Babylon : wolf of wall street wannabe made by a nerd

there is a difference between knowing how it feels like to do drugs and imagining what would feel like to do drugs.

One is in your bones for better or worse and the other is just a pale imitation of the real thing.

Babylon feels like such a fake. Ivy League nerd Damien chazelle(aka the director aka the boy wonder of Hollywood) probably didn't even drink when in film school in Harvard. He somehow thought he could do plenty of research and portray 1920s debauchery authentically. I think not. He falls flat on his face.

What a hot mess and dumpster fire that was

One of the best films of the year

Glad to hear it.
I almost went yesterday but some friends asked me to wait for them.
Seems like a marketing problem though also the tastes of the masses effect this. One wonders if there is any point at all in investing real money in a movie that is not about super-heroes or star wars these days.

The point is the creation of enduring works of art.

This is also why I'm not a producer and the studio system is on the path for Zaslavification.

The debauchery was supposed to mirror modern internet culture's obsession with it. At the time, debauchery would have been more tame, but to relate to the audience the message needed to be modernized. The whole movie was about shoving exaggeration down the audience's throat to make the message, themes and drama much more tense, because it's not too far off of what's happening today. But change is a big part of it, and that's why the movie takes place during one of Hollywood's biggest eras of change.

In fairness, Wolf of Wall Street was also made by a nerd. A nerd who did cocaine back in the '70s, but still a nerd.

But seriously, I think a key difference in that one film's protagonist is fully immersed in the hedonism while the other film's protagonist exists largely at a remove and has to handle the craziness of the other characters. Under those circumstances, I can excuse Babylon being made by a "nerd".

I think it's entirely possible that it really was that debauched back in the day and that the whole point is that so little has really changed except maybe now it's actually showing up in the movies now that the Hays code is more or less a thing of the past.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Very strong point.

Let's not forget one of the greatest on screen portrayals of an alcoholic was by Richard Grant in Withnail, and Richard Grant does not drink.


Creativity and art is not limited to being made by people who've done the things they are making the art about.