IN HIS QUEST TO MAKE A FILM ABOUT ONE OF THE MOST HEDONISTIC ERAS IN HOLLYWOOD, DIRECTOR DAMIEN CHAZELLE WAS DETERMINED NOT TO BE COY. HE AND HIS CAST LEAD US THROUGH THE GATES OF RIOTOUS 1920S EPIC BABLYON

WORDS AL HORNER

“IF LALALAND WAS A LOVE LETTER TO HOLLYWOOD,” SAYS DAMIEN CHAZELLE, “BABYLON IS ONE WRITTEN WITH A POISON PEN.”

It’s early in Los Angeles, and the director is attempting to address the elephant in the room. Not the elephant that violently shits everywhere (and we mean everywhere) within the opening minutes of his latest spectacle (more on that long-trunked fellow shortly). No, what Chazelle really wants to clear up is that he’s aware his upcoming fifth feature might sound like it has a thing or two in common with the swooning musical that, in 2016, underlined him as one of American cinema’s most vital new talents. Set in Hollywood? Tick. Chock-full of characters chasing Tinseltown dreams? Tick. A jazz-trumpet-heavy soundtrack and a plot that pays tribute to the art of moviemaking itself? Tick and tick again.

But Babylon, he says, could hardly be more different. For starters, there’s the period setting: the 1920s. Oh, and last time he checked, La La Land was a wholesome, sing-along romance. Not, as he recalls, an orgy of pissing sex workers, cocaine, and dancers bouncing around on penis-themed pogo sticks. “1920s Hollywood really was a cesspool of vice, hubris and excess,” Chazelle laughs. “We tried to put that on screen. All of it.”

“There’s a dizzying amount of debauchery,” agrees Margot Robbie, who co-stars in this tale of a Hollywood era so hedonistic, you can practically taste the absinthe seeping from the celluloid. “One of the most disturbing, chaotic scenes I’ve ever witnessed is in this film, and it involves a fight with a snake,” she grins. “I won’t tell you who wins or loses that fight, but trust me, it’s insane.” Robbie, lest we forget, knows a thing or two about insanity, having made her breakout performance in Martin Scorsese’s 2013 Quaaludes-and-capitalism romp The Wolf Of Wall Street. “I remember being on set for [that movie] and thinking, ‘I’ll never be in a film as crazy as this ever again,’” she tells Empire. A smile, a pause. “And then I made Babylon.”