MOVIE

Babylon (2022)

Directed by Damien Chazelle3h 9mPublished Apr 29, 2025Episode length 4h 40m
Episode 276 - Babylon (featuring BFF of the BFE: James DeGuzman)
DramaComedy

Top cast

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Diego Calva
Diego Calva
Manny Torres
Margot Robbie
Margot Robbie
Nellie LaRoy
Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt
Jack Conrad
Jovan Adepo
Jovan Adepo
Sidney Palmer
Jean Smart
Jean Smart
Elinor St. John
J.C. Currais
J.C. Currais
Truck Driver
Jimmy Ortega
Jimmy Ortega
Elephant Wrangler
Marcos A. Ferraez
Marcos A. Ferraez
Police Officer
Shane Powers
Shane Powers
Dale
Phoebe Tonkin
Phoebe Tonkin
Jane Thornton
Damien Chazelle
Damien Chazelle
Director
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Overview

A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, tracing the rise and fall of multiple characters in an era of unbridled decadence and depravity during Hollywood's transition from silent films to sound films in the late 1920s.

Show notes

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“Make a mark... and then fade away.” Join your favorite TransAtlantic podcasting crew – Ian, Megs & Liam (B-Tech Kev had to see a man about an elephant) – as we trade our spy gear for trumpets, film reels, and copious amounts of debauchery for our 275th episode covering Babylon (2022). We’re swapping Chimera viruse

Read full show notes

“Make a mark... and then fade away.” Join your favorite TransAtlantic podcasting crew – Ian, Megs & Liam (B-Tech Kev had to see a man about an elephant) – as we trade our spy gear for trumpets, film reels, and copious amounts of debauchery for our 275th episode covering Babylon (2022).

We’re swapping Chimera viruses for jazz-fueled chaos and slow-motion gunfights for full-blown cinematic mayhem as we discuss:

  • How Babylon might be the most Damien Chazelle movie that ever Damien Chazelle’d.
  • Does this film capture the magic and madness of early Hollywood—or is it just chaotic noise?
  • Is Manny Torres a true dreamer… or just a wide-eyed bystander to Hollywood’s self-destruction... or is he a corrupted soul that we overlook?
  • Apparently there's a rule about taking Class-A drugs with company (well, in Act I anyways)
  • How large is the demand for sweeping, three-hour epics about the birth of movies?
  • Which Babylon character we’d most likely be—and who’s definitely channeling peak "trainwreck energy" 
  • Is this an underappreciated masterpiece—or an overindulgent fever dream of excess?
  • Is Babylon a love letter to cinema or a cautionary tale wrapped in champagne and elephant dung?
  • We’ve got questions about giant parties, sudden snake fights, drug-fueled breakdowns, and how much elephant content is too much.
  • At what point is the film in on the joke it's making and at what point does that film become the joke?
  • We're joined by BFF of the BFE: James DeGuzman who tells us why this film is so much more than the punchline film critics have mmade it out to be
  • Whether Babylon is the Best Film Ever.