RED ROCKET (2021): The Making of a Texas Teen Porn Star

Richard Brody summarized Red Rocket well in his New Yorker review:

[...] [Simon] Rex’s character, Mikey Davies (whose porn name is Mikey Saber), travels by bus from Los Angeles to Texas City, where he drops in on his estranged wife and former onscreen partner, Lexi (Bree Elrod) [...] Mikey looks for work locally, but he has a seventeen-year gap on his résumé [...] Instead, Mikey reconnects with the head of the local marijuana trade [...] At a nearby doughnut shop, he meets a counter clerk and high-school student named Raylee (Suzanna Son), who calls herself Strawberry. She is seventeen—or, as Mikey crows, “legal as an eagle”—and he insistently pursues her. At first it’s just sex that he’s after, but then he decides to try to lure Strawberry to Los Angeles to act in porn, with him as her manager-slash-pimp [...]

In the film, shortly after Strawberry informed Mikey, "I'll be 18 in three weeks," and Mikey confirmed, "Legal as an eagle," Strawberry grabbed Mikey's penis behind Donut Hole's counter. 

Subsequently, Mikey had Strawberry cease having teen sex with Nash whom became "clingy ass fuck" after Strawberry "[...] blew him at junior prom." Consequently, Strawberry informed Nash, "I'm with him (i.e., Mikey) now," before she blew Mikey in her pickup truck. #swallow Later, Strawberry and Mikey had age-gap sex in the pickup truck's bed. (Pun intended.)

To the chagrin of (most) middle-aged women and teen boys, like a number of nymphets we've written about on this blog, Strawberry shared that she's a teleiophile and for attention, she and her teen friends posted nudes on Reddit, and she sold a nude for $60 via Venmo. 

Strawberry related to Mikey: 

"Let's just say, I like men - not boys." 

"I posted a nude online [...] This old guy in Ohio propositioned us to sell him a nude pic, and I did. And he Venmoed me 60 bucks [...] We were just trying to see how much attention we would get."

Strawberry invited Mikey to stay at her home for the weekend while her mother was away. "We've got the place to our own to fuck [...]," which they did. Initially, outside along the lakefront and then in Strawberry's bedroom where it was strategically filmed." In reference to the age-gap sex tape, Strawberry opined, "That's so hot."

I won't spoil the ending, but Strawberry informed her boss at the Donut Hole, "I'm going to L.A. with Mikey [to become a teen porn star]."

In her Nylon piece, ‘RED ROCKET’ STAR SUZANNA SON IS THE NEXT BIG THING (Dec 8, 2021), Sophia June asked Suzanna Son (Strawberry):

Q: Your character is so naive, but so confident and really bold and smart. Do you think she’s aware that Mikey is using her and is she using him?

A: She’s super aware of it. She waited on that roller coaster to tell him that because she’s screwing him as much as he’s screwing her. And truly, he’s the naive one. She’s two steps ahead. She might like to play that she is a little bit coy and shy and young, but that’s her weapon. She weaponizes her cuteness.

Mare of Mare of Easttown

As hard as it is for (most) middle-aged women and teens boys to (openly) admit, nymphets can seduce men. And Son's assessment of Strawberry reminds me of novelist Robertson Davies' assessment of Lolita as: “[...] not [about] the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but [about] the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child”. And Son reminded me of Mare of Mare of Easttown who said, "Trust me. Teenage girls are fucking sneaky."

Interestingly, of Mikey Saber, Brianna Zigler shared in her Gawker piece, "In ‘Red Rocket’, Mikey Saber Is a Very Bad Man: How refreshing" (Dec 10, 2021), that she found Mikey, refreshing, exhilarating and a hoot to root for:

It was both refreshing and exhilarating to watch an anti-hero go that low [...] it’s fun to root for a fictional character who is an endearing piece of shit, and boring to watch people become perfect moral agents.

Lastly, before it's release, Red Rocket was shown at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or. And the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarded 47-year-old Simon Rex Best Actor for his Mikey Saber portrayal.