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Madison recalls, “We shot a bunch of the lap dance scenes all together—like, lap dance, lap dance, lap dance—which was kind of fun actually, because I got into a rhythm of [figuring out] how to pick a guy up and what that conversation might be like.”
“We had Mikey on a wireless mic making her rounds around the club and we were documenting this on a telephoto lens, just shooting for ten minutes straight,” Baker elaborates. The length of a 35mm reel with sound is eleven minutes, so the opening of Anora is a series of film reels condensed into a handful of minutes, showcasing a full landscape of her work in the club, plus her personality when she’s not on the floor.
“It’s a dream for an actor to be able to experiment in a situation like that,” Madison says. “You have no idea where a conversation is going to take you or what this person is going to be like. You’re walking up to [these guys] for the first time, unrehearsed, so we got some really interesting, funny, magical moments from that.”
Prior to shooting, Madison spent time tailing dancers and observing how they interacted with clients. She also made up her own backstory for Anora and her relationship with the other dancers; all of this prep work made the opening shoot feel more authentic. “It was very Robert Altman-inspired,” Baker says of the Nashville filmmaker, well-known for his naturalistic dialogue scenes.
“Altman had a style like this where he would capture conversations from afar,” he continues. “We nailed that style because of Mikey being able to hold her own for literally 30 minutes, meeting people for the first time, having to engage with them, and then always having Ani’s hustle come out in the last couple of seconds [of each conversation].”
