While no strict details have been shared about the characters, Deadline’s report mentions that Welliver is said to be playing Duval, a special DOJ prosecutor; Rhodes is believed to be playing Dom, Peter Sutherland’s (Basso) new partner; while Li is thought to be playing Dom’s wife Min. And, in a reveal fans have long been waiting for, Lail will play Peter’s ex-fiancée Zoe.
Exact details for the new season have yet to be confirmed, though we do know that dedicating himself to his new career as a Night Agent, Peter swore off romantic relationships after his job had put Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), his love interest for the first two seasons, in danger.
He may now be thrown back into that arena with his ex-fiancée Zoe re-entering his life. The only fleeting reference of her so far had been when Peter gave some of her clothes to Rose in Season 1.
When will the new season of ‘The Night Agent’ be on screens?
Season 3 of the show premiered in February, and with the next run still to shoot –– with the show itself relocating to Los Angeles –– we can likely expect fresh episodes to arrive early next year.
Currently available to watch on HBO Max and a serious contender in this upcoming awards season is the box office smash hit ‘Sinners’ which was written and directed by Ryan Coogler (‘Black Panther’) and stars Michael B. Jordan (‘Creed’) playing the dual roles of twin brothers Smoke and Stack.
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Moviefone recently had the pleasure of sitting down in-person with director Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan to talk about their work on ‘Sinners’, why Coogler was passionate about making this movie and the themes he wanted to explore, while Jordan discussed his approach to playing the Moore brothers and how he made the two roles distinctively different.
(L to R) Director Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan talk ‘Sinners’.
You can watch the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews.
Moviefone: To begin with, Ryan, can you talk about why you were so passionate about making this movie and the themes you wanted to explore as a filmmaker?
Ryan Coogler: It started with my relationship with my uncle James, who was born in Mississippi, lived there until he was 20, and then moved to Oakland and married my great-aunt, Sammy Lee, who the character Sammy is named after. It was important for me to explore blues music, Mississippi, the Delta Blues and juke joint culture because it was so important to my uncle. It’s kind of passed down to me, and I wanted to do a deep dive on why that music was so important really to a global popular culture. But I also wanted to infuse it with everything in cinema that I loved that I hadn’t had a chance to do yet in my previous films. That’s where the supernatural and the genre elements come to play. As far as the themes, the biggest theme was freedom. You know what I mean? This idea of it, how elusive it can be, how sometimes it can’t be bought. That was the central concept of freedom in these people that are under such great oppression and having to be able to affirm that humanity in a place and a time when it was very difficult.
MF: Finally, Michael, can you talk about the challenges of playing twin brothers and how you were able to make those two characters so distinctively different?
Michael B. Jordan: There were so many challenges. There’s been versions of twins that have been done, and some better than others, and trying to figure out how to make this one a memorable one or just make it work and feel honest. I remember as a kid watching movies like ‘The Parent Trap’, you know what I’m saying? Just as a kid, your imagination, whether you’re pretending you got superpowers or pretending this or whatever, the idea of like, man, if I had a twin, what would I do? Or how would that be? I think being able to imagine that because Smoke and Stack are the same, but they’re completely different. They make up one person. Having Smoke and how he handles his childhood trauma was important and Stack and how he handles his childhood trauma. They had the same experiences, but they have two different perspectives on it. For Smoke, he internalizes a lot of his. He doesn’t talk a lot. He doesn’t want to talk about his pain. He wants to bury it deep and kind of hold onto to that. I know people like that. So, to be able to tap into that in a real way. But Stack is different. He smiles and uses his charm, and he talks his way through his pain because he can’t dwell on it for too long. So, to tap into your childhood trauma and building those characters from the ground up was crucial to build that foundation for me to do the rest of the work and the other things, the layers on top of that like wearing a shoe that is too small for Stack because he’s always moving around. He just never really standing still. As a performer, as an actor, it’s something that I didn’t have to think about, but it helped me be agitated in times and physically be not still. But also, I wore a size too big when it came to Smoke because I wanted him to feel like he couldn’t move a lot and he wanted to be rooted and implanted into the ground. So those were layers to it. The different grill caps that I wore, when I had a certain gold front in, it changed the way I would hold my mouth and speak and my cadence. Smoke spoke few words and slow. Stack was a fast talker, so he was always smiling, always wheeling and always dealing. He’s always selling something. Those are some of the things that I tapped into to kind of help make them a bit different. Just the storytelling, the other characters around Smoke and Stack that allowed me to play off of with Annie and Mary and those dynamics and just a rich world that was created for these characters to blend into.
Two brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932, now wealthy and intent on opening a juke joint in their hometown. But as they open the doors of their new establishment, sinister forces begin to converge upon them and their community.
Director Ryan Coogler and his muse/partner Michael B. Jordan are now five for five. Following ‘Fruitvale Station,’ ‘Creed,’ and the two ‘Black Panther’ entries (yes, we’ll stand up for ‘Wakanda Forever’ despite anti-MCU sentiment in the critical community), ‘Sinners’ is another outright winner for the filmmaker and star, and even better, it’s a wholly original piece of material that’s also ambitious, audacious, and at times even transcendent – not to mention a wildly smart genre hybrid.
Once again, Coogler and company have taken populist entertainment – this time mixing the horror genre with the historical drama – and infused it with social commentary, spiritual themes, action beats, and an almost poetic tribute to the time-bending power of music. The film has its flaws, but so much of it works so well, from the cast to the music to the incredible production design to the overall atmosphere – that you’ll walk out of ‘Sinners’ feeling like you’ve seen one of the most unique movies of the year.
As ‘Sinners’ begins, an opening narration tells us that some people have such a powerful gift of making music that it can “pierce the veil” between the worlds of the living and the dead. With that, we see a bloodied and beaten young man, who we will come to know as Preacher Boy Sam (Miles Caton), appear at the door of the church where his father is pastor. He’s carrying the broken neck of a guitar, and his father admonishes him to “leave those sinning ways.”
The movie then flashes back to “one day earlier” in the town of Clarksdale, Mississippi. The year is 1932. Returning on this day to the area’s Black community are brothers “Smoke” and “Stack” Moore – the “SmokeStack Twins” – both played by Michael B. Jordan. With their expensive suits and car, as well as the wads of cash in their pockets, they immediately stand out from the impoverished community of laborers and sharecroppers around them. Smoke, who’s tougher and more business-minded, and Stack, who is more jovial and reckless, are back in town after spending years away, first fighting in World War I and then finding their way to Chicago, where they allegedly made their fortune working for Al Capone.
Their first action upon returning to Clarksdale is to purchase an abandoned mill outside town from a man who may or may not be a KKK leader (“The Klan doesn’t exist anymore,” he unconvincingly tells them). They aim to turn the mill into a juke joint and open it that night, with entertainment to be provided by old blues musician Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and the twins’ cousin, Preacher Boy Sam, for whom the word “soulful” doesn’t begin to describe his ability to sing and play the blues.
‘Sinners’ unpacks its story and characters – which include Smoke’s former flame, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), who knows magic and who shares a tragic past with Smoke, as well as Stack’s old girlfriend, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who is part Black but looks white enough that their relationship might well have caused a scandal – in leisurely, novelistic fashion. But it’s never anything but fascinating to watch, thanks to the sharply drawn characters and pungent dialogue in Coogler’s screenplay, his fluid direction, Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s stunning cinematography, and the textured, incredibly detailed production design by Hannah Beachler. Then there’s the music – a combination of Ludwig Göransson’s original score and old blues standards that is as haunting as it is evocative.
It’s that music – particularly the music performed by Preacher Boy Sam – that attracts not just a boisterous crowd to Smoke and Stack’s juke joint that night but fuels one of the most incredible sequences you’ll see in a movie this or any other year. Music, we’re told, will bring together the spirits of both the past and the future – which it does in a breathtaking sequence that ricochets through both the history of music and the Black experience in one gloriously kaleidoscopic dance of images that is almost transcendent in its power.
But the music attracts other forces from the realm of the dead as well…and since the trailers already give it away, it’s okay to say here that the juke joint soon finds itself under siege by a trio of vampires, led by Remmick (Jack O’Connell), who quickly go about turning the customers and the Moores’ dwindling band of friends and family into creatures of the night. “It’s better this way,” says one character who has been transformed late in the film, suggesting that Remmick is creating a new species for which boundaries of race, color, and gender have no meaning.
That’s just one of the intriguing ideas that Coogler springs on us during the course of ‘Sinners,’ and if anything this densely packed film has almost too many of them. Questions of race, identity, history, violence against Black bodies, and the power of art flow liberally through the film, which is by turns exhilarating, frightening, erotic, distressing, and poignant. The introduction of a supernatural terror halfway through a historical drama is a bit abrupt, and the third act feels both rushed and drawn out as the climactic confrontation with the vampires leads to a fistful of additional endings and mid-credits sequences (a bit of an MCU hangover for Coogler, perhaps). But even when it wobbles slightly down the stretch, ‘Sinners’ doesn’t feel like any other movie you’re likely to see anytime soon.
In a career already full of sparking performances, ‘Sinners’ may contain Michael B. Jordan’s best work yet. Assisted by seamless visual effects, he delivers two fully-rounded performances as Smoke and Stack, differentiating the two brothers with subtle changes in tone, speech, and body language, while firmly delineating the deep bond between the two.
Smoke has been hardened by the world, doesn’t believe much in magic or the spiritual, and has no time for fun; he thinks that accumulating power (mostly in the form of cash) will give him freedom. Stack is much more hedonistic, given to flamboyance in his clothing, spending, and behavior, and much more in tune with earthly pleasures. Both men’s beliefs are tested and both are deeply changed by the end of the film, and it’s a tribute to Jordan’s incredible skills that you always feel you are watching two separate personalities on their own journeys.
While ‘Sinners’ showcases Jordan’s accomplishment, the rest of the cast is just as powerful. 19-year-old Miles Caton is a real find, providing not just a complex performance as Sam but a singing voice that is nothing short of awesome, providing a credible basis for the film’s mystical view of music. Delroy Lindo is nothing short of great (as usual) as Delta Slim, the blues player at the other end of his career who has seen it all. And while the vampires are not given as much ground to develop as characters, Jack O’Connell’s Remmick is a deft combination of malice, charisma, and temptation, with the story showing how these monsters can still be stirred by music as well (especially in one eerie sequence involving an Irish folk song).
Importantly, every woman in ‘Sinners’ also gets her due, from Wunmi Mosaku’s no-nonsense Annie to Hailee Steinfeld’s Mary, both of whom are courageous, confident, sexually liberated, and capable of moving on from deep tragedies in their lives. Mosaku’s performance is full of texture, compassion, and depth, while Steinfeld succeeds in nailing the role of a woman who is trapped between two worlds but knows which one she feels more at home with. Also notable is Li Jun Li (‘Babylon’) as Grace Chow, who runs grocery stores in town with her husband Bo (Yao) and is as deft in handling her business with both Blacks and whites as she is in fighting vampires.
‘Sinners’ is a luscious, genuinely cinematic experience that deserves every inch of the IMAX screen you should see it on. Even if we wish the horror elements were introduced a little more organically, and even if the film’s closing sequences don’t work as effectively as they could, one can still feel Coogler’s earnest, heartfelt search for truth throughout: What makes anyone truly free? Love? Power? Money? Talent? What does it mean to be free if you know that freedom is merely a façade?
These are the questions ‘Sinners’ raises and leaves one pondering as the credits roll. This thoughtfully conceived, masterfully executed epic doesn’t provide all the answers, but instead brings the viewer on a journey that is haunting, terrifying, emotionally resonant, and powerful in its exploration of community, shared experience, and how the incursion of evil can threaten to rip those apart.
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What is the plot of ‘Sinners’?
Two brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932, now wealthy and intent on opening a juke joint in their hometown. But as they open the doors of their new establishment, sinister forces begin to converge upon them and their community.
‘Babylon’ follows the rise and fall of a group of characters during Hollywood’s transition from silent film to talkies in the 1920s.
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Who is in the cast of ‘Babylon?’
‘Babylon’ stars Brad Pitt as movie star Jack Conrad, Margot Robbie as young actress Nellie LaRoy, Diego Calva as assistant turned producer Manny Torres, Jean Smart as journalist Elinor St. John, Jovan Adepo as musician Sidney Palmer, Li Jun Li as performer Lady Fay Zhu, and Tobey Maguire as gangster James McKay.
How many 2023 Academy Award nominations did ‘Babylon’ receive?
‘Babylon’ has received three 2023 Academy Award nominations including Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Original Score for composer Justin Hurwitz.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with two-time Academy Award winning composer Justin Hurwitz about his Oscar nominated work on ‘Babylon,’ collaborating with his friend director Damien Chazelle, watching dailies and creating music for the elephant.
‘Babylon’ Composer Justin Hurwitz.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch the interview.
Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your first reaction to Damien Chazelle’s screenplay for ‘Babylon’ and the themes that you wanted to explore with the score?
Justin Hurwitz: So I got the draft in fall of 2019, and I was just so entertained by it. I mean, my jaw was kind of on the floor for a lot of these scenes, and there were great monologues and really beautifully written emotional scenes as well. So it was just such a great read. The first thing I thought was, “Oh, my God, there’s going to be a lot of music in this movie.” So Damien and I started talking about it.
Of course it’s set in old Hollywood, but what got me excited about it was right off the bat, Damien said he didn’t want the music to sound like 1920s jazz. He didn’t want it to sound like old movie music. He wanted to do something very different than that. So that got me excited, because I was thinking the same thing as I was reading the script. I was thinking super entertaining movie, but I don’t want to have to write period music, and luckily he didn’t want to do that either.
Director Damien Chazelle on the set of ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
MF: You’ve composed all of director Damien Chazelle’s previous movies. Can you talk about collaborating with him, your working relationship, and how the process of scoring one of his films works?
JH: Well, so much of it feels exactly like it did when we were 20-years old working on the ‘Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench,’ which was our student film that kind of ballooned into a small feature. Just the process of sitting at the piano, coming up with ideas, making voice notes, sending idea, after idea to Damien getting, “No, no, no, maybe, no, no, no,” before you finally get, “Yes, I love it, that’s the one.” I rely on him so much to help steer me into my best ideas, and that has never changed. Even the process of sitting at the piano and making little MP3s hasn’t changed. But we’ve gotten more efficient over the years at certain things.
I love the way we have sort of developed it in post-production where we get offices next to each other so he can cut the movie with (editor) Tom Cross for a year or so, and I can be there the entire time, literally sharing a door. We have a suite with a shared door, so I can be in their room all the time and Damien’s coming into my room. We’re just going back and forth working on picture and music. That’s a process we’ve kind of refined over the years, and I love it. Probably my favorite time is when we’re in post, and we’re all under one roof, and we can finish the movie together, and the score can really take shape and come together. So that’s something that we learned from the past couple of movies, and we’ve sort of fallen into those practices.
Damien is full-time with Tom Cross, the editor, so they’re working together, and then Damien’s full-time with me, really. So that’s why we have these shared offices. So he can be very hands-on with the editing and very hands on with the score. What’s great about Damien is he has such a specific vision, and he’s such a specific filmmaker. He knows what he wants visually, sonically, everything, but he also lets creative people do what we do.
So it’s this very tricky balance and I think he’s found the right balance. He does it very well, and you don’t want to work with a filmmaker that doesn’t know what they want. It’s good to work with filmmakers that are very specific, and very hands on, but they need to give the latitude to the collaborators to come up with their own ideas, and explore, and be creative people of our own. So Damien does both of those things very well.
(L to R) Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy and Diego Calva plays Manny Torres in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
MF: Do you watch dailies and take inspiration from the actor’s performances for the score?
JH: Absolutely. There were kind of two phases of scoring this movie. We had to create about an hour of music in pre-production before we could even shoot the movie. So I was doing tons and tons of demos. We were building that for about a year and a half. We were in the studio recording that. All of that was before the movie was shot. I was going off of the script, and I was going off of Damien’s storyboards. He makes literally thousands of pages of hand-drawn storyboards, and he cuts animatics and we build to that.
Then the movie’s shot, and I’m on set. So I’m there experiencing the feeling of the shoot and the scene. The performance is actually live in front of the camera. Then we have post-production and I made about another hour of music in post-production. At that point, that’s more of the traditional film scoring approach, where I’m watching the dailies, the cuts, the scenes, and then the entire cuts.
For that last hour of score, these are the scenes that you have to just watch, and you have to just respond to what’s in the scenes. So the Manny/Nellie cues, those relationship cues, you just have to watch and respond to the rhythms of the dialogue, and the feeling of it, and the way it’s cut, and what you’re seeing in the design of it all. There were plenty of cues of that sort. So there is really kind of two totally different approaches to this movie. The hour of music we did before it was shot, and then the hour of music we did after it was shot, and it’s about two hours of score in total.
I mean, it’s so well planned because like I said, Damien has storyboarded this thing down to the fraction of a second. While I’ve been building the demos, he’s been building the storyboards. He’s like, “Give me two more seconds here, cut a half second from there.” It’s like we are refining this. Of course things change, and that becomes part of my job. I said, an hour of music is created beforehand. I’m still rebuilding that music through post-production as well, because as the cut comes together, we are lengthening, or shortening, or rebuilding, and moving things around. Things are always changing. But I don’t think there were any pieces of music that we recorded that just got cut from the movie or anything that was that drastically rethought when it comes to those pre-recorded tracks.
MF: Finally, what was it like scoring the scenes with the elephant?
JH: Well, I wasn’t on set for the actual defecation scene. But the elephant does burst into the party a little bit later. That was fun because the track “Voodoo Mama” is the track that’s going on, and that’s where Nellie, Margot Robbie’s character is dancing, crowd surfing, and completely owning this room. It’s a real fun jazz band meets rock and roll, meets dance music sort of track. That track, as soon as the elephant bursts through the door, takes a big turn into circus music. So we have kazoos and slide whistles, and the band starts playing almost like a circus band in with all these crash symbols and circus sort of music. So the track takes a big turn there, and that was a very fun genre to play in.
We actually use circus sounds throughout the score. We bring a lot of those sounds back even during some of those really intimate Manny/Nellie cues. Those cues are kind of this mixture of three pianos that have this very fragile, broken, half out of tune quality. But in those cues, sometimes we pull in little circus sounds as well because their relationship is a bit of a circus, and it’s just sort of a motif in this movie. So we had a lot of fun with many different colors in this score, including circus colors.
Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
‘Babylon’ is produced by Paramount, Marc Platt Production, Material Pictures, C2 Motion Picture Group, Wild Chickens and Organism Pictures. ‘Babylon’ debuts on digital and streaming January 31st, and will be available on Blu-ray and DVD beginning March 21st.
Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
Debuting in theaters on December 23rd, ‘Babylon’ is the latest film from Damien Chazelle, the writer-director of ‘Whiplash’ and ‘La La Land’. Unfortunately, it is also his weakest effort, though not for lack of ambition and scale.
Starting, perhaps as it means to go on with a desire for shock and even a metaphor for what happens to many of the characters in the movie, ‘Babylon’ features an elephant defecating noisily and filthily across an unfortunate man helping to push the truck it is riding in up a hill, the result also splattering the camera.
The animal is on its way to be the star attraction a lavish Hollywood bash being held in the hills, and one of the people helping to get it there is Manny Torres (Diego Calva), who fortunately avoids being covered in Proboscidea poop.
He ends up hired to help out at the party and has his first experience of roaring ‘20s Hollywood––or at least its decadent, wild excessive side––where sweaty, near-naked crowds writhe in time to jazz music. Drugs and booze are in free supply, all thanks to the host, veteran actor Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) who shows up with his latest soon-to-be-ex-wife, played in a brief scene by Olivia Wilde.
(L to R) Brad Pitt plays Jack Conrad and Diego Calva plays Manny Torres in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
Looking to gatecrash is Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), an ambitious young woman convinced she has untapped star power, and who ends up scoring a lucky break, setting her star on the rise as Jack starts to see his own begin to fall.
Manny––who befriends Nellie––is captivated by the idea of working in Hollywood, and sees his own prospects enhanced when one of Jack’s team asks him to make sure the sozzled actor gets home safely. From there, Manny works his way up the ranks, his good ideas for movies helping boost his career in the fictional film studio of the story.
‘Babylon’ is primarily the story of Manny, Nellie and Jack, with some attention paid to jazz musician Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), who will carve his own path out in the entertainment industry, performer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), and gossip columnist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart).
The characters’ arcs weave in and out of each other, as Nellie becomes more and more famous (while her gambling habits and other addictions catch up to her) and Chazelle roams from party to party, interspersed by scenes where movies are made.
Jovan Adepo plays Sidney Palmer in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
Around them, Hollywood begins to evolve from the silent era to the age of talkies, and from rough-and-ready shooting in the desert to cavernous soundstages.
Robbie is particularly vibrant in the film, finding different layers to her character as she moves through the business, and is convincing at every step. Whether she’s conniving to get her name in lights, or overhearing people talking her down, this is further proof that she’s one of the best working at the moment. Pitt, meanwhile, commits to the easy charm of Conrad, whose career is on the wane as audiences don’t warm to him once talking pictures come along.
Calva, who is probably best known to American audiences from ‘Narcos: Mexico’, is something of a revelation, a soulful presence in the movie who worries that his soul is tainted as he climbs the executive ranks and then has to help Nellie out of her money problems.
Smart, whose gossip hound flits in and out of the story, is particularly strong, though she’s not often on screen for more than a minute or so. But her big scene with Jack, where she explains his downward slide, is a highlight. Li, meanwhile, who is also largely on the sidelines, makes the most of her role.
Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
And there are certainly elements to recommend here: in some scenes, ‘Babylon’ has a pleasing level of comedy, especially when director Ruth Adler (Olivia Hamilton) and Nellie are trying to shoot a scene in the early sound era, where mic positions, concerns over volume and particularly an overheating cameraman, provide memorable laughs.
Chazelle unfortunately loses focuses when it comes to the theme of the film, though. Certainly, there is plenty to be mined from the idea of Hollywood and this time, but ‘Babylon’, for all its length and intertwined stories, merely scrapes the surface. The concept that the entertainment industry is a place for excess and fraught with problems for those who seek stardom is hardly a fresh one, and the movie has little to say that is new or interesting.
This is much bigger than his previous efforts, but it soon becomes ungainly, and is loaded down with flabby scenes that add little. Even a crazed moment for Calva, where he’s seeking financial help from the distinctly dodgy James McKay, played by Tobey Maguire, which takes in freaks, torture implements and an alligator, feels like it could easily be lost in the service of reducing the movie’s overinflated running time.
Tobey Maguire plays James McKay in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
The less said about the final montage that wraps up the movie, the better, to be honest. It’s meant to celebrate the movies but ends up an embarrassingly amateur example, cramming in easy highpoints and coming across as something out of a film school offering.
Given that he’s been planning and writing the movie in his head for around 15 years, we’re sorry to report that Chazelle has fumbled this one. ‘Babylon’ is not without its charms and some diversion, but beyond the main cast’s appeal, it is a lot of sound and fury, signifying––not nothing––but not much.
‘Babylon’ receives 2.5 out of 5 stars.
(L to R) Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy and Diego Calva plays Manny Torres in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
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Moviefone recently had the pleasure of sitting down in-person with writer and director Damien Chazelle to talk about his work on ‘Babylon,’ what audiences can expect from the new movie, why he was interested in this point in Hollywood’s history, casting Pitt and Robbie, and the importance of music in his films.
‘Babylon’ writer and director Damien Chazelle.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with Chazelle, as well as actors Jovan Adepo and Li Jun Li.
Moviefone: To begin with, what would you say to moviegoers getting ready to sit down and watch this film to prepare them for the experience they’re about to have?
Damien Chazelle: That’s a good question. I would say just to prepare yourself for a wild ride. It’s not the kind of movie about older Hollywood that I think anyone is expecting. It’s shocking, it’s wild, it’s crazy, it’s a roller coaster ride, it’s an adventure, and it’s a party. I would say to go in with that in mind.
But beyond that, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say much. I think ultimately I made this movie for audiences, for them to have an experience. I think whatever mindset you’re in when you sit down in the theater for this movie, it will sweep you up and it’s going to take you for a ride whether you want to or not.
MF: What was it about this era in Hollywood’s history, the period moving from silent films to talkies, that really fascinated you and what were some of the themes you wanted to explore with this movie?
DC: Well, a lot of it had to do with just how unhinged the society was at that time. I just hadn’t realized the extent to which people at that time partied, how hard they lived, how hard they worked, and how recklessly and transgressively they operated. It was this circus atmosphere that I think in many ways got lost once Hollywood became a little more sanitized and regulated, and became more of a corporate industry.
The Hollywood in this movie is right before that. It’s the last gasp of the wild West of early Hollywood when it was still unregulated. It was like people pitching a tent in the desert and making their movies, and doing them the way they wanted to. There was just this manic, hysterical atmosphere where anything went. That was key to try to capture that and take that as far as it went.
Brad Pitt plays Jack Conrad in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
MF: Can you talk about casting and working with Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie?
DC: It was amazing. As a director, it’s a dream come true. They’re such seasoned actors so, yes, on the one hand, you’re getting these larger-than-life movie stars, and they’re playing larger-than-life movie stars in the movie, so that’s kind of perfect. But they’re also just real thespians.
They deliver. They know how to craft performances that move you and make you laugh and cry and break your heart. They take you on a ride. I think they help ground this movie and make it human, so that even at its most excessive, larger-than-life, outrageous, shocking moments, you still feel a beating heart underneath. That’s thanks to them, I think, and the rest of the cast.
MF: Margot has a scene in the movie where her character has to cry on cue. Did she actually do that on set, or did you have to enhance it in post?
DC: That is Margot! Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to shoot it. You can’t CG that!
Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
MF: Finally, can you talk about Justin Hurwitz’s music for the film and the importance of music in all your movies?
DC: Music comes early on for me. I work with the same composer, Justin Hurwitz, for all my movies. We’ve worked together since college. We have a shorthand at this point. As soon as I have a script, I hand it to him, and he starts working on the music.
By the time I’m shooting, I’ve got a lot of the music already in place. We can play it on set and we can set the mood with it. We can have the actors dancing to it and thinking about it, and just letting it seep into their body. You get a sense of what the tone is right away. That’s really important to me, and especially with this movie. I knew I needed a very specific tone and a specific kind of energy and pulse, and that’s what the music provides.
Director Damien Chazelle on the set of ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
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