The Fairy Tale Night of Sean Baker, Director of Dreams Gone Awry
Sean Baker came equipped with extra speeches, and that was wise: On the night of the Oscars, he wound up onstage four times to receive four statues.
That's not just unusual. It's almost unheard-of.
Baker's film 'Anora,' about a sex worker in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn who marries the son of a Russian oligarch and then watches it all go sideways, earned five Oscars overall on Sunday. One went to its ingénue star, Mikey Madison, and four to Baker: best director, best original screenplay, best editing and best picture.
By taking home four Oscars on a single night, Baker joins just one other luminary: none other than Walt Disney, who pulled off the same trick in 1954. That year, Disney won best documentary feature ('The Living Desert'), best documentary short subject ('The Alaskan Eskimo'), best cartoon short subject ('Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom') and best two-reel short subject ('Bear Country').
But even Disney didn't pull off Baker's feat: earning four Oscars on one night for the same movie. Doing so requires wearing a lot of hats, and Baker, who started his career in ultra-low-budget independent films, has a deep hatrack.
Movies are a collaborative art, and even the most hands-on filmmakers work with a team of artists and craftspeople. But writing, directing, editing and producing a film leaves a distinctive personal mark. Disney, who was heavily involved with his studio's projects, certainly did so. Similarly, 'Anora' audiences who know Baker's work probably spotted his fingerprints from the moment the film starts. (And not just because Baker emulates John Carpenter, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and Wes Anderson by sticking with one typeface for the titles of all his films — Aguafina Script Pro, if you were wondering.)
One of Baker's hallmarks, the one people most often associate with him, is a focus on people who live on the margins of society, especially but not exclusively sex workers.
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