Smooth Criminals

Edgar Wright rounds up one of the year’s coolest casts for a heist movie set to music. TF unplugs its iPod to talk to the director plus stars Ansel Elgort, Lily James and Jon Hamm about pulling off scores to a score.

- Jamie Graham

In 2014, when Edgar Wright was scripting Baby Driver, he found himself talking to a guy who’d served time for armed robbery. He was one of four ex-bank robbers Wright met with in a determined effort to bring authenticity to a screenplay penned, as he puts it, “By an English, middle-class kid.” The question was always the same: “Did you listen to music while taking down banks?” The answer was “yes”. One had favoured a rave compilation, another would blast Michael Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’.

Wright, sitting in London’s Soho Hotel, grins at the memory. “This guy in Boston told me about doing a job and, outside the bank, waiting to go in, ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’ by Guns N’ Roses started playing. One of the guys said, ‘This song is jinxed… This is a hex… We’re gonna die if we go in.’ So they didn’t. And I said, ‘That’s fucking amazing…’”

It’s a detail that made it into a script that was originally commissioned way back in 2007 by Working Title as part of a two-picture deal. Back then, all Wright said to Working Title’s co-chairman Eric Fellner and to Nira Park, founder of Big Talk Productions, was: “I have this idea for a car chase movie.” Fellner replied: “I want to see you do a car movie.” And that was that. But the story goes back further, to 1995, when Wright, aged 21, moved to Bounds Green in north London.