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