Damien Chazelle shares he filmed 2-hour cut of ‘Babylon’ on phone in his backyard

Damien Chazelle filmed a two-hour secret cut for his newly-released movie Babylon in his backyard.

During a recent Los Angeles Q&A for the movie (via Entertainment Weekly), Chazelle revealed that he rehearsed filming for Babylon by shooting a two-hour cut of the movie in his backyard.

Chazelle told the audience that he recruited his wife Olivia Hamilton (who plays director Ruth Adler) and star Diego Calva (who plays assistant-turned-producer Manny Torres) to help him rehearse an entire two-hour cut of the movie.

“It's a very tight, two-hour version of the entire movie, [filmed] on an iPhone in our backyard,” the director explained.

“We rehearsed the whole movie in his backyard, only Olivia, Damien and I,” Calva added. “It was a very uncommon kind of situation.”

The movie, more elaborate and with an ensemble cast, the plot follows the ups and downs of Hollywood in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

During that same Q&A, Margot Robbie shared that the director made a few brief cameos in the final cut of the movie. Chazelle can be heard briefly off screen, once as a camera guy and once as a man gossiping about Robbie's character Nellie LaRoy as she hides in a bathroom.

"Every time someone's laughing at a character, that's Damien's laugh," Calva added.

And even when Chazelle considered cutting his own appearances, his cast urged him to keep it in. "I actually fought to keep Damien outside the bathroom talking s--- about [Nellie]," explained Pitt, who also served as a producer on the film. "It's so spot on."

Babylon is in theatres now.