SIMON REX SEBASTIAN MOVIE
He was paid handsomely for three instalments of the execrable Scary Movie franchise, where slapstick was his stock in trade: he gets kicked in the balls by an alien, throws a small child into a ceiling fan, and tries to rouse a corpse in an open casket, having misunderstood the word “wake”. He went on to be an agreeable clown in US sitcoms and web series, although quality control has not been his strongest suit. Once you leave your seat at the Hollywood table, it’s hard to get it back. A former model, rapper and MTV VJ, he is the missing link between Paris Hilton (he swears they never dated), Meghan Markle (ditto), Adrien Brody (who encouraged him to rap), Mark Ronson (who DJ’d while Rex strutted up and down the catwalks of Paris and Milan) and Charlie Sheen (who took Rex under his wing). Even more remarkably, though, he has done nothing in his decades-long career to suggest he had it in him. Rex’s performance would be audacious by any measure. Mikey is the same, he just doesn’t have Trump’s success.” Trump is a byproduct of the problem, which is America and capitalism and greed. “They’re both delusional American narcissists. Some even voted for one: Red Rocket is set during the 2016 presidential campaign, with Mikey something of a minor Donald Trump. We all know this person: we’ve dated them, worked with them. Not too many movies have a despicable lead character who you root for, but who doesn’t change. “They begin somewhere, they change, and that’s what is interesting. “Usually in a movie you’re watching a character arc,” says Rex. Mikey is a kind of Peter Porn: the stud who never grew up. That wasn’t acting.”īeaten to the punch … Rex with Anna Farris in Scary Movie 4. When you see me running down the street scared, I really was running down the street scared. I’m sitting in a van at two in the morning, naked except for a robe and a fake dick, going: ‘Is the coast clear?’ It was crazy, man. “We were in a very bad neighbourhood in Texas, the cops driving by. In one scene, he flees naked down the street in the middle of the night, draught excluder flapping comically. It helps that Mikey is often a hapless figure. I had to make him boyish and charming.” This he does in abundance, leavening the character’s toxicity with an indefatigable vim and optimism. “I knew my only job was to get the audience to like him. “When I read the script, I thought: ‘Why is anyone going to care what happens to this guy?’” says Rex, popping a grape in his mouth. Battered, bruised and on his uppers, he begs a spot on his ex’s sofa, starts dealing weed, and proceeds to groom a 17-year-old for possible porn stardom. In the opening scene, Mikey arrives in his old Gulf Coast suburb after many years in LA. That seat-of-the-pants scrappiness suits the material. That was September 2020, and the film was to be shot guerrilla-style: shoestring budget, Covid restrictions, a skeleton crew of 10, no permits.
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