Babylon follows an ambitious cast of characters - The Silent Film Superstar (Brad Pitt), the Young Starlet (Margot Robbie), the Production Executive (Diego Calva), the Musical Sensation (Jovan Adepo) and the Alluring Powerhouse Performer (Li Jun Li) - who are striving to stay on top of the raucous, 1920s Hollywood scene and maintain their relevance at a time when the industry is moving on to the next best thing.
Fans who buy the film on Digital - where it is now available from Paramount Home Entertainment - will have access to over 40 minutes of behind-the-scenes interviews and deleted scenes to further illuminate how the cinematic tour-de-force was brought to life.
Nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Original Score, Best Production Design, and Best Costume Design, Babylon is a must-see spectacle featuring outstanding work from a world-class cast and filmmaking team, including Oscar-winning composer Justin Hurwitz.
Perhaps best known for his longtime collaboration with director Damien Chazelle, scoring each of his films: Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, Whiplash, La La Land, First Man, and Babylon, we were fortunate enough to speak with Justin about Margot Robbie's breathtaking "Voodoo Mama" dance, his approach to the movie's score, and whether he writes music with actors in mind.
Hurwitz also addresses plans for La La Land to head to Broadway as a stage musical and reveals whether he would be interested in tackling a Marvel or Star Wars project with (or without) frequent collaborator Damien Chazelle.
You can check out our full conversation in the player below.
Music is key to Babylon’s story, and as hugely important as the score is to any movie, do you think being so involved in the storytelling process with Damien ultimately helps enhance your work?
Absolutely. With this movie, it was so necessary for me to come in as soon as he had a draft of that script. I had to read it and then we had to get going with figuring out where the music would be and starting to build those demos. Really, from that point all the way through Damien’s process of storyboarding and making all the stick figures to figure out every single shot he wanted in the movie - he does that because he’s an unbelievable planner when it comes to making storyboards and animatics for every single shot and camera move. I created music demos through that whole process and was on set through the shoot, and then through about another year of post-production, we continued to build and refine this score. It was a constant evolution of that music from the very beginning to the end.
People have gone wild over Margot Robbie dancing to “Voodoo Mama,” but when you’re tasked with creating this very complex, layered piece of music that needs to mesmerise both the character and audience, where do you even begin?
One of the early ideas Damien and I had musically about what this score would be was the idea that, at least when we’re at parties, using the lineup of a jazz band you could believe would be at a party, but making the style of the writing a lot more muscular and aggressive than what we think of as 20s jazz. We talked a lot about riff-based writing which is these tunes that are built around this very driving riff. Almost the way rock and roll is built around a heavy riff on an electric guitar; in our case, we do it on Unison horns. I always start here at the piano and just noodle around like all compositions until we have an idea we like.
In the case of ‘Voodoo Mama,’ it was really thinking about riffs and that’s where we came up with [the tune]. It was given to Unison saxes and horns and we built the composition around that. The other idea that’s there is the driving percussion. There’s the sax riff and then there’s the very, very driving percussion. Again, that was a process of demoing a lot of stuff and layering, layering, layering in the studio. There are a lot of claps and sounds of wood hitting wood. Even here in my apartment, I was taking a wooden board and hitting them on the ground at one point! I think there are something like a hundred layers - and I’m not exaggerating - of percussion. It’s pretty much wood hitting wood to create that real driving sound that goes along with the riff.
Being involved from so early on, do you ever write music with specific actors in mind or do you prefer leaving it up to them and Damien to take what you’ve created and then find a way to combine it with their performances?
It depends on the movie. It’s probably most important with a musical like La La Land because you’re going to have actors actually singing the music you’re writing. In the case of that movie, almost all of it was written before Emma [Stone] and Ryan [Gosling] signed on. There were a couple of things that were stragglers, so Emma’s audition - ‘The Fools Who Dream’ song - was saved for the very end so it did have Emma in mind and I could at least picture her in the scene as I was writing it. John Legend, we actually collaborated with on the song he sings so he was even more involved in his song. For the most part on that musical, the music was written before the actors signed on.
For a score like this, I’m really not thinking about the actors so much. I’m thinking about the characters I’ve read in the script. I’m thinking about the vibe of Manny, Nellie, and Jack. I want to be unhinged to match Nellie’s character. I want to be thoughtful and sometimes a dear in the headlights to match Manny’s character. I need to be wistful and romantic to match Jack. I’m thinking more about what I’ve read in the script than the actors usually.
When you’re taking that 1920s jazz and putting a completely new spin on it by imagining the music that might have been playing in clubs at the time, is it quite an intimidating feeling or a challenge you embrace?
It’s always intimidating going into any new project when there’s so much work ahead of you. There’s a lot of unanswered questions and themes that haven’t been discovered yet. I was very excited. I was a lot happier once Damien and I decided to do something that wasn’t going to sound 1920s and would sound, for the most part, very different from what we’ve done. When I first heard about the project, I was like, ‘Oh no, I hope I’m not going to have to do that again.’ We’ve done so many jazz projects and I love them and I’m very proud of our movies. I didn’t want to repeat myself.
As soon as he said, ‘But…I want to sound really different and a lot more modern and aggressive. Let’s play with modern dance music and really different sounds.’ We put a lot of different styles in the blender. There are a lot of Middle Eastern flavours. We have a lot of African percussion and Asian sounds. We used an Erhu Chinese string instrument and kazoos and slide whistles in a lot of the tracks. There are circus sounds like calliope music. Once we started talking about these ideas, I got very excited. I realised, ‘Okay, we can put a lot more things in the blender than we ever have and draw on a lot more influences and come up with something that really sounds like its own thing.’
That’s always the goal for us. How do we come up with a sound that is the Babylon sound? We were aiming for something that was definitely different than what we’ve done.
La La Land is one of my all-time favourite films, and “City of Stars” was even our first dance song at my wedding, so I’m very intrigued by those Broadway plans. Is that something you’re closely involved with and, either way, how do you feel about it?
I will be! What we announced the other day is that I’ll return to do the new music and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote incredible lyrics for the movie, will return and co-write the songs with me. We just haven’t started yet. There’s a book that’s been underway, but as the music team, we haven’t started. I think it will have to start soon because there’s a timeline and everybody has an idea for when they want to get to Broadway. I haven’t even dived in yet.
Your collaborations with Damien have led to you working on such a wide array of stories, but do the big franchises like Marvel and Star Wars appeal to you as a composer?
Well, the Damien relationship definitely appeals to me. That’s the most appealing thing going on for me. That’s why I haven’t worked with anyone else yet. I might at some point. I think it would be a good thing for me. Maybe Damien will make an action movie. I don’t know! I don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive and it would be great for me and Damien together to explore new genres. Who knows, maybe that’s in the cards at some point. I would love doing a big action movie because it’s a great canvas.
The John Williams scores for Star Wars are totally iconic, incredible, and some of the best music ever written. My friend Ludwig Göransson’s score for Black Panther I think is a masterpiece. It’s an unbelievable score. There are other great examples. Laura Karpman’s score for Ms. Marvel is awesome. It’s one of my favourite scores in the past few years. It’s so interesting and a combination of great themes and sounds. Themes and soundscape all put together in something really special. I think Marvel can be an incredible canvas, so no current plans to work in that universe, but maybe at some point.
Now available on Digital platforms, Babylon arrives on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, and in a Limited-Edition 4K Ultra HD SteelBook on March 21, 2023.