We chat with Babylon director Damien Chazelle about the inspiration behind his Hollywood epic, using music to pace the film's biggest set pieces, and leaning into intimidating ideas:
Damien Chazelle's Babylon tells a sprawling, epic story that takes place over the span of decades. It's fitting, then, that the filmmaker spent over a decade developing the film, with Babylon in the back of his head even during the creation of Whiplash, La La Land, and First Man. The ambition behind Babylon is clear from the film's opening moments, with spectacle, music, story, and performances alike that certainly make it worth a viewing .
Damien Chazelle: I'd say it was definitely one of those, 'bubbling in the background', or 'on the back burner' projects for years. It felt like a mountain that I kept trying to psych myself up to climb, and then would just decide not to. A lot of days of facing the blank page and feeling unable to surmount that initial wall.
Damien Chazelle: It was and organic thing in the years of research, where certain people would just keep jumping out. I'd keep finding myself gravitating back to Clara Bow, for instance, or John Gilbert, or Anna May Wong, or Elinor Glyn. Those people became some of the linchpins, [but] even in the case of those characters... especially Margot's character, there's a lot more than Clara Bow in there.
Damien Chazelle: It's tough, but I don't think I could do it without the music. I have to sort of be able to envision it with music. I don't know if I'd be able to do it without Justin [Hurwitz], the composer I work with. It's not just helpful but indispensable for me to be able to give him a script as soon as a draft is done, and have him begin to workshop themes and melodies, even just as piano demos, to get a sense of what the musical language is going to be.
This film goes to so many places, and there's so much wild stuff happening. Was there any sequence or a scene where you thought "I might be pushing it with this one?" You have Babylon, and Whiplash, and La La Land that all deal in their own way with the cost of creative pursuits. Obviously, you're an incredibly creative person, but is there something specific that has kept drawing you back to that subject?
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