“You name’s Baby? B-A-B-Y Baby?” From the moment Edgar Wright lifted the curtain on Baby Driver and its super-sleek first trailer, moviegoers have been entranced.
And not just because of the film’s razor-sharp editing – nor its enviable ensemble cast – but more because of the soundtrack coursing through the pipes of Wright’s hotly-anticipated heist thriller. Unlike the tried and tested formula of layering music onto a scene in post, the British filmmaker (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) shot Baby Driver with its licensed soundtrack in mind, and the result is a frantic, but ultimately refreshing movie experience that straddles the line between action and musical. That’s a topic that Edgar Wright discussed during a recent interview with Screen Rant.
It’s arrived just in the nick of time, too, given that TriStar has rolled out the latest (and greatest?) trailer for Baby Driver, one in which Ansel Elgort becomes the Mozart in the go-kart. Wright, meanwhile, traced the movie back to its genesis, and revealed that he’s been kicking around the idea of an audibly impaired getaway driver since wrapping up Hot Fuzz in 2007.
I guess it was more of a concept initially and I sort of knew what I wanted to do tonally and what kind of movie I wanted it to be like instead of what the general premise was and it was a nice voyage of discovery in terms of starting to build out the plot and the characters and the twists and things like that. And also once I started writing I started talking to ex-cons and real getaway drivers and FBI people and stuff and that’s always fascinating to me. It was also something (interesting) because it’s an American film and a crime film.
I met this guy who’s amazing, an ex-convict who is now a writer called Joe Loya who wrote a book called “The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell”, and I found him through a researcher and we became friendly. So when I would write pages I would sometimes sent them to him and say ‘Does this sound kind of real?’ I’m real aware of being English and middle class and writing an American crime film, so I may as well get the okay from someone who has been inside for ten years.
One of the many stars on board for Baby Driver is Jon Bernthal, the actor best known for his scenery-chewing performances across The Walking Dead, Daredevil and, soon, The Punisher. Why did Bernthal choose to sign on for the genre mash-up? Simple: Edgar Wright.
He’s a visionary. Every director, every job is different. I think with this particular project, it’s so specific, this movie already existed in Edgar’s mind before. You know, sometimes you get called into something and even with the great directors, it’s kind of like, you all get there and you play and you sort of figure it out, what it is. I think he’s different. I think these films exist in his mind before you get there.
It’s almost time to put the Mozart in the go-kart – Baby Driver speeds into U.S. theaters on June 28th, and if you’re curious to know how Wright’s latest creative venture stacks up when placed under the microscope, look no further than Matt Donato’s review from SXSW.
