Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. IMDb All rights reserved. And it was in the research of that period, especially looking at, well, what was Hollywood like right before sound came in? That's driving all of this behavior. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. At a moment when the Hollywood box office is being dominated by sequels and live-action reboots of animated Disney films, Chazelles film is a breath of fresh air, something to get excited to leave the house to see. Do you think Damien Chazelle tucks in his trumpet at night? All these transitions happening at once. Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in Babylon, Academy Award winner Damien Chazelle is back on the awards circuit with his ode to Old Hollywood, Babylon.. What inspired such a subversive approach to the time period? The whole movie seemed to fall apart, said Chazelle. Im told that Lionsgate, which distributed the 14 Oscar-nominated La La Land, is considered the front-runner to land a project described to me as an original drama that is set in period Hollywood at a shifting moment when the business was turning from silents to talkies. The film received five Academy Award . Loved it. pic.twitter.com/DOsEi2VBAL, Drew Taylor (@DrewTailored) November 15, 2022, Not often you see mind-blowing movies made for the big screen Damien Chazelle just made one with Babylon. You have the Spanish flu. It will drop tom' Many films simply punted on 2020, hoping that 2021 would allow for a return to theaters for potential blockbusters and awards hopefuls. Between projects he would dive back into his research into the period, from watching documentaries and silent epics like Erich Von Stroheims Greed, which was cut down from nine hours, and D.W. Griffiths grandiose Intolerance (which features a legendary Babylon sequence) to visiting library archives, which was so much fun that it took years before Chazelle dragged himself away and started the hard work of writing a screenplay. There is nothing very surprising in "Babylon." (A sequence late in the film which involves a character intermittently spitting, a jump scare and a grotesquerie, echoes a nervy, bravura episode from "Boogie Nights."). But he still needed to find characters to guide us through this tumultuous time. He settled on about six, including rebellious actress Nelly (Margot Robbie), aging silent star Jack (Brad Pitt), wily Mexican elephant wrangler Manny, who rises to a studio executive (Diego Calva), powerful gossip columnist (Jean Smart), a charismatic actress based on Anna May Wong (Li Jun Li), and a trumpeter who becomes a movie star (Jovan Adepo). Film data from TMDb. Wilson. The Finest Victrolas, the Most Squalid Toilets: The Stories Behind 5 Key 'Babylon' Sets That's insanely fast by any standards, and so there's never been anything quite of that level, and maybe never will be again. Chazelles most recent project was the Netflix series The Eddy, for which he served as a producer and directed two episodes, but Babylon represents his first big screen movie since 2018s highly underrated First Man. It was funny. There might have been moments during that day where I regretted that it was one of the harder day ones Ive ever had., Next came Nellys first day shooting a movie, dancing and crying on cue. Sources confirm that Pitt also is in the mix, though neither he nor Stone has made a commitment. Knock on wood that no new issues arise that would put the December 25, 2022, date at risk. but i like pitts approach more, enough to forget bullet train ever happened. New York, Tobey Maguire will haunt me in my dreams for the foreseeable future. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Paramount will release Babylon in theaters on Friday, December 23. This Article is related to: Film and tagged Babylon, Damien Chazelle. The Whiplash writer-directors latest epic is a fevered telling of how 1920s Hollywood reacted as the industry transitioned from silent film to sound, shining a spotlight on the drug-addled dreamers chewed up and spat out by Tinseltown as it underwent that seismic change. Exteriors were grabbed at Sheas Castle in Antelope Valley. Damien Chazelle: 5 Films That Inspired 'Babylon', Inside 'Babylon' Composer Justin Hurwitz's 'Avant Garde' Take on the Age of Jazz (Exclusive), 'Babylon' Costume Designer Mary Zophres: 5 Films That Inspire My Work, Damien Chazelle Goes Wild With 'Babylon': 'There Was No Point to Do a PG Version' (Exclusive), When first asked to direct his new movie, the actor said, "No, no, no, we're going to get a good director. Emma Stone, who along with Chazelle won an Oscar for her work in La La Land, is circling to star. And other times, we'd be completely wedded to the script but just trying to find those little nuances of behavior in between the lines. In other words, he was interested in the milieu. 5 min read. The starry project is being launched for sales ahead of the upcoming Cannes market. Damien Chazelle's high-energy ode to moviemaking, "Bablyon," babbles on and on and on for three hours and eight minutes, offering an orgy of eye-popping images and performances and one thought that movies are bigger than life and have the power to inspire; they should mean something to the makers and the viewers. The star-studded ensemble film charts the chaos, glory, and mayhem of the City of Angels during the transition between silent films and talkies. Philosophically I am partial to the idea of trying to begin a shoot with something meaty, he said, rather than have it loom over your head., Thats why Chazelle took the first day of filming to the impossibly hot Simi Valley, to shoot a series of sequences set in the desert on the poverty row studio Kinoscope sets of multiple movies filming at once, including a war battle complete with cannons and a thousand extras. When Brad Pitt first read the screenplay, he said, Whats gonna get cut? Chazelle figured hed shoot a minute a page. Letterboxd Limited. 189 minutes Cast Diego Calva as Manny Torres Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy Brad Pitt as Jack Conrad Jovan Adepo as Sidney Palmer Li Jun Li as Lady Fay Zhu Jean Smart as Elinor St. John Tobey Maguire as James McKay Damien Chazelle is one of the best young directors in Hollywood. Babylon is a fever dream of a movie thats best when its being a straight out comedy. In 1926, 1927, the idea of sound on film being the future was still a joke to a lot of people, and by 1930, almost nothing was being shot that's silent. By Manohla Dargis. She starred in Wings, the first film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. 'Babylon': Damien Chazelle Answers Questions About His Costly Early Hollywood Epic "Babylon" has left early audiences befuddled. Pitt is about to open opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie in the Quentin Tarantino-directed Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Shot 180 pages of script at about a minute per page. Amazon, Hidden Pictures Win Stakehorse; A Last Spec Auction Before Possible WGA Strike Stirs Near 7-Figure Deal For Ready-To-Shoot Thriller, James McAvoy Stars, Robert Schwentke Helms Control; Action Thriller From Studiocanal & The Picture Company To Shoot In Summer In Berlin, Kevin Iwashina Resigns As Fifth Season Documentary Head; Bracing Treatment Of Colleagues Cited. Here's What's Been Said About It. Brad Pitt Margot Robbie Diego Calva Jean Smart Flea Jovan Adepo J.C. Currais Jimmy Ortega Hansford Prince Telvin Griffin Olivia Wilde Circus-Szalewski Lukas Haas Li Jun Li Kaia Gerber Patrick Fugit Eric Roberts Cici Lau Tyler Seiple Zack Newick Rory Scovel Olivia Hamilton P.J. So, it felt like there was this opening for a sort of truly unvarnished, R-rated approach to that time period. Follow him on Twitter. Interviews with leading film and TV creators about their process and craft. Whereas La La Land was a tenderhearted homage to the classics of yesteryear, his latest movie, Babylon, is a descent into the debauchery of early Hollywood. The film also stars Samara Weaving, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, and Jean Smart, plus Katherine Waterston, Olivia Wilde, Spike Jonze, Lukas Haas, Jovan Adepo, Tobey Maguire (who additionally executive produces), and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. Fay and Sidney each get their own storylines, but Chazelle shortchanges them, just as Hollywood does, by giving them very little to do other than be lesbian/Asian, and Black, and keeping them mostly on the sidelines. Makes the eternal mistake of reminding you of much better movies you could be watching, only in this case it's like a hundred of them. And then it morphed more into a kind of portrait of a society as a whole, both before sound and after sound. Bell Sol Landerman Karina Fontes Spike Jonze Freya Parker Tobey Maguire Lewis Tan Manny Liotta Anna Chazelle Mike C. Manning, Marc Platt Matthew Plouffe Olivia Hamilton Mathew Ferrante, Tobey Maguire Adam Siegel Helen Estabrook, Michael Nelson Davon Slininger Brian Freesh Robert Petrin Rochelle T.A. When he nervously and uncertainly watches the edit of his first-ever talkie scene, he says "I wish George couldve seen it." Damien Sayre Chazelle is an American director and screenwriter. When he calls EW in early October, he's still hard at work putting the finishing touches on Babylon, his sweeping epic (out Dec. 23) about the rise and fall . An early screening Monday evening at the Samuel . And it's classic Hollywood again, so the Oscars will be intrigued. Alas, Toby Maguire's deliberately off-putting appearance is meant to be uncomfortable, and his scenes are mostly exasperating. A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, it traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood. Playing a fictional character in old Hollywood in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood led to Pitt snagging his first acting Oscar; maybe he can strike gold twice. Of course, Robbies Sharon Tate and Brad Pitts Cliff Booth never actually met throughout the course of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; perhaps the two would finally get to share the screen in Chazelles story. Gregory Ellwood -The Playlist (@TheGregoryE) November 15, 2022, #Babylon has some incredibly strong sequences especially the ones focused on Margot Robbies character but overall lacked focus & couldnt support so many key characters. Dec. 22 . Said Hurwitz, "There would be a lot of . A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, tracing the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood. She took everything from me. Associated Press articles: Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. Related ), We have Brad the movie star, said Paramount distribution chief Chris Aronson, who says the film will open to an older audience, then pull younger ones, much like Pitt-starrer Bullet Train ($103 million domestic). In the first eight minutes, an elephant poops all over a man, a woman urinates all over another man, and there are still three hours of excessiveness to go. I was so inspired by what Coppola would do in some Apocalypse Now sequences where a normal standalone set piece would be in the corner of the frame behind the actors, like some building gets demolished, or a cow gets lifted by a helicopter in the background of the shots.. Ryan Swen//Sun Tianxing (@swen_ryan) November 15, 2022, Babylon is an ambitious mess of a film. But not this one. My first question to Damien was, Great, great, great. The collective reaction in a packed, mostly enthusiastic house was, That was a lot of movie. Responses on Twitter (social reactions were encouraged while reviews remain under embargo ahead of the films wide Christmas Day release) from the press corps ranged from marveling over the films druggy over-the-topness to bewilderment over its wildly swinging tones. More at Will dabble in just about any movie genre, but passionate about discovering classic films/film history and tracking the Oscar race. D.C.-based cinephile. I wanted to tell a story about society at that time and how it shifted when sound came in. Also, I think I became really interested in the changes that weren't necessarily because of sound, but that were concurrent this idea of the morals of a society changing and that sense of the Wild West becoming civilized, so to speak. Side note, Pitt is being true to his word about taking less acting roles. EARLIER EXCLUSIVE, 7:45 AM PST: Several studios are lining up for Babylon, a script that Damien Chazelle has written to. However, her potential replacement is none other than Margot Robbie. Yeah its insane. Those first two weeks were a trial by fire, said Chazelle. Damien Chazelle is an American director and screenwriter. So stopping one part of the process to begin another actually took a conscious gearshift., The filmmaker noticed that towards the end of the 20s, there was this rash of suicides, deaths, suicidal drug overdoses, a little bit coalescing with a drug epidemic going on at the time, he said at an Academy Q & A, which coincided with the transition that was covered in Singing in the Rain, from the silent to sound eras. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. The next week brought the battlefield scenes. TMDb Learn more. I cheated with the margins, Chazelle said. It feels like we're now going through these transitions where they happen slowly enough that we're not even sure if they are a transition or are they a fad? "Babylon" flickers to life during its second episode starting with a fabulous tracking shot through the moviemaking process which includes dozens of spectacles in the foreground and background. Set in the 1920s, Babylon immortalizes the A-listers of today by placing them in the context of yesterdays golden era. Paramount has pulled the curtain back on " Babylon ," Damien Chazelle 's period comedy documenting the excess of the early age of Hollywood. When Babylon was announced back in November 2019 and given a Christmas Day 2021 release date, it was likely believed that the film would have little problem meeting this more than two-year window. who also wrote the script for "Babylon," discussed his vision for the film; he spoke of the dissonance between the art of filmmaking and the industry that . If you know your lore, you'll also surely recognize the fictionalized yet familiar characters played by the likes of Li Jun Li, Jean Smart, Olivia Wilde, Tobey Maguire and more. Copyright 2023 Salon.com, LLC. Send us a tip using our annonymous form. ", The director discusses his new family adventure, 'Chupa,' and teases Marvel's 'El Muerto.'. Unfortunately despite the great performances and set pieces it doesn't live up to Chazelle's previous work. That started my brain going.. Its hard to replace when it comes to trying to feel the elements, on a gut level of what some of those silent filmmakers would have felt., To mimic that, Chazelle tried to avoid CGI, even when hundreds of his extras would somehow fall away after lunch. Damien Chazelle '07 on His . We went through several regime changes. artists, biography, musician, songs or emotional, dancing, choreography, songs, tune or musical, sex, sexual, relationships, erotic or sensual, weird, surreal, bizarre, dream or confusing. one of those movies where im gonna wake up tomorrow and be like what happened last night? im just rambling now. The idea being that the further we could push the extreme behavior, the more viscerally you would then feel the desperation underneath it. ------------------------------------------, Park Chan-wook's mesmerizing "Decision to Leave" is a dreamy seduction that plays with our trust, "EO" is the gorgeously hypnotic drama about a donkey whose journey will break your heart, Surrender to Alejandro Irritu's Netflix movie "Bardo," a surreal "chronicle of uncertainties". Academy Award-winning director Damien Chazelle returned to the big screen on a massive scale with his latest, Babylon.Based on an idea the writer-director first cooked up years ago, the film . A rebellious, outrageous portrait of golden-era hedonistic Hollywood. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! What did you find in your research of the era that inspired those more R-rated moments? He explained that he researched the world of cinema in the 1920s in depth and refined his script. Emma Stone, of course, has an established history with Chazelle, with the two having worked together on La La Land, for which Stone won her Best Actress Oscar. It became this thing of trying to do everything in camera, he said. How has Babylon changed from the idea you started with to now, the finished product? Of course, we all know what transpired during 2020, so it should come as little surprise that in January, Paramount, among some other schedule shifts, pushed Babylons release date a full year. Show All, 189mins IndieWire is a part of Penske Media Corporation. And we'd improvise things that then would wind up in the script, and vice versa. Damien Chazelle wanted to make a film set during the druggy, decadent transition from silents to sound. With almost breathtaking audacity, Chazelle imagines Babylon to be a kind of origins story for Singin' in the Rain, clumsily nodding towards the 1952 classic before simply lifting clips from it. I love [Nelly] so much, but she was so exhausting. Now, more recently, there's a lot of debate about how films are shown and theaters versus streaming, things like that. Related The 'Breathless' filmmaker leaves behind a body of work that revolutionized modern cinema. Meanwhile, parallel stories involving Manny having to help save Jack's film by getting a camera in time, and Nellie wowing her initially unimpressed director, Ruth Adler (Olivia Hamilton), with a gutsy performance, unfold. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab). George is his best friend and Jack still doesn't really love him, he loves what he represents to Jack confidence in his status. On its face, Babylon would. "It's a disaster, and all the chips fall. Diego Calva plays Manny Torres and Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in "Babylon" (Paramount Pictures). Heres how it works. She took everything from me.. I can handle the truth. Such is the film's mix of class and crass as Chazelle rubs viewers noses in both, with a "Look at me, aren't I clever? The ballroom at the Ace Theatre in downtown L.A. required eight days of shooting, with hundreds of extras and an elephant, plus other hallway and room sets filmed in other locations. Its a gorgeous feat of cinema. All of the above cast, along with Chazelle, were onstage Monday night for the Academy Q&A moderated by Chapman film school dean and former Hollywood Reporter editor Stephen Galloway. And a whole day has passed and you havent got a single shot off. Thats what all the great party scenes go through its not just this joyful high from the beginning to the end theyre living organisms that begin in a certain place of innocence, and then maybe they curdle at a certain point, or maybe they go dark or violent. Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. Manny also ends up on set. There was heaps of stuff. There was also a marinara food fight involving Robbie and Smarts characters left on the cutting room floor. Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie working together after not sharing the screen in. It's one of the most impressive screen turns for Pitt in a long time. We're just going to live each day like it's our last, because it might be!" had such a great time. 5 min. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island. This comes after Netflix stepped up to greenlight another golden era Hollywood film in Mank, with David Fincher directing a script his father Howard Fincher wrote about Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, with Gary Oldman playing the scribe in a drama that chronicled his battles with Orson Welles on the classic film. Brown Chris Rauch Craig Cooper Kyle Padelford, Eric Sundahl Anthony D. Parrillo May Mitchell Jason Perrine, Paul Sonski Nancy Deren Noelle King Luis G. Hoyos Samuel J. I go big on the first take Damien comes up to me, twirling his hair as he does, which means that you havent given him what he needs yet, and goes, Yeah, that was great. Follow. How Ben Afflecks Air Makes the Case for Movie Theaters to Build Buzz, How Succession Trapped the Roy Family in a VIP Room of Grief in Episode 3, Movies Shot on Film 2023 Preview: From Oppenheimer to Killers of the Flower Moon and Maestro, How Gene Kelly and Singin in the Rain Taught John Wick to Fight, The 50 Best Movies of 2022, According to 165 Critics from Around the World, All 81 Titles Unceremoniously Removed from HBO Max (So Far), 10 Shows Canceled but Not Forgotten in 2022. As a director, how did you work with your actors on building these characters? Writer-director Chazelle called Babylon an ode to the wild West of the Roaring Twenties that has been in the works for close to 15 years. 2022 Chazelle, who first started thinking of the idea a decade and a half ago, said, The initial germ of [Babylon] was getting to know the particulars of this early pre-history of Hollywood, the American history of Los Angeles as a city, I remember one momentreading about this weird phenomenon where, toward the end of the 20s, there was this rash of suicides, deaths that seemed that they couldve been suicidal, drug overdoses, a little bit coalescing with the cresting of a drug epidemic going on at the time, and I started to dig into it and was curious as to why, and found it coincided with a transition that Id seen treated in movies like Singin in the Rain, which was the transition from silent to sound. 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I go big on the first take, she said. From Barbie to The Flash, Here Are the Movies That Made the Biggest Impact at CinemaCon. Chazelle's big swing is mediocre at best. In contemporary terms, we would call this a breakup. 200. It is meant to show the difficulties of capturing the magic, but the scene isn't as magical as the earlier ones with Jack and Nellie. #BabylonMovie pic.twitter.com/BnKQiOz2Zd, Scott Menzel (@ScottDMenzel) November 15, 2022.
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