American filmmaker Paul Schrader criticized Damien Chazelle’s latest film “Babylon,” claiming it lacked historical accuracy.
“BABYLON is many things but well researched isn’t one of them,” Schrader said in a Facebook status post on Christmas Eve. The filmmaker who is responsible for writing “Taxi Driver,” and performing as writer-director for “American Gigolo,” also questioned whether Chazelle truly did his due diligence with his research for the film, which is centered on the rise and fall of a few Hollywood dreamers in the 1920s.
“After reading a number of planted articles about the filmmakers’ voluminous ‘research,’ I was scratching my head. Does any film historian agree the film’s putative historicity?” Schrader questioned in the post, which had 128 comments and was shared 12 times.
Babylon was led by Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva, and took home an underwhelming $4 million at the domestic box office in comparison to Chazelle’s massive $471.2 million box office success with “La La Land.” “Babylon” highlights actors from the silent era and the transition into the age of the “talkies” for motion pictures.
During an interview with IndieWire, Chazelle mentioned his research of the industry during that time started more than 10 years ago.
“It was a little treasure trove I kept dipping into over many years,” said Chazelle. “The research was so addictive that it took a conscious decision to finally go, ‘It’s now or never. This should be the movie I should try to make now.’ So I have to close the book, look at these notes I’ve collected over the years, this dense mass of impenetrable stuff, and actually figure out what the roadmap through that would be. I have to take a machete to this and turn this into a story. So stopping one part of the process to begin another actually took a conscious gearshift.”