By Gill Pringle and Reuben Lazarus
Can you talk a bit about the casting process?
I think in the case of a movie like this which is like a studio movie but it is an original movie, it’s not a huge budget movie. Those actors are getting the movie made, if there’s no Kevin or Jamie there is probably no movie. In fact, if I’m honest I didn’t think of actors that big when I was writing it. So, there is a point when somebody suddenly says, “What about Jamie Foxx” and you think “Well he’s amazing but I don’t think he’d do it”, and then he does it. And it’s like, oh god it’s great!
I would always be very conscious of when there was this kind of shock with Kevin and Jamie in the same shot, and I would always whisper to my deputy producer “Double Oscar Shot”, Two Oscar winners in one shot!
What about Meryl Streep, is she in it?
Okay, so I tweeted this. This is actually true. Well, let me put it like this, there is a clip of It’s Complicated in Baby Driver, therefore Meryl Streep and John Krasinski are in the movie. Were they actually on set? No. Are they actually in the movie? Yes. So, I feel like nobody can take me to court for lying on that one.
How do you think this movie contributes to the heist genre?
I’m a big heist movie fan. I love those movies. Some of the classic heist movies are some of my favourites whether it’s The Driver or Heat or The Rock or Reservoir Dogs. Those are a big part of my movie diet growing up, and it was my idea to have this twist to it by having this car movie which is driven by music as the basic premise. Taking things that you’ve seen before but pushing them in a new direction.
In your movies, you work with a lot of meta-referencing. How does that feel in the current climate? Does it seem futile to keep working like this?
No. I don’t think this film is affected by the current climate. I think the fascinating thing that comes out of troubled times globally, is that interesting art comes out, whether it’s music or comedy or films. You’ll probably get a lot of films that indirectly talk about what’s happening now. This movie isn’t as meta as my previous movies. My movies are all comedies and they all connect in a kind of inverted comas kind of way. This film felt a bit more real; it has humour in it and it has some of the stylised music sequences, but at the core it’s real characters and real consequences. I don’t want it to be a heavy-handed morality play, but the movie is about the disparity between the fantasy of being in a high-speed police chase and the reality of actually being a criminal, and the consequences of that.
Is Fast and Furious an elephant in the room?
I think the thing is with those movies, like caper movies, is that they’re all pg-13s. The best thing about those movies, like Fast Five and The Italian Job, is that they are caper movies. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I thought it would be interesting to do something that has bit more of a real life edge to it.
There are movies with a lot of guns where there is so much joy in shooting guns, and in a way, it glorifies and makes you want to have a gun. Do you think this is a problem?
In my movie, you’ll see that it doesn’t really end well for everybody. The films that did inspire me for this movie, going way back to the Warner Brothers gangster films, which were made in the 1930s and 1940s, and the ultimate message is crime does not pay. I think once you see the end of this movie, even though there are moments that seem like they are more glorified stuff or a stylised version of that, the reality comes crashing down.
Will there be a number 2 for this movie?
Well there could be a number 2. Not with all of the cast. I’d say the majority of the cast don’t come back.
How do you maintain your integrity on a larger budget?
I think that one of the benefits is that it helps if you’ve written the film as well, because then as a writer and director you’re just connected. Sometimes where the director hasn’t written the project, you’re maybe more at prey to lots of opinion from the studios, the producers, the actors. Whereas when you’ve written, you can say to the actors “This is the intention of the scene, this is what I want”. So, you don’t get into too many of those conversations of what the scene is supposed to mean and what the tone and intention is. That’s why I think I’ve written or co-written everything that I’ve done. This is the first movie since my first one where I have written and directed credit.
Is there a bit of yourself in this move, because most of your movies have a strand of the personal?
I think a lot of times, you make movies to do things that you could never do in real life. Like, unless things go really wrong, I would probably never be a getaway driver. So, in a way it’s kind of living vicariously through the profession. But with that said, there are elements of Baby that are me, like I used to have tinnitus when I was a kid, like about 8 or 9, also I’m obsessed with music. I cannot write without the right music playing, so there is that element where the eccentricities of how I get motivated come into the script.
How did the tinnitus happen and effect you when you were 8 or 9?
I think there was just a buildup of pressure in my ears and it was awful, it had to get syringed. It used to keep me awake at night, it was awful. So, I know it affects musicians a lot, but it’s something that I read up a lot about. I read that Barbra Streisand has it, and she plays music all the time to drown it out. There is now a reference to that in the movie, because I thought “ah, that’s detail”. I’ve never met Barbra Streisand before, but I’ll ask her about it if I do. Jamie [Foxx] is good friends with her though.
Baby Driver is in cinemas July 13, 2017
