carry a constant tension reminiscent of Uncut Gems, it lacks the underbelly grit that made the New York of Uncut Gems feel lived-in and immersive. Anora‘s depiction of New York feels like a facade, despite Baker’s use of real-life workers in real-world settings. Additionally, the flawed protagonist in Uncut Gems had layered motivations you couldn’t help but root for despite his shortcomings, but Anora struggles to evoke the same connection.

Because the wealthy Russian family can pay their way out of harm, this diminishes the stakes and any sense of consequence. The supporting characters are unlikable and undermine the gravity of the film’s subject matter. A story involving sex work should have an empathetic, thoughtful lens. But here, it feels dismissive rather than insightful.

While Baker’s commitment to telling stories from this specific community is appreciated, Anora ultimately feels shallow and disjointed, its characters applying more slapstick than lipstick. Anora is currently playing in theaters.

📣 Recommending: Cabel Sasser, 2024 XOXO Festival

XOXO was a conference that brought together artists and creators to share their stories of working online. In this year’s festival—its final one—Cabel Sasser, founder of Panic who created Firewatch and Playdate, shared a story about how a trip to McDonald’s led him down a rabbit hole of history, creativity, collecting, and remembering. It’s a story that unfolds in an unexpected and touching way—a tribute to why we should always read the plaque and document your work. Cabel’s presentation is available to stream on YouTube.

Thanks to my friend Livvy for sharing this with me.

🤔 Thinking About: The Story Circle

Whatever is going on with me at the time will find its way into the piece. It has to or the piece isn’t worth making.

— Quentin Tarantino

Dialogue in film is so important to me. When characters take distinct, uninterrupted turns while speaking, I check out. When characters frequently call each other by name, I check out.

But I get it—writing dialogue for characters is difficult. What they should say is different from what you think they would say, which is different from what they would actually say.

If you listen closely, what people say in real life isn’t always interesting. It’s messy, bumbling, contradictory, and incomplete—but it’s real. Recreating this reality in a fictitious story is the magic glue that elevates a story from boring to believable. As I work on writing my own film, unlocking this magic has been the primary blocker delaying my progress.

In my research to overcome this, I discovered a new-to-me story framework called The Story Circle. Created by Dan Harmon (Rick and Morty, Community), The Story Circle is a simpler take on The Hero’s Journey and differs slightly from other story structures like Save the Cat and the Three Act. I’ve been reflecting on this framework and how it can help what’s going on with me find its way into my piece.

📺 Watching: Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

When traveling, my favorite thing to do is wander—to take the side street, walk down that alleyway, or turn that random corner. I find that’s the best way to experience a new place—by getting lost in an already unfamiliar setting. Often, this has led to some of my favorite photographs, which then calcify my memories of a place.

I recently went to New Orleans to celebrate a wedding. While wandering, I noticed that it was very much a “stoop city.” There were many people, often teens, sitting on front steps and watching the world go by. At the wedding, a friend shared a page with me from Matthew McConaughey’s book, Greenlights. It was a love letter to New Orleans and captured my experience so eloquently. It was reassuring to realize that my perspective wasn’t unique—that there’s just something special about that town.

McConaughey recently sat down with Rick Rubin to discuss film, relationships, spirituality, and life. The page from Greenlights is below and Rubin’s interview is available to stream on YouTube.

Thanks to my friend Ryan for sharing this page with me.

Dear New Orleans,

What a big, beautiful mess you are. A giant flashing yellow light—proceed with caution, but proceed.

Not overly ambitious, you have a strong identity, and don’t look outside yourself for intrigue, evolution, or monikers of progress. Proud of who you are, you know your flavor, it’s your very own, and if people want to come taste it, you welcome them without solicitation. Your hours trickle by, Tuesdays and Saturdays more similar than anywhere else. Your seasons slide into one another. You’re the Big Easy…home of the shortest hangover on the planet, where a libation greets you on a Monday morning with the same smile as it did on Saturday night.

Home of the front porch, not the back. This engineering feat provides so much of your sense of community and fellowship as you relax facing the street and your neighbors across it. Rather than retreating into the seclusion of the backyard, you engage with the goings-on of the world around you, on your front porch. Private properties hospitably trespass on each other and lend across borders where a 9:00 A.M. alarm clock is church bells, sirens, and a slow-moving eight-buck-an-hour carpenter nailing a windowpane two doors down.

You don’t sweat details or misdemeanors, and since everybody’s getting away with something anyway, the rest just wanna be on the winning side. And if you can swing the swindle, good for you, because you love to gamble and rules are made to be broken, so don’t preach about them, abide. Peddlin worship and litigation, where else do the dead rest eye to eye with the livin?

You’re a right-brain city. Don’t show up wearing your morals on your sleeve ’less you wanna get your arm burned. The humidity suppresses most reason so if you’re crossing a one-way street, it’s best to look both ways.

Mother Nature rules, the natural law capital “Q” Queen reigns supreme, a science to the animals, an overbearing and inconsiderate bitch to us bipeds. But you forgive her, and quickly, cus you know any disdain with her wrath will reap more: bad luck, voodoo, karma. So you roll with it, meander rather, slowly forward, takin it all in stride, never sweating the details. Your art is in your overgrowth. Mother Nature wears the crown around here, her royalty rules, and unlike in England, she has both influence and power.

You don’t use vacuum cleaners, no, you use brooms and rakes to manicure. Where it falls is where it lays, the swerve around the pothole, the duck beneath the branch, the poverty and the murder rate, all of it, just how it is and how it turned out. Like a gumbo, your medley’s in the mix.

—June 7, 2013, New Orleans, La.

Thanks for being here.
— Justin

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P.S. Apparently I’ve always had a lot of thoughts on these types of things:

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