00:00 No one's brought out the word gross yet.
00:01 - Yeah.
00:02 - But you're also gross.
00:03 - But gross?
00:04 - You are correct.
00:04 - Gross is correct.
00:05 - Action!
00:06 (upbeat music)
00:09 - I think what we have here in Hollywood is high art.
00:14 It's...
00:15 - Party time, sparkle time!
00:17 (upbeat music)
00:20 - This movie obviously does go to some extreme
00:24 and very gross places.
00:25 And actually I wanted to ask the two of you
00:27 specifically about two scenes,
00:29 namely the elephant and also the fancy dinnerware Nelly.
00:32 - No one's brought out the word gross yet.
00:34 - Yeah.
00:35 - But you're also gross.
00:36 - But gross?
00:37 - You are correct.
00:37 - Gross is correct.
00:38 - Tell us, you know, tell us about the elephant.
00:39 - Diego, you were in there.
00:40 - The elephant, sorry.
00:41 - Well, the elephant and I...
00:42 - Can you help us in that?
00:43 - I would love to have like here Linus, the DP,
00:46 because I remember the shot when everything
00:48 is coming into you, when it was coming into him.
00:51 - He was wearing a porn shirt?
00:52 - Luckily I was a little like, you know, aside.
00:54 But I think it's one of the greatest opening scenes ever.
00:58 No, so let's start a movie with an elephant doing that.
01:01 (laughing)
01:02 It's a self-made, yeah.
01:04 - Yeah, that was insane.
01:06 And the projectile vomiting was...
01:08 - Oh, impression.
01:09 - Was...
01:10 (whooshing)
01:10 - So impressive.
01:11 - It just, you know, it was, you just had to go for it.
01:13 - Did you practice for that?
01:14 (laughing)
01:14 - Yeah, yeah.
01:15 Yeah, it was disgusting and hilarious.
01:20 Like a lot of things in this movie.
01:21 - Yeah, I mean, by all reports, it was rock and roll time.
01:25 You know, it was unregulated, it was new.
01:27 They were figuring out who they were,
01:29 what the community is, and it was the wild, wild west.
01:33 - It's the most magical place in the world.
01:35 (upbeat music)
01:37 - Does it enhance the experience
01:39 making a movie about making movies?
01:41 Like, do you feel an extra level of passion
01:43 just having that part of the experience?
01:45 - I don't know if I thought of it that way.
01:47 - Yeah, 'cause it kind of made it funny just to be like,
01:49 yeah, we're making a movie about movies.
01:50 And then you would see like, the mics or whatever.
01:52 And then you see the actual mics above it.
01:54 I'm like, yo, this is super crazy.
01:58 - It's a little tricky.
01:58 - There's cameras on cameras.
02:00 I remember there was a couple of times
02:01 where you'd be performing and be like,
02:02 looking at the camera.
02:03 - Yeah, that's which camera is it?
02:04 Nope.
02:04 - No, that's the camera that's in this.
02:05 Oh, I knew that.
02:06 - It's a little like "Inception."
02:08 (laughing)
02:09 - A dream, a dream.
02:10 - What you don't know is that this is still the movie.
02:12 - I knew it.
02:13 - Still going.
02:14 - I knew it.
02:15 - We're gonna say we come in for my closeup now.
02:17 - One thing that struck me watching this movie
02:19 is that there was a lot of glamor shown
02:21 in the life of being an actor,
02:22 but there's also quite a lot of tragedy and nightmare.
02:26 - Yes.
02:27 - Action!
02:27 - I'm scared!
02:28 - Being actors, to what degree do you internalize that
02:31 and just think about it in relationship
02:32 with your own career?
02:33 (laughing)
02:34 - Wow.
02:35 - Yeah.
02:36 - Wow, that's a really, really good question.
02:38 - Well, I mean, we were just talking about it.
02:40 I mean, we humans, we're just, we're messy.
02:44 We're wonderful and we're awful and it gets complicated.
02:48 And we're, you know, we're all over the place.
02:51 So I think, you know, it's just the same
02:53 in any kind of environment you land.
02:54 I haven't quite run into the dysfunction of some,
02:59 to the extent of some of this.
03:00 - To the level, yeah.
03:01 - Except maybe in the younger years,
03:02 when people starting out were a little more reckless.
03:03 - Yeah.
03:04 - I think maybe.
03:05 - Yeah, I think, I mean, definitely the,
03:08 you start researching some of the people
03:09 that Damien pointed us towards
03:11 and you start racking up how many people died
03:13 really young at this time
03:15 and how young everyone was just in general.
03:17 People running the studios at 35
03:19 and start, people were going from being dirt poor
03:22 to being the biggest movie stars in the country,
03:26 like so quickly.
03:28 And they were 20, if that,
03:30 and then they were dead by that time.
03:32 They were 25, 30, 20, you know, like it was just,
03:34 it was kind of insane.
03:36 And it felt like at this time,
03:39 everyone was just like, live fast, die young sort of vibes.
03:42 - Lift that up!
03:43 - Oh, you big dick, Mr. Man!
03:45 - Who wants to see me fight a fucking snake?
03:48 (dramatic music)
03:50 - I don't think it's quite like that now
03:52 for a number of reasons, the industry's evolved,
03:55 but yeah, it was a crazy time.
03:58 I don't think it feels quite the same.
04:00 - I haven't thought about it that way.
04:03 I think I was so focused
04:05 on just portraying my character correctly
04:07 that I didn't really think about, you know,
04:09 what's gonna happen before,
04:12 what happened before, now and the future.
04:15 You could say I was in the moment.
04:17 - Seeing the things that they had to deal with back then
04:20 and noting it as it still kind of exists now,
04:22 especially like with like the sound,
04:24 like the issue with sound
04:25 and like the issue with like trying to get the lighting right
04:27 and you know, like the red light
04:29 and coming into this studio. - Oh my gosh, yeah.
04:30 - 'Cause that's, I've gotten yelled at before
04:32 by walking into, what do you call it?
04:34 - Always. - The stages
04:35 and ignoring the red light.
04:36 This was early in my already early career, but still.
04:39 - Yeah, 'cause you're not stealthy.
04:41 - Yeah, I'm not stealthy.
04:42 I'm not stealthy.
04:43 He's coming in here and making all this noise.
04:45 (laughing)
04:47 - Tell me, you miss the silence?
04:51 - No.
04:52 - Sound is how we redefine the form.
04:58 Sound!
04:58 - I like the idea that they were all pioneers, you know,
05:02 like pirates, like finding what to do
05:05 and taking risks all the time
05:07 because there wasn't like a book to go to,
05:09 like movie making 101.
05:11 No, there was a, so they were like literally the first ones,
05:14 like building something.
05:16 And I like that for "About Babylon" also.
05:18 And we built something, no?
05:20 (laughing)
05:21 - You can feel it.
05:22 It's something bigger than life.
05:24 - You are playing fictional people in fictional stories,
05:27 but I know that Damien Chazelle did just so much research.
05:30 I'm curious just how you both engaged with real history
05:33 and if there were any just real people
05:35 whose stories you found connections with.
05:37 - Yeah, my character was based on Anna May Wong,
05:39 so there was a lot of research on hers, on her.
05:42 I read her biography.
05:44 I watched a lot of her films.
05:45 And then of course the opening number,
05:49 the tuxedo number was inspired
05:51 by Marlene Dietrich in Morocco.
05:54 Yeah, a bunch of research done.
05:57 Damien and I met together
05:58 for a very intensive three-day masterclass
06:01 where he and I just chatted
06:04 about how we want Lady Faye to go,
06:07 anywhere from how she walked or how she carried herself
06:11 to what octave she spoke at,
06:14 how much breath is in all the words.
06:16 - Sure did.
06:17 - I like how you said that.
06:18 Damien really, it was interesting
06:20 getting those earlier conversations with him
06:22 once we all came on board
06:23 because it was just kind of like an open forum.
06:26 I mean, we've read the scenes obviously
06:27 and went through each of the scenes,
06:28 but then he's kind of like, "What do you think about this?"
06:30 And in my opinion, I feel like Sidney will sound like,
06:32 you know, he has like a melodic to his speech.
06:35 What do you think?
06:35 And then we would compare to like actual artists
06:38 like Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong,
06:39 which I kind of wanted to drift away from
06:41 'cause that's like the easy choice.
06:43 But Curtis Mosby was someone
06:44 that Damien brought to my attention.
06:46 And then obviously being knowledgeable
06:48 of like the earlier, like Duke Ellington,
06:50 all the people of that era
06:51 that I wasn't really familiar with
06:53 outside of just listening to the music like once or twice.
06:56 It was really cool to get to explore that with him
06:58 and the way he presents all the information that he has,
07:01 but he'll like give you everything
07:02 and then he'll like let you pick and choose
07:04 like what's gonna be most beneficial to you
07:06 as you're translating the character from script to screen.
07:09 - It's gonna be what it's gonna be.
07:11 - Just as far as like the structure of these,
07:13 of this narrative goes in these characters,
07:15 I mean, you're dealing with a lot of time jumps
07:16 and spaces in between these stories.
07:18 I'm curious just to what degree each of you
07:20 kind of basically dug into this parts of the stories
07:24 that we're not hearing just to fill out your characters.
07:27 - Well, yeah, sure.
07:28 I mean, it's always the case.
07:30 We, I mean, again, what Margot was saying,
07:33 we have a, we had a lot of silent stars
07:37 to go back to, to study and to help us fill in
07:39 kind of that story.
07:41 I know what you're saying,
07:43 because there's so many characters,
07:45 you know, what Damien focuses on
07:48 as far as their arc is interesting.
07:52 You don't see the same.
07:53 So yeah, we, I think it was just,
07:56 I think it's just inherent to what we do.
07:59 - Yeah.
08:00 - Can you guys explain this better?
08:01 - I mean, I-- - Surely.
08:02 Surely you can.
08:04 - I kind of do it with every character,
08:05 like come up with all the stuff
08:07 that you're not gonna see on screen,
08:09 but it helps me deliver what you do see on the screen.
08:11 So Nellie was definitely no different.
08:13 Like in my mind, I'd plotted out her childhood,
08:16 her teen years.
08:17 - Thank you.
08:18 - Thank you.
08:19 - Honey, you don't become a star.
08:20 You either are one or you ain't.
08:22 I am.
08:23 - One thing that both of you share in common
08:24 is these really just key scenes for both of your characters
08:28 with Diego Calva, where you are both pressured
08:31 to change who you are to fit a certain standard
08:34 of the industry.
08:35 And it obviously is such an impactful moment
08:37 for both of your characters.
08:38 I'm curious just how you approached it just personally
08:40 with Damien Chazelle and with Diego Calva.
08:43 - The thing I think is interesting about you bringing it up
08:47 is because we're sharing,
08:48 both of us are sharing that scene with Diego
08:49 and he's also a person of color.
08:51 - Mm-hmm.
08:52 - Kind of forcing somebody who is of his,
08:54 you know, of a general group and kind of, you know,
08:57 charging us to change.
08:58 - And that makes it all the more heartbreaking.
08:59 - Right.
09:00 - Because he's someone who has moved up in this world
09:03 and now he's in a place where he has to, you know,
09:06 to keep himself up there, he has to-
09:08 - Knock somebody else down.
09:09 - Yeah.
09:10 - Or challenge somebody else.
09:11 And as far as approaching how to play it,
09:13 I mean, I really enjoyed doing my scene with Diego
09:16 just because he has like an organic excitement
09:20 just about acting.
09:22 And I think if you work with,
09:24 I've been really lucky so far to work with some artists
09:26 that are really great and always committed,
09:27 but you know, you could be in a situation
09:29 where you're working with an actor who's like,
09:31 just tired of, like, I've been doing this for 80 years,
09:33 I'm tired.
09:34 Diego has this freshness to him that I found
09:37 in all of my castmates for this.
09:38 So it was going into work every day
09:40 and having a couple of scenes with everybody,
09:42 it was really exciting and just really made you
09:44 appreciate filmmaking.
09:45 And Damien only, you know, adds to it.
09:47 - I mean, that kind of energy and commitment
09:49 is really infectious.
09:50 - Yeah.
09:51 - So to be around this group of people who are here
09:55 doing their passion project and really loving it
09:57 was just very fulfilling and crucial
10:01 to making something as big as this.
10:03 - We've got to innovate.
10:04 We've got to inspire.
10:06 What happens up on that screen means something.
10:10 (dramatic music)
10:13 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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