Baker won the coveted Academy Award with “Anora”, his latest neo -realist portrait of the low funds of society, in which a Stríper believes that he took the lottery from life by marrying the son of a Russian oligarch.
“Thanks to the Academy, this means so much,” said Baker, who got on the stage to receive the statues for the best original script and best edition.
In his first nomination as best director, Baker won Brady Corbet (“The Brutalist”), James Mangold (“A complete stranger”), Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Pérez”) and Coralie Fargeat (“The substance”).
It has been a long road to the most great Hollywood stage for Baker, 54.
Delgated and infallibly affable, with an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema, Baker is known for including authentic sexual workers in his films.
Despite his devotion to art and essay cinema, Baker’s only previous encounter with the Oscar’s maelstrom came when Willem Dafoe (a rare renowned star in his work) was nominated for a secondary role in his production “The Florida project”.
That fleeting look at the awards campaign was “a crazy, crazy race”, but the American audience is told that “it only comes to the cinema for the great blockbusters, everything else can be achieved in Netflix,” Baker told AFP.
With “Anora”, who won the gold palm at its premiere at the Cannes Festival in May, Baker has opened to a broader audience.
He became his highest grossing film, raising about 40 million dollars globally.
“Anora” won last month the top award of the guild of Hollywood directors, where, visibly shocked, he told his companions that his “imposter syndrome” was “by the clouds.”
“In front of our noses”
Born on February 26, 1971, Baker started in the cinema thanks to his mother, who was a teacher.
He stung the big screen at six years, when he saw Boris Karloff playing the monster in “Frankenstein.”
His first feature film, “Four Letter Words”, premiered in 2000, shortly after graduating at the University of New York, but his life was uncontrolled because of a heroin addiction.
When he recovered, Baker was determined to continue in the industry.
He released “Take out” (2004), on a Chinese immigrant in New York who tries to settle his debts with a smuggler.
But it was “Starlet” (2012), about a porn actress, who made him be interested in sex workers, contacting prostitutes, companions and exotic dancers, many of whom became friends.
Asked why so many of his films focus on sex work, Baker told AFP in May that “we are all fascinated (…) because it is in front of our noses, we realize or not.”
“It’s not a joke. From my kitchen, I can literally look at a massage room with a happy ending,” said Baker, who lives in Los Angeles.
Baker’s next movie, “Tangerine: Fabulous girls” was shot with iPhones and followed two transsexual prostitutes through the streets of Los Angeles on a crazy day.
He was followed by “The Florida project”, about a six -year -old girl who lives in a cheap motel with her mother, a Stríper who loses her job and begins to request sex work online.
Bria Vinaite, who plays the mother in distress, was discovered by Baker on Instagram, while one of the children actors, in a supermarket.
The scandalous and the mundane
Baker competed for the Golden Palm of Cannes for the first time in 2021.
“Red Rocket”, a “Lolita” story of a porn star that returns to his small hometown of Texas to prepare a young woman, earned Baker the usual good reviews.
Last year he returned to the French festival with “Anora”, where the ovations marked the beginning of a prize campaign that was unstoppable.
Baker then declared AFP that he expected a more “divisive” response. “We all have different opinions about sex work.”
For Baker, the lives of these human beings, often imperfect, whose days and nights contain both the scandalous and the mundane, “they can be addressed forever.”
“I can’t do alone, and sorry for my terminology, because it is an ancient term, a story of ‘prostitutes with a heart of gold,'” he added.
