Red Rocket (2021) on Netflix
Washed-up porn star Mikey Saber returns to his Texas City hometown. His estranged wife Lexi and her mother take him in. He meets Strawberry, a teenager at a donut shop counter.
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- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.1/1043,922 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Mikey Saber has spent years in the adult film business in Los Angeles, and now he is back in Texas City, Texas, with little money and nowhere else to go. He turns up at the house of Lexi, the wife he left behind, and her mother Lil, who let him sleep on the couch on the condition that he find a job and help around the house. Interviews go nowhere because of the gap in his work history and his reputation, so he returns to selling cannabis for Leondria, the mother of a former schoolmate. He borrows an old bicycle to get around. At a donut shop, he is drawn to Raylee, a seventeen-year-old who calls herself Strawberry and works the counter.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Red Rocket (2021)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Baker had wanted to cast Simon Rex for five years but had never actually met him; when he finally called Rex on October 23, 2020, he gave him just five minutes to record an iPhone audition, and Rex then drove to Texas to dodge post-flight quarantine rules because filming was due to start in only three days.
- Sean Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch conceived the Saber character while researching the adult film industry for their 2012 film Starlet, when they met several men who fit the archetype of a “suitcase pimp”, which Baker defines as “male talent who lives off a female talent in the adult film world.”
- A planned drive-in screening of the film tied to Travis Scott's Astroworld Festival, meant to feature appearances by Baker, Scott and the cast, was canceled after a mass casualty event at Scott's concert just three days earlier.
- Principal photography ran in Texas from October 26 to November 19, 2020, under rigorous pandemic safety protocols, and the film was shot on 16 mm with a crew of 10 people, no rehearsal time and mostly non-actors.
- The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney called Simon Rex's casting a "winking joke," since before his mainstream acting career Rex had made solo videos for a gay pornography company.
- Securing the rights to NSYNC's song “Bye Bye Bye” was not part of the film's initial budget, and all five members of the band had to approve its use before it could be heard.
