Baby Driver is a 2017 action film written and directed by Edgar Wright. It stars Ansel Elgort as a getaway driver seeking freedom from a life of crime with his girlfriend Debora (Lily James). Eiza Gonzalez, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Jon Bernthal, and Kevin Spacey appear in supporting roles. Eric Fellner and his Working Title Films partner Tim Bevan produced Baby Driver in association with Big Talk Productions' Nira Park. Sony and TriStar Pictures handled commercial distribution of the film. Baby Driver was financed through a co-production pact between TriStar, MRC and tax subsidies from the Georgia state government.
Wright developed Baby Driver for over two decades. He devised the idea while in his youth, and his early directing experience further shaped his ambitions for Baby Driver. Originally based in Los Angeles, Wright revised the film's setting to Atlanta, integrating the city's ethos into an important storytelling device. Principal photography took place in Atlanta over four months, from February to May 2016. Production involved the planning of meticulously coordinated stunts, choreography, and in-camera shooting. Critics have examined Baby Driver's subject matter in thematic studies of the film, with emphasis on its use of color symbolism and focus on Baby's evolving morality.
Baby Driver premiered at the South by Southwest festival on March 11, 2017, followed by releases in North America and the United Kingdom on June 28. It was acclaimed for its craftsmanship and acting, though the characterization and screenwriting drew some criticism. The National Board of Review selected Baby Driver as one of the top films of the year. It earned $226 million globally, bolstered by positive word-of-mouth support and flagging interest in blockbuster franchises. Baby Driver was nominated for numerous awards, including three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Film Awards (with a win for Editing), two Critics' Choice Awards (again, with a win for Editing), and a Golden Globe Award, and won several other honors, chiefly for technical achievement. The success of Baby Driver increased studio interest in producing a sequel.
His next robbery goes awry after an armed bystander chases them down, but Baby evades him and the police. Having paid his debt, Baby quits his life of crime and starts delivering pizzas. Doc interrupts Baby's date with Debora and insists he join a post-office heist under threat of retaliation. The crew consists of easygoing Buddy, his sharpshooter wife Darling, and trigger-happy Bats, who takes a dislike to Baby. While the crew attempts to purchase illegal arms at a rendezvous, Bats recognizes one of the dealers as undercover police and opens fire, resulting in most of the dealers being killed. Afterward, Bats makes Baby stop at Debora's diner, unaware of Baby and Debora's romance. Baby, aware of Bats' homicidal habit, stops him from killing her to avoid paying.
Doc is furious, revealing that the dealers were dirty cops on his payroll. He decides to cancel the heist, but Bats, Buddy and Darling disagree. Doc lets Baby decide; he chooses to go through with it. Baby attempts to slip away late that night, hoping to take Debora and leave. He is stopped by Buddy and Bats, who have discovered his recordings and believe he is a police informant; when they and Doc hear his mixtapes, they are convinced of his innocence.
During the heist, Bats kills a security guard. Disgusted, Baby refuses to drive away, causing Bats to hit him. Baby rams the car into a rebar which impales Bats, killing him. The three flee on foot. After the police kill Darling in a shootout, Buddy blames Baby for her death and vows to kill him. Baby steals a car and flees to his apartment. After leaving Joseph at an assisted living home with his heist earnings, Baby rushes to Bo's for Debora, where Buddy is waiting. Baby shoots Buddy and flees with Debora as police reinforcements swarm the restaurant.
At the safe house, Doc refuses Baby's pleas for help, but relents when he sees Debora consoling him. Doc supplies them with cash and an escape route out of the country. The police confront the three in the parking garage, but Doc kills them all. Buddy ambushes them with a stolen police car and kills Doc. A cat-and-mouse game ensues until Buddy has Baby at his mercy. He shoots next to both Baby's ears, bursting his ear drums and temporarily deafening him, but this distraction allows Debora to subdue Buddy with a crowbar. After Baby shoots him in the leg, Buddy falls to his death.
Baby surrenders after he and Debora encounter a police roadblock. At Baby's trial, Joseph, Debora, and other individuals Baby randomly helped testify in his defense. He is sentenced to 25 years in prison, but will be eligible for parole after only five. Debora stays in contact with Baby during his incarceration, and once he is released, she waits for him in a new car as the two are reunited and drive off into the sunset.
Other cast members include Flea as Eddie 'No Nose',[24] Lanny Joon as JD,[25] Sky Ferreira as Baby's biological mother (an aspiring singer),[26] R. Marcus Taylor as Armie, a crooked police officer, Lance Palmer as Baby's biological father (an abusive alcoholic),[27] Big Boi and Killer Mike as restaurant patrons,[28] Paul Williams as 'The Butcher',[28] Walter Hill as the voice of a courtroom ASL interpreter, and Jon Spencer as a prison guard.[28] Noel Fielding and Nick Frost have cameos through archive footage on Baby's TV, appearing in the music video for Mint Royale's "Blue Song" (directed by Wright), in which Fielding played an prototypical version of Baby.
Baby Driver was a longtime passion project Wright had been developing since 1995, when the writer-director was a struggling 21-year-old filmmaker living in suburban London.[7][16] He had relocated to London to finish his first professional film, the low-budget western comedy A Fistful of Fingers, and to contemplate his future in entertainment.[7] Wright's repeated listening to Orange (1994), the fourth studio album by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, provided the impetus for Baby Driver.[7] At first he envisioned a high-speed car chase that was prefaced with a dance sequence soundtracked to "Bellbottoms".[29] Though this was ultimately written into the script as the film's opening sequence, Wright's nascent vision was far from a fully realized project.[16] By the time Baby Driver took definite form, the advent of the iPod, Wright's childhood tinnitus, and his reading of Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia (2007), which explores the neuroscience of music, were forces shaping the project's artistic direction.[29]
Wright, lead film editor Paul Machliss, and Los Angeles-based editor Evan Schiff devised a pre-edit of Baby Driver with animatics in the initial stages of production. With Avid Media Composer, Machliss was tasked with syncopating each animatic to a corresponding song. He and Wright had an existing professional relationship from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The World's End. In addition, Machliss worked on set providing input for the shoot, which is unusual for a film editor.[32]
Los Angeles was to have been Baby Driver's original setting, but prohibitively expensive production costs made shooting there impractical.[30][33] Instead, the studio toured cities that offered generous transferable tax credits for film production. These included Atlanta, which emerged as the frontrunner during preliminary scouting. Preserving the city's ethos was imperative for an authentic story, for Atlanta typically doubles for other global cities in blockbuster cinema.[33][34] Wright spent about a week observing the cityscape to facilitate the necessary revisions to the script. He found Baby Driver's story better realized in Atlanta because of the city's renown as a logistics hub.[33] Principal photography, which lasted four months from February to May 2016,[35][36] took place mostly in the central business district.[33] Location shots showcase many of Atlanta's landmarks (such as Peachtree Center), cultural institutions, and even local media.[37][38] Elsewhere, filming occurred in Gainesville and rural Monroe County, Georgia.[37] Although other suburban areas of Atlanta were scouted for main unit filming, Wright preferred the city's urbanity over the dense vegetation of the suburbs, which he considered an unsuitable backdrop for the film.[30] Baby Driver contributed $30.1 million to the local economy through wages, transportation, and other expenditures.[39]
Wright cited Vanishing Point (1971), American Graffiti (1973), The Driver (1978), Point Break (1991), Reservoir Dogs (1992), and Heat (1995), among others, as significant influences on the film's visual hallmarks and creative direction.[29][30][31][40] To evoke their aesthetic, one of the production's main goals was to produce Baby Driver using practical filmmaking techniques.[41] This meant planning meticulously coordinated stunts and choreography, and shooting as much of the film in-camera as possible, using visual effects only when necessary.[42][43] Baby Driver was director of photography Bill Pope's third film with Wright, following Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The World's End. Pope shot the project mostly on 35mm Kodak film stock, utilizing Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 cameras with G-Series, T-Series, and C-Series 2.39:1 anamorphic widescreen lenses.[41] Occasionally, to capture more intense stunts, and to achieve unusual camera angles Wright demanded for certain scenes, the crew shot in Super 35 format with specialized cameras.[44] Panavision's Atlanta offices assisted with the needs of the production when logistics management became challenging.[41] The climactic scene in particular, staged in a parking garage at the Atlanta Falcons' training facility, which was available only at night, was difficult to shoot because of the darkness.[41] The scene ended up being filmed digitally using the company's Arri Alexa camera system, which has greater exposure latitude.[32][41]
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