Baby driver brings your badass playlist fantasies to life

Edgar Wright's Baby Driver begins the way most capers end: three goons pulling off a bank heist, then their getaway driver leaving the cops in his rearview. Unlike most capers, though, the escapade goes down to the pulse-pounding strains of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's "Bellbottoms." It’s a whiplash-inducing rush that lays more than a dozen cars to waste and doesn’t let up for the song’s entire 5:16 runtime, each screeching turn and crash perfectly timed to the track's churning rhythm. And it ought to be—Wright’s been plotting it ever since he heard "Bellbottoms" in 1995. “That moment was the closest I’ve ever come to synesthesia,” the writer-director says. “I would listen to that song and start visualizing a car chase.” As a result, he made a movie perfect for a song, instead of finding a song perfect for his movie.

What’s incredible, though, is that when he dreamed up Baby Driver—arguably the first film to make the iPod a central character—most people were still making each other mixtapes. Back when “Bellbottoms” was released, folks couldn’t dance down the street with 3,000 songs at their disposal. Even with the 15 you could cram onto a single side of a cassette, cuing up the right track at the right time was just about impossible. Portable CD players helped deliver music faster and more accurately, but they skipped constantly if you tried to walk with them having anything more than the slightest spring in your step. iPods and their non-Apple mp3-playing ilk changed all that, allowing hundreds of hours of music to be stuffed in your pocket ready to be cued up during just the right moment.

“For the first time, which wasn’t the case with the Walkman or the Discman, the iPod meant people could basically start soundtracking their own lives,” says Wright.

That’s what getaway driver Baby does throughout the movie. Looking to fulfill a debt to the crime boss Doc (Kevin Spacey), he times every heist to a specific song. A sufferer of tinnitus, he needs the music focus on the road—to drown out the hum in his ears and the chaos around him. That leads to some exquisitely crafted car chases, but it also leads to some moments more relatable to folks who don’t know how to execute proper donuts. Like, for example, the time Baby goes on a coffee run set entirely to Bob & Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle.” We've all had that moment, all known instinctively based on the weather, mood, or activity just what song to cue up, then timed every footstep or lane change to that said song. For music fans, getting it right feels like high-fiving a million angels. For a director like Wright, making a movie that way is downright genius.

Lots of directors make movies with soundtracks in mind—and often have songs in mind when they develop their films. Quentin Tarantino and Cameron Crowe are both known for this, but Wright took it a step further, timing scenes to the songs he knew he was going to use. Instead of syncing the action to a track as the movie was being edited, it was shot to be beat-for-beat—just like we all do when we time our morning run to Beyoncé’s “Ring the Alarm” (or, you know, whatever is on your sprint mix).

“When life starts to sync up with your soundtrack, it’s a magical moment," Wright says. "If it’s something where you’re walking and it’s cloudy and the sun comes out in time with a bit in the song you feel like you’re omnipotent—so Baby Driver is an entire movie made up of moments like that.”
As a result, Baby Driver feels like a rollicking action movie that just happens to plays like the fantasy everyone has experienced when the bassline of their favorite song times perfectly to their footfall—it’s just that when Baby’s foot falls its dropping the pedal to the floor.

Wired