Jamie Leigh McIntosh and Heba Thorisdottir are seasoned veterans in the film industry, having done hair and make-up on innumerable projects.
With credits on Blade Runner 2049, Black Panther and Blonde – Jamie Leigh McIntosh has been responsible for some very important heads of hair. Similarly, Heba Thorisdottir has collaborated with Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson amongst others, in a career which has seen her apply her make-up palette to some of the most memorable movies in recent times.
Damien Chazelle’s Babylon brings these two heavy hitting hair and make-up heads together, as they seek to enrich this eye popping extravaganza of excess, which seeks to tell the ultimate Hollywood tale. Martin Carr recently got to sit down with them both in the run up to its UK release, where they talked about Tobey Maguire, eye popping parties and what audiences can expect come 20 January.
Image via Paramount Pictures
Considering that Babylon spans almost 30 years over the course of the film, what challenges did that create for you both?
HT: We had a challenge everyday, it was always something new, like everyday was a new day, there was never a day where we could just settle in and be like okay we got this now and we’re just going to keep a little continuity.
It was enormous, it was as much for us to digest and just always be on our toes, all day everyday for the 70 something days we were shooting. It was just every single actor, like 150 of them and 65 in the background had to come through hair and make up. It wasn’t just Tobey Maguire and his dirty disgusting teeth, it was everyone in the movie, but most people didn’t show it.
JLM: I think it was a lot of research, let’s put it that way. Damien was wanting to do something very different with this film and not have it look like a cliche 20s film with the same hair and make up that you always see. So that research was us digging a lot deeper than we normally would, instead of scratching the surface and doing what we have learned and believe the 1920s is.
It was trying to find all those images and references of things that we hadn’t seen before that were a little weird, maybe a little wacky, maybe completely contemporary looking and use those. Then of course we had Diego (Calva) playing Manny who did span right through to the 50s. We needed to have a progression with him, visually that would kind of help tell that story and the time process as well and his kind of story arc. That was very cool.
It was a lot of back and forth between Heba and myself and Damien and Mary (Zophres) the costume designer. All working together to try and make sure it all melds together really well and that nobody kind of goes off on their own beaten path. It was a lot of fun.
When it came to the specific looks of Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva, what did Damien bring to the table aside from being writer-director on the project?
JLM: A wicked vision, like his eye for detail and his depth of vision is just insane, it’s amazing, and he’s so collaborative and open to talk about anything.
HT: I think he is an amazing collaborator and actors just trust him so whatever he discussed with us they were game for, including Tobey Maguire with our freakish makeup [laughs]. I don’t think he had been warned about it and he was taken back a little bit, like you wanna do what, but they just trust Damien and they just go for it.
Image via Paramount Pictures
The film not only contains some extreme visuals, but really looks sumptuous in terms of budget, what challenges did that present to you both?
HT: I’m so happy that it actually comes across like he just gets tons of money to do whatever he wants, because it was not. We cut our rates, we didn’t have the money to hire all the help we needed, or keep them as long as we needed. This was kind of like doing an independent movie in so many ways. I think the first budget for the movie was for 110 days and then Paramount cut back to 70 days. This was the longest hardest thing I’ve ever done and I’ve been doing this for a long time.
Everybody had to be done in this, there are no tricks and there is no CGI. All the background actors you see, we actually did them, they actually went through hair and makeup. Not necessarily beautifying them obviously, but like getting dirty and then everybody has marks, and colour on their teeth, and then we have to put sweat on them and that takes the dirt off. So it’s constant touch ups and it was just enormous work that we had to do.
Everyday is like a new day, because there’s no makeup in this where we can just tone it and feel okay that we got this and now it’s smooth sailing. On every film that you do there’s always one big scene that you’re kind of like ‘Oh my God we have to prep for this’. That was every week with us. I will never forget the first day of shooting and I walked on set and we had three movie sets that were set up, like we were shooting a movie, within a movie, within a movie.
So we’re shooting a movie and then we have this movie set that we have a black and white camera shooting, so everything has to work in black and white and colour. We had to put three white guys into black makeup as jungle men, which is an extremely sensitive issue. It was just everything, when I walked on set my knees got weak and I was just like, we did it, we did it and I didn’t really know how.
Then Mary Zophres (Costume Design) comes up to me and said ‘I think the guys in the black are supposed to have like white dots on them’ and I was like ‘what, I don’t remember that picture’, so we had to pull them back, put the dots on them, and then Damien is like ‘I want more of this and I want a little bit less here’ and we just fine tuned everything and then it just came together, it was just incredible. It felt like we had just walked into a 20s movie set.
JLM: Well reading that script, just like watching the movie, you just get that little bit in and you’re like, what is this, this is not what I was expecting to come from Damien Chazelle. I was glued, I couldn’t put the script down, I was like I can’t wait to watch this film because it’s just go go go go go. So many things are like Oh my God I can’t believe that happening, Oh my God I can’t believe they just did that.
For me I was excited by just how different it was going to be, not only to watch but to work on it. I remember Damien’s sister actually came in and did a little part on it and I couldn’t help but ask her ‘did you know that Damien had this in him’ [laughs]. To think from La La Land to this other extreme and I was just like ‘did you know that your brother had this script in him’, because it’s so incredible, but so different from what he had previously done.
It tested all of us, not only coming to terms with doing a different period film that wasn’t the everyday, from me down to the additional help people that we were hiring daily, to then come in and go ‘that’s not 20s’, to go ‘it is actually’, we’ve done the deep research and it existed because we found the photo or some footage of someone with this hairstyle. Everyone just had so much fun, I mean the Wallach party, the insanity going on there, I think we kind of warned people a little before hiring them.
HT: We definitely had a disclaimer [laughs].
JLM: It was a jaw dropping ‘what is happening’. It’s an experience that they’ll never forget, they’re gonna remember that and it doesn’t happen for everyone in their career so it’s pretty cool.
If you had to pick a period in Hollywood history to experience, which would it be and why?
JLM: Experience first hand, well not the 20’s [laughs]. I think we’ve experienced that with the comforts of air conditioning.
HT: I mean don’t we all walk out of the movie wanting to go to that Wallach party [laughs].
JLM: But you wouldn’t want to work in the industry at that time would you?
HT: No, I mean maybe for the parties you know, I mean if you love it just do it. I mean how many times have we been somewhere where we don’t have air conditioning, or comfort or anything you know. I don’t know, I just want to go to the Wallach party [laughs].
MC: So basically you’re telling me you don’t care about which decade, as long as there’s a party involved you’re there, is that about right.
HT: Oh yes absolutely [laughs].
Can you describe for me your perfect Christmas Day?
HT: I’m from Iceland, so we celebrate Christmas Eve and that’s when we open presents and stuff, we don’t have the stocking thing, so I’ve never really had that. So the perfect Christmas Day for me is being in my pyjamas, reading the books I got the night before, and just eating and hanging with my family.
JLM: As little as humanly possible. I’m a little bah humbug I’ll say. I’m fine with my family so of course I want to spend it with them, but I would quite happily also dodge this season [laughs].
Image via Paramount Pictures
Babylon is out 20 January in selected cinemas and the review can be found here
The original video interview in all its glory can be found here