Wright wrote the screenplay while listening to the film’s playlist (wisely clearing the rights for every song beforehand) and storyboarded every scene to a song, beat by beat. He remembers “listening to the song ‘Bell Bottoms’ by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and imagining this car chase to it, the action crescendoing with the music.” “But I wanted to take that even farther, to its nth degree.” The use of pop music in Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and John Landis movies (“especially ‘The Blues Brothers,’ which is mind-blowing”) inspired Wright.

Baby’s basically trying to bend the world to fit his playlist.” “I was trying to take an instant like that, when you notice your windshield wipers moving to the beat, and create a world in which that’s happening all the time. “You know those moments in life when the music you’re listening to syncs up with your life?” said Wright. Ever since then he’s lived with his iPod earbuds in 24/7, to drown out the ringing (“a hum in the drum,” says Spacey’s character). Wright said he first got the idea for Baby’s character more than 20 years ago, and he gave him a comic-book-worthy backstory: He has tinnitus from the childhood car accident that killed his parents. The cast also includes Lily James as his girlfriend, and Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm and Flea as a ragtag crew of thieves. (The eclectic mix includes everything from Jonathan Richman and the Commodores to Queen, Young MC, Danger Mouse and Big Boi.) Ansel Elgort (left) plays a young getaway driver and Kevin Spacey a crime boss in “Baby Driver.” Tri-Star PicturesĮlgort plays the baby-faced title character, a young getaway driver trying to pay his final dues to crime boss Doc (Kevin Spacey) with one last robbery. The film’s biggest and most entertaining twist, which wowed audiences at its South by Southwest premiere in March, is the extent to which all the action - every gunshot, skid mark and slammed door - is synced by the second to the soundtrack. “I find something I really love, like the car chase or heist movie, and then I think, ‘What kind of twist can I put on it so it’s new?’”

“‘Baby Driver’ is my action musical,” said Wright. They clearly relish memories of the movie’s “herculean” shoot in Atlanta last spring - racing cherry-red Subarus on Interstate 85 (including a high-speed three-card monte on wheels, shot from above), staging gunfights in multilevel parking garages and parkour-styled chases on foot. He folded his 6-foot-5 frame into a chair beside the ebullient British writer-director Wright, 43, and both men laughed throughout the interview. “I only make a film every three or four years, so I think I try to do at least two movies at once with each one,” Wright said during a recent visit to San Francisco with “Baby Driver”’s 23-year-old star, Ansel Elgort (“Divergent”).Įlgort, a ballet-trained actor, musician and DJ from a creative New York family (he was named after photographer Ansel Adams), shot to fame after playing Augustus Waters in the teen-romance blockbuster “The Fault in Our Stars” three years ago.

Baby driver soundtrack bell bottoms