I sometimes receive messages from audiences for Anora that are like, ‘Hi Mark, why are you playing video games like this? It’s a shooter, why are you pushing all the buttons all the time? It’s a fake. You’re not playing really.’
And it’s partly true. Because I’m not a video game person, really. I’m not into video games. But my young brother, his name is Matvey, he is really into this. And when I asked him to play, I started to push all the buttons. And Matvey, every time, would say, ‘No, Mark, you don’t have to do this. You have to attentively push the right buttons. It’s very important. It’s a science. It’s not a game. You have to be serious in this.’ So in the movie, I thought it would be funny if I pushed all the buttons, and my brother would laugh. It was for that.
