‘The Florida Project’: Sean Baker Talks Divisive Endings & Post-Weinstein Indie Cinema [Antalya Interview]

Exactly. Miramax and then TWC were supposedly at the forefront of “independent” cinema but really adhered to an outdated model of a studio with a product, and now companies like A24 appear not to be using that model anymore, which can only be a good thing.
Right? And you have to remember what the Academy Awards were originally, it was a promotional show put together to help the studios promote their big movies. It only seriously changed in the last, what, ten years? It’s now become more about the actual quality — well, there’s always been quality films, I’m not saying there haven’t — but it’s less about a studio trying to promote a product and more about a real comment on what is culturally making a difference.

Look at “Moonlight” — it would never even have been part of the discussion if it had been made a few years before. Now it seems like the decision behind what is being selected and pushed for Oscars has more to do with what’s striking a chord. In the past I’ve always been very skeptical about what is nominated and why and it’s nice to see it’s not all about the money anymore.

That’s true, and also I think it has a huge amount to do with the even more recent change in the Academy membership profile which I hope it will benefit films like yours. Though I understand it could have missed out on that — this was a script you had written six years ago?
Yes, and six years ago would it have been a different film. For many reasons, the most obvious is that my entire cast would have been different — I wouldn’t have had Brooklynn Prince, who was one at the time, and I can’t imagine this film without Brooklynn. Now it seems like she’s just as much this movie as the movie is her.

So there’s that but then there’s also I think “Tangerine” helped us slightly — not entirely because if you look back at [Baker’s earlier features] “Starlet” and “Prince of Broadway” there’s humor that runs through all of them. But “Tangerine” was much more of an overt comedy and going for real “entertainment” and I think that helped us, it dictated the style of this film. So I think “The Florida Project” six years ago would have been darker, it would have been perhaps not as focussed on the children. I don’t know exactly how it would have played out, but I do feel that “Tangerine” had a big impact on it, also in terms of the audience and the warm reception it had. People seemed to like that approach and so we took it a little further this time.

But also, six years ago there was a different social context. Would that have impacted on it?
I don’t know, you know? I mean, obviously, we still shot this while Obama was in office. And what we noticed when we revisited it, after we got a grant from Cinereach to start doing trips down there, we found that nothing had changed — in fact, we now had children the age of Moonee who had spent their entire lives in that situation. They had grown up in a motel. So to tell you the truth, if anything I felt it was even more relevant and more timely in that it wasn’t merely three years after the recession when it was perhaps an issue that would go away or fade, it’s something that has existed for close to a decade now, and it’s getting worse.

Yes, soon there will be an entire generation of people who will have always lived under those circumstances, for whom that type of existence is normal and who will find it increasingly difficult to get out of that trap.
And that is one of the many reasons why I feel the film is better coming out right now. It means more. Especially now with Trump’s proposed budget cuts to HUD [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development]. There needs to be public support, getting behind telling [HUD head] Ben Carson this better not happen, so it’s a topic we’re trying to talk about during Q&As and doing press so that we can hopefully make a difference. It’s so hard to know, in terms of the big picture, how much of an impact it’s having.

I think the timing is key in both directions though, because while the film highlights a social ill, it is not really political in the more controversial sense. I wonder would you have been able to shoot it now, under Trump and keep it so apolitical? 
Oof, I don’t know — I really don’t know. It is a bipartisan issue, though, and that’s how we’re talking about it because we don’t want to alienate 30% of the country. We want to actually talk to everybody. So I went on a conservative radio show the other day! Yeah, Hugh Hewitt‘s show. But it wasn’t about slamming Trump, or even slamming the political conditions leading up to the crisis, it was about talking about an issue that everyone needs to get involved in right now. This is not partisan, you don’t even have to know what my political leanings are.

And it was great, Hewitt was very supportive of the film, he wanted to know how his listeners could help and I gave them the website to the agency that we worked with directly in the area — which is hope192.com, and they’re trying to get an affording housing complex built in that area . But then I also said, nationally if you are motivated or inspired by this film, look into it in your own community, go to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and get involved.

So he was great, and you never know, you do a conservative radio show and you don’t know whether or not you’re going to be slammed [by your liberal allies] for even doing that! But I think people are seeing that this is a bipartisan issue, about a human right. Affordable housing is a fundamental human right and that’s the message we’re trying to get across, because in the United States, we have an affordable housing crisis.