Interviews (Written): Edgar Wright
The writer-director talks his latest movie Baby Driver.
The writer-director talks his latest movie Baby Driver.
I love Baby Driver as you can see from this post from earlier this week after seeing the film. So I’ve aggregated links to a bunch of interviews with the film’s writer-director Edgar Wright.
Here are some excerpts of Wright’s responses in a /film interview:
I think it came from literally visualizing the action while listening to songs. It really all started when I was 21 and I had done my first movie, but I was living in London, completely broke. Even though I had made a movie, I certainly wasn’t calling myself a film director at that point [laughs]. It took a long time. I think it was after I had done Shaun of the Dead that I actually uttered “Oh, I’m a director.” Really, I would listen to music and I would visualize the action. So it’s like dreams and visualizations of action came before the idea for the character. I knew it was a car chase movie. I would literally listen to “Bellbottoms” by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and visualize this car chase and be able to visualize: “So the first half of this section, they’re all pulling up. On these guitar stabs, you cut around the gang and they get out and go inside. And now he’s on his own and he starts singing along with the song. And then they come back and it’s building up to the song really kicking into gear and then they drive off.” This is stuff I was thinking about way before Spaced, way before Shaun of the Dead. Over the years, I started to get the idea of a getaway driver who listens to music the whole time. I didn’t start seriously working on it or writing it until 10 years ago.
I had done this music video that was like a dry run for the opening scene. It’s funny. It’s now become the story that the movie is an expansion of that music video, when in reality, that music video was me road testing the idea for the first scene. It only came about because, the night before I was supposed to hand in my first treatment for [music group] Mint Royale, I was like “What the fuck am I going to do? Maybe I’ll go with this getaway driver idea!” And then I was mad at myself for doing it, because even though the music video turned out pretty good, I was like “Oh, why did I burn that idea on that video?” So I was annoyed at myself for doing that. Later, it actually became sort of a help, because the actor in the video, Noel Fielding, became much more famous after the video was made. So that video kept popping up again, virally, over the next 10 years. It eventually became something where, when I was pitching the film, I could say “I did this video which is sort of like in the right vein” so people could see it and get the right idea.
For the rest of the /film interview, go here.
More interviews:
A.V. Club
Support original movies! Go see Baby Driver!