Before THE WORLDS END, before HOT FUZZ and before SHAUN OF THE DEAD, there was BABY DRIVER, or at least the beginnings of it. It's been four years since our last Edgar Wright film, but, after the unfortunate business with ANT-MAN, it feels as though it's been much longer. We're still a few months out from the release of BABY DRIVER, but the film recently had its premiere at SXSW and Wright was on-hand to answer a few questions about the project, including how it all began.
Edgar Wright revealed that he had "the germ of this movie rattling around in my head for a long time," 22 years to be exact. While listening to "Bellbottoms" by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in his bedroom, Wright thought that the song would be perfect for a car chase.
I just listened to that song over and over again, and I just thought, ‘That would make a great car chase song.’ I sort of started to visualize the car chase to that song. I didn’t really have what the rest of the idea was. And then I started to think of the idea of a getaway driver that cannot really operate without the right music playing, like a soundtrack.
Many years later, BABY DRIVER came to life (complete with the "Bellbottoms" track) and stars Ansel Elgort as a near mute getaway driver with an ear condition known as Baby, who is coerced by a crime boss known as Doc (Kevin Spacey) to work for him. Additional members of BABY DRIVER's cast include Jon Hamm as Buddy, Eiza Gonzalez as Darling, Buddy's girlfriend and partner-in-crime, Jamie Foxx as Bats, the impulsive gun-slinging cohort, and Lily James as Deborah, Baby's love interest. When it came to the car chases featured in the film, Edgar Wright wanted everything to feel as real as possible.
I think there are real visceral pleasures to watching a somewhat real car chase and that’s what we tried to do–real fast driving and real amazing stunt work happening, and on residential streets as well. The other thing that makes them extra challenging, we did all the car chases in the day. A lot of the time you see them at night because it’s easier, because you can close the roads. But we did these on weekdays in Atlanta instead of weekends on the freeway. So that added a huge organizational challenge on the stunts and location departments. But it just looks more vivid. And also banks are open during the day, they’re not open at night. Sort of a no brainer.
In order to give these sequences an added dose of reality, Edgar Wright actually interviewed several ex-cons, including ex-getaway drivers, and came to the conclusion that the cars in the film would need to blend in, not stand out.
I actually interviewed several ex-cons, including some ex-getaway drivers. And part of the plan is to blend in as quickly as you can. In a lot of action films, a lot of guys are driving muscle cars or vintage cars whereas in reality a lot of getaway drivers would actually choose like commuter cars and find a way to blend into freeway traffic as quickly as possible. There’s nods to that kind of technique in the movie, being in a car that can blend in, getting on the off ramp, switching the car, disappearing in a different car or cars rather than being in like a limited edition muscle car in hot pink muscle car. Though we have one of those later as well!
BABY DRIVER is set to hit theaters on August 11, 2017.