Edgar Wright: living vicariously, heist by his own pet art

Filmmaking, says British director Edgar Wright, is living vicariously through your main character.

Inspired by heist movies: Briton Edgar Wright, director of Baby Driver. Picture: Hollie Adams

Filmmaking, says British director Edgar Wright, is living vicariously through your main character, doing things you would never do yourself.

“I will never fight zombies, I will never be a policeman, I will never be a getaway driver, I will never be a musician — well, maybe there’s time for that,” said the director of zombie flick Shaun of the Dead, police comedy Hot Fuzz and this year’s anticipated hit Baby Driver.

The film is a hybrid: a heist musi­cal, an action movie scored to a soundtrack chosen by its main character, a young getaway driver called Baby. He lives every part of his life to a soundtrack he plays on a collection of iPods chosen­ for the occasion — and the audience hears what he hears.

Baby Driver is tipped to be one of the big hits of 2017: “Hugely entertain­ing” is the verdict of The Australian’s film critic David Stratton. It features Ansel Elgort as Baby and Kevin Spacey as an Atlanta crime kingpin.

The film moves at a furious pace but has taken time to come to the screen.

Wright, 43, said he’s had the start of the movie in his mind for more than 20 years, and he took the idea to his producers a decade ago. He said the film needed to be grounded in real-life experience and he talked to people who know crime from the inside.

One of them, bank robber turned author Joe Loya, is credited as a technical consultant and has a cameo as a security guard.

Ansel Elgort, Jamie Foxx, Eiza Gonzalez and Jon Hamm in Baby Driver.

“Being an English middle-class kid, the only way I can truly authenticate this is to talk to ­people who have actually done it and try to bring some of that detail and real-life anecdotal feeling to the movie,” Wright said in Sydney yesterday.

He also asked his interview subjects about music.

Some of their stories “were gold ... and they’re in the script verbatim”, Wright said.

“I asked Joe: ‘Would you listen to music on the way to a heist?’

“And he said something along the lines of: ‘I’ve got enough ­demons up here making music.’

“And that’s literally what (actor) Jamie Foxx says.”

Wright said he was equally ­inspired by heist movies and car-chase sequences, most of all by Walter Hill’s 1978 classic The Driver. Hill — “without whom this film would not exist” — has a voice cameo at the end of the movie.

Not long before Baby Driver was given the go-ahead, Wright met Australian director George Miller, and they talked script ­details, action scenes and camera rigs.

“Mad Max: Fury Road is the greatest action film of the 21st century,” Wright said.

“It was an amazing experience to be able to have a movie surgery with Dr George Miller.”

Baby Driver is currently screening.