The filmmaker talks Burt Reynolds, Atlanta, and hex songs.
When Baby Driver debuted at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, it generated a ton of buzz. The Cinapse Crew was certainly sold on it. (Find our festival write ups here and here.) This was no surprise given the track record of director Edgar Wright, who has captured the imaginations of a certain segment of filmgoers with works like Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. With Baby Driver he just keeps raising expectations, this time with a heist movie married to a soundtrack in ways that aren’t commonplace in the world of film.
Cinapse had a chance to sit down with Wright recently, and the following are edited excerpts from a round-table discussion with the filmmaker.
On the genesis of Baby Driver:
Much as the music is a motivating factor in the main character’s life, the whole idea for the movie came about because I would be listening to music and visualizing the scenes. The opening track of the movie, “Bell Bottoms” by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, when I was 21 I used to listen to that on audio cassette the whole time, and I would start to visualize a car chase. Back then I wouldn’t have even called myself a film director, but I was starting to visualize this action, which is one million miles from what’s on film in 2017. That’s crazy to me. The music was the inspiration for the movie, and then as it developed, it became about a character who’s obsessed with music.
On the role of place in the movie:
It’s interesting because when I first had the idea I was in London, but I knew it couldn’t be a London movie because you don’t really get car chases in London. London is car-chase proof. Mainly because of the one-way system, and it’s such a traffic snarl-up. Also, banks are not by freeways in London, so it just doesn’t happen. When you get robberies in London it’s usually people on scooters and stuff.
Then I wrote it in Los Angeles and set it in Los Angeles. Then when we were actually coming to make the movie, and with budget concerns, tax breaks for cities become more attractive to the producers. Initially I was a little reluctant to that, but I ended up doing a little tour of tax-break cities, and it was kind of fascinating. Me and my production designer went to Cleveland, Detroit, New Orleans, and then Atlanta. And Atlanta I had been to a number of times, but only ever really in a press capacity. Or been to a studio which is miles away from anything, so I never really got to know the real place. It was in spending more time there, and specifically asking our location manager if he could take me to all the places I’d never been to before, the places people weren’t filming in.
The thing that then sold me on the idea of rewriting it for Atlanta was, Atlanta rarely plays itself in movies. It’s the biggest location in current cinema but usually doubling for LA, New York, and countries around the world. Also, it’s a big music city. It’s a big car city. And because it’s a main travel hub, it’s a hub for crime as well. So a lot of stuff that happens in the movie genuinely happens in the city. All of those things came together.
Once I’d rewritten the script for Atlanta, with the help of some Atlanta locals for advice. By putting it in Atlanta, not only does it help distinguish it from the many, many LA heist movies — Heat, Reservoir Dogs, Point Break, The Driver — it also makes more sense for the characters that they have a destination. They’re heading west. The romantic idea of them getting on that road and heading to the other ocean made a little more sense. It wasn’t my first idea, but now Atlanta and the movie are now synonymous in my head.
The other thing that was funny was, when people are filming there, we used two freeways there, the I-85 and the I-20. Not easy things to close down. What’s funny is we kept getting shown these country freeways, and I said, This is like Smokey and the Bandit country. This doesn’t looks like the movie in my head. I even said to my location manager, if we don’t get the I-85, we have no movie. We used to have this thing, and it would revolve around two Burt Reynolds films. Smokey and the Bandit–which Paul Williams is also in–which is leafy, country freeways. Another Burt Reynolds film, Sharky’s Machine, which is also shot in Atlanta, but it’s all downtown Atlanta, and it’s all concrete gray. I would show bits of Sharky’s Machine, and I would say to the location manager, “Think of it this way: It’s more Sharky and less Smokey.” That is a thing we’d say all the way through the shoot. It was like the Burt-o-meter. And to make the stunt team laugh, on a technical scout, I would blast out Eastbound and Down on regular intervals. Never not funny.
On the use of nostalgia:
You start to see it through the eyes of your actors. Something very early on, even the auditioning process that made me feel good was playing these songs and having the young actors hear them for the first time and falling in love with them. They don’t know much about the artists, and it doesn’t really matter. Something I find with music is that it becomes timeless. I didn’t want to have too many contemporary songs in the movie because I didn’t want to date the movie that much. Everything in the movie is a little bit dated. The cars. The fact that he’s still using an iPod Classic. He doesn’t have a smart phone or a laptop. Even when he makes that song in the first part, Kid Koala, who did the song for us, said it’s got to be all analogue equipment. You could do it without ever having to use a computer. The film is a little bit timeless in that respect, but I think you take things that are familiar and unfamiliar, and nostalgic and new, and through that you create a new kind of flavor that feels of itself. That’s the idea anyway.
On creating characters:
Baby is in every single scene in the movie, so you are seeing the movie sort of through his eyes. There’s a way in which the movie is about an unpaid intern! This kid who’s sitting in the back, he’s not getting paid properly, and he’s doing all of the work.
In terms of how do I write the criminals, the thing that I did was I spoke with a lot of ex-cons. I already had the idea for the script, and I had the idea for the characters, and I would meet ex-cons, some of whom have become writers now, and that’s how I found them was through their non-fiction books. I’d do long interviews with them where I would ask them about scenarios that were in the script or characters that were in the script.
Some of the things that are in the movie are straight from people’s stories. There’s a bit where Jamie Foxx is talking about the “hex songs.” The songs that are bad-vibe songs that they think are bad luck, and we should call off this job because this song means we’re all going to die. That was something that somebody said that this had happened, that they had been about to rob a bank and Guns N’ Roses Knocking on Heaven’s Door was playing on the radio. This guy in the car said, “We should not go in, we’re going to die. This song is a bad omen.” That’s going straight in the movie! What an amazing thing! When Jamie Foxx came on board, I was talking to him about it, and he said “My jinx song is Hotel California. When I used to play pool in Dallas, any time Hotel California would come on, I’d start losing, so that’s my hex song.” I wrote that into the script to make him laugh. When he read the new draft, he was like “Haaa!”
It’s complete fantasy and yet there are all these nuggets of real anecdotes in there.
Baby Driver hits US screens on June 28 but you can read all about our love for it now from our SXSW coverage.
https://cinapse.co/4-reasons-edgar-wrights-baby-driver-isn-t-just-great-it-s-important-sxsw-2017-d1c4b73aeaf3https://cinapse.co/4-reasons-edgar-wrights-baby-driver-isn-t-just-great-it-s-important-sxsw-2017-d1c4b73aeaf3