New York-born scriptwriter-director Sean Baker stayed close to home for his first three films: debut feature Four Letter Words (2000) is set in suburban New Jersey, and his next two works, Take Out (2004) and Prince of Broadway (2008), in the Big Apple. For Starlet (2012), he went to Los Angeles, the magnet for those who dream of making it big in Hollywood.
Baker's fourth film stars Dree Hemingway (daughter of Mariel and great-granddaughter of Ernest) and Besedka Johnson, who was "discovered" at the age of 85 in the locker room of a YMCA by a friend of Baker's. (Johnson died last April.) The film centres on the friendship that springs up between 21-year-old Jane and the elderly Sadie when Jane finds a stash of money in a thermos flask she buys at Sadie's yard sale.
That's originally what I wanted to explore: the days in which [adult film actors] aren't shooting. The stuff in between
Baker says the plot is based on a real-life incident. "Finding money at a yard sale actually happened to a friend of the family," the indie filmmaker says. "My father's friend approached my father, a lawyer, to ask about the legality of keeping this money. And it stuck with me. I thought it would be a good catalyst for bringing two characters together. I wanted to explore cross-generational friendship, how a person from one generation could affect a person from another."
Baker also wanted to break some female stereotypes. Sadie, for example, is a childless widow who lives alone and seems almost joyless. Yet, as Starlet shows, there's much more to her life and past than first meets the eye.
Jane, meanwhile, is an aspiring starlet from the American heartland who ends up working in the adult film industry in Los Angeles. So why add this element to a quirky but uncontroversial film?
"It was another part of the world I wanted to explore. I was exposed to it working on a television show [ Warren the Ape, an MTV reality show parody using puppets]. We had cameos with adult film performers, and I became acquaintances with some of these people, both female and male," Baker says. "I found their world fascinating because they live alternative lifestyles and they live on the fringe of normal society. And I always find those lifestyles fascinating and want to explore them [through my films]."