Babylon: what was the hardest scene to put to music?

At Damien Chazelle, music plays a major role. It’s even the heart of Whiplash or La La Land, his homage to musicals. It is therefore not more surprising than that that his most faithful collaborator is a composer: Justin Hurwitz.

Aged 38, whom he celebrates on January 22, 2023, he is only three days apart from the director, born on January 19 of the same year. Anniversaries that the two men celebrate while Babylon, their fifth collaboration, has just been released in French cinemas.

A dive into the Hollywood of the 20s whose musical challenges Justin Hurwitz details with us. While waiting for the Oscar nominations of which he could be one of the favorites after his triumph at the Golden Globes, thus offering himself a chance to add a third golden statuette to his list, after those for Best Song and Best Music Original received for La La Land.

AlloCiné: How did your reunion with Damien Chazelle go? How was this project different from previous ones?

Justin Hurwitz: I love working with Damien! We’ve known each other for more than half our lives now, and it’s very rare to find a director who thinks about the music as early in the production process as he does. And who appreciates it as much as he does. I find it fun to be involved so early in a project, as we are used to.

As soon as there is a scenario, we look at it, Damien and I, to note where there will be music and where there will not be. And that applies to both the music playing in the scene and the music we add on top of it. We are also thinking a bit about editing. I like having this possibility of thinking about the music to conceive it so early. I feel lucky that Damien wants to work like this.

I didn’t want my music to sound like the era

What were your inspirations to capture the essence of this era?

I didn’t do any research, because I didn’t want my music to sound like the era, to be honest. I know Damien did a lot for the film, but as far as the music is concerned, we really wanted to avoid falling into 20s jazz. I listened to more rock music to find catchy and aggressive music.

I also listened to modern dance. House, electro dance music. To look for rises and falls, rhythms, percussions. That’s what inspired me most of all. Because we wanted Babylon to have the instrumentation of a 20s jazz band, but not the feel. It had to be wilder, more unbalanced and more catchy than the jazz we associate at that time.

What was the hardest scene to put to music?

There’s a track called “Damascus Thump”, and which is on the commercially released soundtrack. Without revealing too much about the content of the scene, we ask Sidney [Jovan Adepo] to do something very humiliating while playing. This piece had to be very edgy and catchy at the same time. Let it illustrate Sidney’s feeling at the time, and how that develops as the sequence progresses.

And the editing takes us to other places during the scene: we see for example Jack [Brad Pitt] speeding down the freeway to see someone, Manny [Diego Calva] who leaves to find Nellie [Margot Robbie]. So we had to reflect the inner state of Sidney as well as the atmosphere of these other passages. Creating and structuring all this music was a fun challenge.

What is for you the main message of “Babylon”?

This is a sprawling film that contains a lot of stuff. The love story speaks to me because I find it heartbreaking, with this person who wants to love but doesn’t know how. It affects me a lot. But the main message around which Babylon revolves is this idea of ​​being part of something bigger.

In this case, it’s about artists who have their little moment. And when this one is over, the art form they participated in continues to move forward without them, even though they were part of its overall evolution. This applies to all industries, and all kinds of things. At the end of our lives, when we look back, we can realize that time has passed, that things have changed, and that we had a part in it.

Interview by Emmanuel Itier in Los Angeles on December 4, 2022