Kyle Buchanan of Vulture.com and film critic Amy Nicholson maintain that younger and more diverse nominees are a result of the academy broadening its membership; "Baby Driver" director is a Grammy nominee for the film's pop-heavy soundtrack.
Edgar Wright on the music, cars and choreography of 'Baby Driver'
JAN. 23 UPDATE: Edgar Wright is nominated for a Grammy Award in the Compilation Soundtrack category, and the movie garnered three Academy Award nominations for Film Editing, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.
ORIGINAL SEGMENT FROM JULY 7, 2017:
There would be no "Baby Driver" without music, choreography and cars.
Writer/Director Edgar Wright's latest film follows Ansel Elgort as Baby, a young, introspective, spectacularly talented getaway driver who can’t do his thing unless he has the perfect tune queued up on his iPod.
The music was so specific – Wright even put the exact songs in the script – that he became paranoid about another movie using the music he planned to use.
TEXTING WITH "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY" FILMMAKER JAMES GUNN:
The movie that scared Wright the most was James Gunn's "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2." Since the two are friends they played a cagey text game of Go Fish about what songs – or more specifically, what music acts – were in each of their films.
EDGAR WRIGHT: Earlier this year, before "Guardians 2" had come out, I suddenly had a panic, I thought, Oh, what if one of my Baby Driver songs are in Guardians 2?
So I texted him and we had this funny text conversation...where I said: Hey man I was just panicking that some of my Baby Driver songs are in Guardians 2.
And he goes, Well, do you have any ELO?
And I was like, No. Do you have any Queen?
He said, No. Do you have any Sweet?
And I said, No. Do you have any Barry White?
And he goes, No. I was going to use a Barry White song but I didn't. And I said, Well I'm using Barry White. Neither of us divulged what the song was... we just went back and forth, and then we figured out that neither of us were using the same songs.
WHY WRIGHT HIRED A CHOREOGRAPHER:
Wright didn't just want the music to be part of Baby's character, he wanted it to essentially provide the rhythm of the entire film.
EW: It was always the idea of this movie to make it an action movie that's completely driven by the music. So as well as having an amazing stunt department headed by Darrin Prescott, who was the second unit director and the stunt coordinator, we also had Ryan Heffington who is the choreographer for the whole movie.... Ryan will come up with a sequence based on my notes and storyboards, then he'll show it to me and probably Bill Pope, my cinematographer. In some cases, like the opening, this is one shot. So then you're looking to see where you can keep it interesting for the whole two-and-a-half minutes of "Harlem Shuffle."
00000181-b667-d102-ad89-f6ff44000002 SHOOTING THE MOST COMPLICATED SCENE ON THE FIRST DAY OF FILMING:
The most ambitious part of the film – that didn't involve a massive car chase – is the title sequence. Shot in one continuous take, the camera follows Baby has he goes to buy coffee while moving through busy city streets listening to "Harlem Shuffle." Wright shot it on the first day of filming.
EW: I think it's a good thing to do a shot that’s very complicated on the first day because it really fulfills a number of tasks. One, it shows to the studio that you're not messing around and it's like, 'Whoa, this is gonna be a different kind of movie.' And, number two, I think it brings the cast and the crew together. Because it's a shot on the first day of the shoot employing so many extras and all of the [assistant directors] and all of the [production assistants] and everybody from every department — camera, sound — everybody's employed in this one shot. And not only that, number three, it's something that they can watch back and see that it works. Because if the shot turns out great, then it's actually a good morale booster for the crew. Because everybody can sit around and go, 'Wow, that looks really cool.'
By the way, they shot that scene twenty-eight times over the course of that first day and used the twenty-third take for the final film.
WHY BABY DRIVES A SUBARU WRX IN THE OPENING CHASE SCENE:
To make sure he was using the most authentic getaway cars for the heists in"Baby Driver," Wright interviewed ex-cons and ex-getaway drivers about the cars they used.
EW: One of the biggest things was that getaway drivers in bank robberies don't use conspicuously cool cars. Like you wouldn't use a vintage muscle car. You wouldn't use an expensive sports car because you're just crying out to kind of get caught...By their very nature they're more everyday commuter cars. So, in the script originally the first draft of the script I had populated the script with models and makes of the most stolen cars in America.
In the original "Baby Driver" script, Baby drove a Toyota Corrolla in the opening chase scene. But the studio had a different idea...
EW: The studio read the script and one of their notes said, 'Can the cars be any sexier?' I think they used the word 'aspirational', which is an interesting thing. And I said, 'well that kind of goes against the point of the movie'. Because the whole point of what a getaway driver tries to do is to blend into traffic and disappear...They begged me to come up with something sexier. So, I got to give the credit to the stunt team...Darrin Prescott and [stunt driver] Jeremy Fry were the people who said, 'Well, what about if – it's still a sadan and it's still an everyday car – but what about a Subaru WRX? Because it's like a secret rally car and the gearheads will go nuts. It's still like normal enough that it's like an everyday car. It's not a sports car that costs a quarter of a million.' And I have to say they were totally right.
To hear the full interview with Edgar Wright – including his reaction to
Fuck BABY DRIVER.
— Anthony Bourdain (@Bourdain) July 4, 2017
– click the play button at the top of the page.
Oscar 2018 nominations: Surprises, snubs and Hollywood's new wave
Over the past two years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has sent invitations to approximately 1,400 new members, hoping to diversify the mostly male and overwhelmingly white organization. With the 2018 Oscar nominations, we finally saw the effect of these new additions.
Younger voters helped push indie films such as "Get Out" and "Ladybird" while seasoned Academy members favored stalwarts like "Dunkirk" and "Darkest Hour."
This year's nominations also held many triumphs for women and people of color. Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig both garnered directing nominations while Rachel Morrison became the first woman nominated as a cinematographer, for her work on "Mudbound."
The Frame's host John Horn caught up with Vulture's Kyle Buchanan and Variety's Amy Nicholson to talk about this year's snubs, triumphs and surprises.
WHAT WERE THIS YEAR'S NOTABLE SNUBS?
Amy: I feel like "The Florida Project" is the big hole this year. I was really hoping that film would've gotten a ton more nominations across the board: cinematography, direction — everything. I think that Sean Baker is one of the best filmmakers working right now and the absence of it in every category, except for supporting actor... I feel like in 10 years we're going to look back on this as a big mistake.
Kyle: Well, I loved "Battle of the Sexes" but it just seemed to come-and-go when it was released early in September. As for "Wonder Woman," that was genuinely one of my favorite movies of the year. Why didn't it get nominated for best picture? I think because its [technical achievements] were not superlative enough. If you're going to make it into the best picture lineup and you are a tentpole action blockbuster, you need to be a lock in visual effects, you need to be a lock in production design and costumes — like "Mad Max: Fury Road" did. And "Wonder Woman" just didn't have those advantages. If you couldn't get nominated anywhere else, are you going to get nominated for best picture? It's awfully rare.
WHY NO JAMES FRANCO NOMINATION?
Kyle: I think it's pretty obvious. The accusations of sexual misconduct surfaced with just a few days left to vote. There's no doubt in my mind that they had an effect on his candidacy. The best actor field was very thin this year, for Denzel [Washington] to get in says a lot of things beyond the fact that Franco took a hit. It says that they still love Denzel, they'll want to nominate him for anything. It says that so many people voted at the last minute. And it says that even though "The Post" did make it into picture and actress [categories], they didn't [choose] Tom Hanks for best actor.
WHAT ARE THE LESS-NOTABLE SNUBS?
Amy: I wish Bria Vinaite had made it in as the mom from "The Florida Project." This is an unknown actress, just discovered off of Instagram and had an amazing screen presence. I think she's doing a lot more acting than anybody realizes. I look forward to seeing her in the future.
WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THE SCREENPLAY CATEGORIES?
Amy: I'm glad to see "Disaster Artist" in here. The book is fantastic and I thought they did such a good job figuring out how to stream the timelines together and make this a story about creativity and getting the people to come together to get something done even though it's a little bit ridiculous. "Molly's Game" is in there, and I thought that film was a lot stronger than anyone gave it credit for. I'm a little sad [Jessica] Chastain didn't make it [in the actress category].
WHAT WERE YOU MOST SURPRISED BY?
Kyle: The most notable of the screenplay nominations was in the adapted [category], which, again, wasn't the strongest field we've ever had. But "Logan" made it in. That's Hugh Jackman's final "Wolverine" film. It's very rare that a comic book movie gets nominated in screenplay. The only one that ever has, as far as I know, is "The Incredibles" in original screenplay. For an actual live-action Marvel film to get nominated in adapted screenplay, that's another one of the walls that's fallen today.
WHAT MADE YOU HAPPY?
Kyle: I think it's a really good crop of nominees. You know we always say, if the Oscars represent the industry, well then what does it mean? And I think there are encouraging signs this year, in part, because the Academy has been taking steps to broaden itself, diversify its ranks. And I think we've seen a lot of those picks reflected this year, not only in the fact that there's good taste reflected in the nominations, but in the fact that we have a lot of new records to tout. Rachel Morrison getting nominated for cinematography for "Mudbound" — that's the first time in the 90-year history of the Academy Awards a woman has gotten that. And it's no small thing either that "Mudbound," while it didn't make it into [best] picture and director [categories], did make it into categories that Netflix has never penetrated before, like supporting actress for Mary J. Blige and best song.
Amy: That nomination for Mary J. Blige makes me incredibly happy. She is so great in that film. She channels all of these emotions without saying anything. I feel like it's this almost psychic performance where you’re reading her mind the entire time.