Sean Baker had to tell a teeny little lie about Anora's runtime to get it made

Anora is one of this awards season's biggest contenders, particularly for the lead performance from Mikey Madison. But for such a major movie it was made "tiny and under the radar" using "all the guerrilla indie techniques," director Sean Baker says in Variety's latest Directors on Directors conversation with Brady Corbet. In Baker's words, he "put all the money on the screen by making, borrowing and stealing." 

For example, Baker says he knew going into shooting the film that it was going to have a run time of two hours 20 minutes. But "two weeks out from production," they had to do an international presale "for everything to work and for us to move forward," the filmmaker explains. "I had to sign a contract saying I would deliver the film at 2:10. That killed me, because I knew I was lying when I signed the contract. I knew it, but I thought, 'I don't even understand, am I going to be held to this? … It’s not cool, because I lived with that stress for over a year."

Eventually in the making of the film it hit two hours and Baker knew there was "no way I’m wrapping this film up in 10 minutes." Fortunately, his partners said, "'Oh, just make a good movie, and if it’s good enough, no problem.'" That worked out for Anora, but Baker says he'll "Never, ever again" put himself in such a situation: "I would rather not make that film than deal with the stress."

Runtime features prominently in the directors' discussion; Corbet's The Brutalist is three hours and 35 minutes long, presented in two acts with a 15 minute intermission. Corbet says he also lived with a similar stress to Baker's, and was frustrated by having to leave the making of the movie to have "conversations about runtime." He sees it as "old fashioned": "Why are we still having this conversation about runtime in the age of streaming when people are binge watching five or six hours…?" He questioned. "I don't understand why when folks are wearing tights and a cape, it's okay for it to be three hours long. And yet when you're making a drama about adults for adults by adults, it's like, 'Well, you have to mop this all up in 90 minutes.' And 90 minutes is not that much time to really settle in."

In Corbet's mind, "I just think it's the wrong conversation to be having," he says, "and it's frustrating that it's so standard to include that in a director's contract, about delivering it under a certain runtime."