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 costume designer Mary Zophres.
A four-time Oscar nominee for her work on True Grit, La La Land, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Babylon, Mary also counts classics like Dumb and Dumber and The Big Lebowski among her many credits, not to mention blockbusters like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Iron Man 2.
In this interview, she delves into her creative process alongside filmmaker Damien Chazelle and reflects on creating that iconic red dress for Margot Robbie. Mary also explains how important colour is to storytelling and weighs in on the lasting impact the iconic costumes she dreamed up for La La Land and Babylon have had.
You can watch our full conversation in the player below.
I spoke to Justin Hurwitz last week, and he talked about collaborating with Damien Chazelle from very, very early on in the filmmaking process - is that the case for you as well?
Yes! Yes, we were able to collaborate and get together very early. Mind you, it was maybe earlier than it would have been because we did push for a year due to COVID, but even then, I read the script for the first time in the Spring of 2019 and we met in the Fall of 2019 and just started sharing ideas. We met in person and were supposed to start four or five months later and it had to be pushed because of the pandemic. We started collaborating very early and continued all the way through. We were not technically on the film, but started gathering the research and visual ideas and did it all digitally to create albums for different characters and sets.
When I say sets, it’s working with the production designer Florencia [Martin], but I also have mood boards for each scene. Like the party, I had maybe 15 to 100 mood boards. The visuals that we gather that are inspirational springboards are so plentiful that we could wallpaper our walls in the fitting rooms with our mood boards. It was really inspiring. All of the preparatory work Damien and I did with all the department heads manifests itself in the visuals of the film. It shows when we’re so on the same page and we all had this backdrop of knowledge of how we were going to approach this singular piece of work of his and once we started filming, it was on your marks, get set, go.
And, I have to tell you, it was so cool that Damien and Justin always do their prep because when we were filming, we often filmed to the score. The timing, if you notice, the camera movements are so in sync with the score because we had that pre-record. We’d shoot to it. Talk about inspiring, You’re in it! It’s more than a movie set; it’s magical. In a weird, meta way, it’s like you’re in the movie.
The red costume Margot Robbie wears as Nellie when we meet her has already become iconic, particularly as it’s front and centre in the incredible Voodoo Mama dance scene; did knowing how physical that would be play heavily into how you approached the design?
It absolutely played into it. It was as big of a part as her character. What the dance was and what her movements were, I would say, were equal. That’s why it was a challenging [process]. We did several prototypes because the dance started to develop. At first, it wasn’t exactly like that, so we started making prototypes in our shop. I had a cutter/fitter just making those clothes and others making everybody else’s because we wanted to concentrate on Margot’s. It was a very important change and the entire arc…we built the whole movie around that and those characters.
As the dance developed, absolutely, it became clear. We also knew there would be 300 or more background surrounding her, including dancers, very closely. As each puzzle piece made its way into the picture, it became clearer and clearer there were certain things the costume had to have in addition to speaking to her character. She wants to make an entrance, but she has very little means at the time of that scene. It has to have this feel of being a little scrappy, a little cobbled together, and it was so helpful to have the dance studio 20 yards from my office. I could pop over there and watch them do it and we would have changes where we could try new things. Honestly, it was the dream collaboration movie experience on high, high octane. It was insane!
Like La La Land, colour is so important to the costumes we see on screen in Babylon, but what does your collaboration with the movie’s other art departments look like in finding that palette?
Both times, I collaborated heavily with the production designer and Damien early on. With La La Land, we did the same thing, but just had our meeting in person with myself, production design, set decoration, and the location team to go beat by beat through the colour story in each scene of the movie. Myself and Florence were plotting, ‘Okay, this is where she might wear this colour, so this is what the set will be.’
We were in discussions with every single set and every single pallet, and I had a rendition of the colours which is very important. Sometimes, the costume preceded what the set was and Florence and I work in tandem. Nellie is wearing red, and I felt it was very important she be in red because it felt like the right colour for her in that opening number. We decided no one else at the party would wear red and there would be elements of set decoration and set design, but very few. We wanted your eye to travel, but for it to hone in on Margot. So, when the police character points at her, it’s her…they’re experiencing the same feeling as the audience.
The collaboration of colour is very important. Even on a movie like First Man which has a more documentary feel, it’s a completely different nature, but the desaturation of making it like a faded photograph was super important. I think colour is a really great way to tell stories in film and Damien…sometimes, directors prefer a more muted palette, but he’s not afraid of colour, and I think we knew we had to realise it to its fullest to tell the story of Babylon.
La La Land is one of my favourite films and Emma Stone’s yellow dress and Ryan Gosling in the white shirt and tie has become such an iconic piece of imagery, as has Margot in the red dress. Does it mean a lot to you to create these very iconic pieces of imagery through your work?
It is a question I get asked a lot. I’ve also had it asked to me when I’ve interviewed with different directors. They’ll say, ‘How did you do that? How did you know?’ The answer is, you don’t! For me. I never approach it like, ‘Oh, this is going to be the iconic look for the movie.’ You start with this incredibly strong script as we did with La La Land and Babylon. These character arcs are so fully formed on the page, as is every description and everything Damien wanted to see in the movie. It was written in the script. You follow that path and you listen.
Damien is my guidepost and I trust his instincts. He’s very communicative and extremely articulate, so he’s able to tell me what he thinks and what he’s visualising in such an easy way that you just do that and then…I think if you try to make it iconic, you’re working backwards. I’ve never tried to do it that way. Not with The Big Lebowski, True Grit, La La Land. There are very specific reasons why she ended up in that yellow dress and it had nothing to do with it ending up on the poster, but it was right for the scene! I love it that it happens. I love that The Dude is a Halloween costume and one of the most top-selling on Amazon or something crazy like that, and yeah, it’s pretty cool. I have never sought it and it’s never been my goal. It happens after the fact, even with Margot’s red ensemble.
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.