FILM · 2016 · USA
La La Land
- Directed by
- Damien Chazelle
- Runtime
- 129 min
- Studio
- Summit Entertainment, Gilbert Films, Impostor Pictures
337 archived facts 8 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.
337 Interesting Facts About La La Land
Interesting Facts (141)
- #001
Sebastian's line "that's L. A. They worship everything and they value nothing" was added by Ryan Gosling, who had heard his real-life partner Eva Mendes say it as a joke.
- #002
Having Sebastian dream of owning his own club, rather than of becoming a successful jazz musician, was Gosling's idea.
- #003
Emma Stone sang "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)" live, deciding herself when to slip from dialogue into song; there was no pre-recorded track to lip-sync to. Composer Justin Hurwitz played piano into her earpiece from another room. Director Damien Chazelle said this was to give Emma more control on set.
- #004
Contains a major spoiler — show
Sebastian never introduces himself to Mia, and she never once calls him by name.
- #005
Damien Chazelle is known for the film's long, unbroken takes, but at least one scene is played in reverse. In the planetarium, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone float down from the air, land perfectly in their seats and kiss, and the camera pushes in to a close-up before the screen goes dark. It was shot backwards: starting in black and pulling away from the kiss, taking in two shots through the telescope, widening out, then lifting Stone and Gosling out of their seats, with the whole sequence then run in reverse. That's why they settle so perfectly and effortlessly: they never "land." They're already seated, and the zoom-in is really a zoom-out.
- #006
Contains a major spoiler — show
Chazelle was also drawn to the idea of meeting someone who changes your life and sets you on the path to becoming who you dream of being, while you still have to walk that path alone. He found that both beautiful and heartbreaking, and ultimately wanted the film to be about it.
- #007
Contains a major spoiler — show
Giving Sebastian a tour of the Warner Brothers backlot, Mia shows him a window used in Casablanca (1942). Near the end, when Mia and her husband walk into Sebastian's club and he's stunned to see them, it's a clear homage to Ilsa and Victor walking into Rick's Café Americain and catching Rick off guard.
- #008
The production could film the exhibits inside Griffith Park Observatory but not the planetarium, so the planetarium was rebuilt on a set. To complete it, the vintage Minolta projector at its center was rented from the Planetarium and Projector Science Museum in Big Bear Lake, California.
- #009
Before filming, Damien Chazelle, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone visited Gene Kelly's widow and got to look through many of his mementos, including a leather-bound copy of the Singin' in the Rain (1952) script. As they were leaving, her dog ran off, and Chazelle and Gosling dashed into traffic after it. Chazelle told Gosling, "We will not kill Gene Kelly's widow's dog," and confirmed that they did save it.
- #010
Contains a major spoiler — show
As Emma Stone sees it, the ending isn't a sad one: "Even though Mia has a happy marriage and a baby, this film celebrates the loves that came before and that they are at least as important as the love you have now."
- #011
Contains a major spoiler — show
Emma Stone calls the finale an exploration of what could have been. Chazelle says: "Let's give them the old-fashioned musical version of their story, in which there is no real conflict and we can leave it to them to think about — is this better than what actually happened? That's the question the audience can be left with," "using the tools that only a musical can use to flesh it out and run with it." He goes on: "This is a film about people growing up, and part of growing up is realizing that life does what it wants."
- #012
The dinner argument is said to be the most rewritten scene in the film; Gosling and Stone also helped shape the dialogue, making it one of the most realistic moments in a film full of fantasy.
- #013
Contains a major spoiler — show
Producers Fred Berger and Jordan Horowitz and Damien Chazelle agreed that under no circumstances would Seb and Mia end up together.
- #014
Producer Marc Platt remembers that on the last day of shooting, as the sun went down, Damien Chazelle held off calling wrap and grabbed a handheld camera to film the sunset instead. Platt realized he didn't want production to end. Once it was dark, Platt went over and told him there was nothing left they could shoot without light, and Chazelle reluctantly called it a wrap.
- #015
Contains a major spoiler — show
Damien Chazelle on La La Land: "It was important to make a film about dreamers, about two people with giant dreams that drive them, that bring them together but also pull them apart." For him, it's a film about balancing your relationship with your art against your relationships with other people.
- #016
The music was recorded in the same studio that produced the scores for Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Wizard of Oz (1939) and many other MGM musicals.
- #017
The sequence Moore called "dance independent of gravity" came about because, as Chazelle put it, "we wanted the audience to feel that Sebastian and Mia had fallen into this beautiful waltz, because in that moment they have no choice but to dance." He called the pairing of Stone and Gosling alchemical: "There's a shorthand between Ryan and Emma, not just personally but on screen."
- #018
Seeing Emma Stone play Sally Bowles in the 2014/15 Broadway revival of "Cabaret" is what convinced Damien Chazelle to cast her.
- #019
Writer-director Damien Chazelle's girlfriend plays the café customer who asks for her money back on her pastries early in the film.
- #020
The express-lane ramp in the opening number "Another Day of Sun" is the same stretch used for the famous bus jump in Speed (1994), where a 15-meter section was erased with CGI to create the gap the bus had to clear.
- #021
Neither Gosling nor Stone was a trained dancer; Moore put both of them through his own boot camp before filming.
- #022
At one point Miles Teller and Emma Watson were set to star. Teller, who had made director Damien Chazelle's first feature, Whiplash (2014), was dropped in favor of Ryan Gosling, and Watson left for other projects.
- #023
The plot point of Mia designing the logo for Seb's club was Emma Stone's suggestion.
- #024
Emma Stone did nine takes of "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)"; Damien Chazelle used the second.
- #025
The spot on the Warner Bros. lot where Mia tells Sebastian she hates jazz is exactly where the cover of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here was shot.
- #026
Stone sang "City of Stars" live on set so she could stay fully present in the moment. "It was challenging but it was also something I felt really strong about," she says. Having done Cabaret on Broadway, she had seen what a live performance adds: even if your voice cracks or slips a little off-key, something irreplaceable comes through.
- #027
Emma Stone points out that perfection wasn't the goal in the dance numbers: "Our characters are struggling artists, so were never asked to be incredibly brilliant dancers and singers." Damien Chazelle wanted Mia and Sebastian's relationship to feel alive and somehow pure even inside these cinematic numbers, and welcomed the small flaws as a way of making it more real.
- #028
On the first day, Zophres and Chazelle went through the film scene by scene, discussing color palettes. For Sebastian, Zophres wanted elegance with an unusual edge: "His look is definitely not fashionable. It's a look that you feel he has developed and curated. Sebastian is not a guy you see wearing T-shirts. Instead he has a very specific, subtle silhouette that expresses respect for tradition and formality."
- #029
Driving through downtown Los Angeles, Mia and Sebastian stop at the food stalls of Grand Central Market (317 S. Broadway) and pick Sarita's Pupuseria, a real Salvadoran stall. The scene lasts just 3 seconds, but it brought the little spot international attention, and it's now celebrated as a landmark in El Salvador.
- #030
Chazelle wanted Los Angeles to be one of the film's main characters. On screen the city has been a film noir backdrop, a beach-and-bikini paradise and a dystopia; Chazelle wanted to explore it as a Muse, a moving canvas of chance encounters, endless traffic and ceaseless striving where everyone chases a dream, sometimes in vain, sometimes life-changingly. With all that in mind he calls Los Angeles a widescreen city, which is why he shot in widescreen and made the city look as big and magnificent as in a classic Hollywood musical.
- #031
Contains a major spoiler — show
"Someone in the Crowd" foreshadows Mia's eventual success: at her one-woman show, the casting director is literally "someone in the crowd."
- #032
Contains a major spoiler — show
The original ending followed Mia out to her car and watched her drive off into the sunrise; the filmmakers realized it was far more poignant to end on Sebastian's face as he starts to play.
- #033
Contains a major spoiler — show
Costume designer Mary Zophres started Mia off in brightly colored dresses to stress her youth. As Mia matures and focuses on her work, the colors become less saturated, and for her one-woman show she wears black and white.
- #034
Contains a major spoiler — show
The set Mia and Sebastian stroll past after meeting at the studio-lot café is the same set where they dance in the dream sequence at the end.
- #035
According to John Legend, Chazelle's main brief was to make "Start a Fire" something you could hear as a single that still had a jazz influence and was fun. Legend says: "Writing the song was like threading a needle, because you don't want it to be so bad that it's embarrassing, but you want it to be something Sebastian wouldn't want to do. You want it to be something he wouldn't be proud of."
- #036
Gosling on Sebastian: "His heroes were born 70 years ago, and in this era a great pianist playing real jazz is condemned to work in bars where people don't even stop their conversations to listen to you. So how much do you compromise on being the artist you want to be?" He thinks Sebastian struggles with the line between purist and snob: "Ultimately, Sebastian faces the question many creative people confront: should I keep doing this work that truly feeds me, or should I accept that it's just a job and I need to pay the bills?"
- #037
The production brought two closed locations back to life for filming: the Rialto Theatre in South Pasadena and the Angels Flight railway in downtown Los Angeles. The Rialto had been shut since 2007, unable to survive as a single-screen cinema, and Angels Flight had been closed to the public since 2013 over safety concerns. The producers got around this by having the railway opened for a single day as a private function while they quietly shot the scene; Angels Flight reopened for service in 2017.
- #038
"Duet" is one of Emma Stone's favorite numbers, the moment, she says, when the two characters truly connect for the first time. She, Ryan and Chazelle felt it was important to feel the joy of the pair literally falling into step with each other.
- #039
A version of the Summit logo was designed especially for La La Land, recalling those of Hollywood's golden age.
- #040
The opening (CinemaScope logo included) runs for about 6 minutes with no visible cut; it's actually three shots stitched together with whip pans.
- #041
Chazelle says the hardest parts of shooting the opening included choreography that took the dancers right to the edge of the freeway ramp, the ramp's curve, which was nothing like the flat parking lot they'd rehearsed in, and camera cranes that nearly hit the dancers.
- #042
Many of Stone's costumes copy iconic dresses: the green dress Mia wears on her first date with Sebastian was modeled on Judy Garland's in A Star Is Born (1954), and the black trousers echo Audrey Hepburn's look in Funny Face (1957).
- #043
The futuristic keyboard Gosling plays in the Messenger performances is a Seaboard Grand, invented in 2013 by Roland Lamb, founder of the UK music-tech company ROLI. It lets a pianist play between the keys or notes of a normal piano, mimicking the wider palette of a wind or string instrument: instead of keys the surface is silicone, and pressing harder deepens the sound and bends the pitch. La La Land's executive music producer, Marius De Vries, knew the instrument and suggested Sebastian use it with the Messengers.
- #044
Contains a major spoiler — show
At the very end the film literally enters "La La Land." As Sebastian plays their melody, he and Mia both imagine what their relationship could have been, and we see the film as a traditional, all-out musical: larger than life and dreamlike, where both of them get what they want (each other included) and everything is happy and perfect. When the melody ends, we're back in reality, reminded that the "epilogue" we've just watched is pure fantasy.
- #045
According to the producers, Emma Stone gave Mia a subtle Everywoman quality. Producer Jordan Horowitz: "She also brings the quality of a tremendous movie star, but at the same time she feels very human and authentic. It's very easy to fall in love with her and at the same time to see her feelings."
- #046
Justin Paul puts it this way: "In New York, you grind and grind to pursue your dreams and… get up the next day and it's muddy and gross." Los Angeles is different: "You pursue your dream, you go to bed and you get up the next day and it's a gorgeous day. It encourages you one breath and refuses to acknowledge that you failed miserably the next."
- #047
Characters in both Whiplash (2014) and La La Land talk about Charlie Parker and why he might have been called "Bird."
- #048
Hurwitz wrote "City of Stars" from an emotional place, moving back and forth between major and minor cadences because, he says, that's what the song is about: life has great moments and then less great ones.
- #049
Gosling says the costumes Zophres gave him helped him walk the line between the 1940s and a modern sensibility. For the big dance numbers she thought about function as well as form, dressing the leads in clothes that looked all the more striking while swinging, spinning and soaring. Watching Gene Kelly musicals for research, Zophres noticed that costume linings switched to something lighter once the performers got into their routines. For ideas for the leads' costumes she turned to a huge collection of magazines going back to the 1930s, including Life and Vogue.
- #050
The dream sequence was shot in short pieces spread across the eight-week shoot.
- #051
Justin Hurwitz says "City of Stars" is Mia and Sebastian's first duet. Recording the vocals live like that captures the giggles and all the other little nuances you'd lose by recording in a studio months earlier and lip-syncing on set.
- #052
Damien Chazelle's sister plays the casting director behind the camera at Mia's callback; she's also the hula-hooper on top of a car in the opening freeway number.
- #053
Damien Chazelle says Sebastian was less likable on the page: "He was a complete jerk throughout, equally stupid but extra arrogant, and Ryan never softened that, but he manages to play it so warmly and sensitively that you can actually see the kid underneath who is in love with the music and the art."
- #054
Choreographer Mandy Moore calls the planetarium scene "the heart of the film"; it was originally going to take place underwater before it moved into the sky.
- #055
As Mia writes her one-woman show, the script names the main character Genevieve, probably a nod to Catherine Deneuve's character in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), one of this film's biggest inspirations.
- #056
For the opening dance on the freeway, the filmmakers used both directions of the westbound carpool lane on the 105-to-110 interchange; half the cars on location were facing backwards.
- #057
The "City of Stars" scene at Hermosa Pier, which had only a short window at sunset, was nearly ruined when a large US warship suddenly sailed into the shot. Producer Marc Platt vanished for 10 minutes, and by the time he came back the ship had moved, just in time for the scene to be filmed.
- #058
When Mia comes to see Sebastian play with "The Messengers," bandleader Keith wears a red leather jacket and a red guitar strap, recalling the 80s George Michael-style red leather jacket Sebastian wore at the earlier party gig. In both bands Sebastian is stuck with a kitschy second keyboard (a key-tar at the party, a synthesizer with The Messengers) instead of the piano he loves, the implication being that the flashy stage act is just a better-paid gig pulling him away from his dreams.
- #059
Damien Chazelle used to be in a band with D. A. Wallach, who plays the 80s singer at the pool party.
- #060
Damien Chazelle rehearsed the opening number alongside the dancers, filming it himself on his iPhone.
- #061
Ryan Gosling told the director that dancing made him feel like a 'slimy monkey': "My extremities are everywhere; it's hard for me to control my body."
- #062
The jazz club scenes were shot at The Lighthouse Café in Hermosa Beach, California, over four days in the summer of 2015. The Lighthouse has hosted jazz since it opened in 1949, with names like Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Art Blakey and Cannonball Adderley playing there; Howard Rumsey owned The Lighthouse Café and brought jazz there from 1949 to 1960 with his band, Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars. The set designers left most of the interior as it was, adding a stained-glass panel to the front window and a round stained-glass lighthouse behind the piano.
- #063
Damien Chazelle's love of That Thing You Do! (1996) is why Tom Everett Scott was cast as Mia's husband: "Growing up as a kid drummer, there are not many movies where the drummer is the hero." Stone and Gosling loved the film just as much and spent a lot of time quoting it.
- #064
La La Land was shot in widescreen on film with Panavision equipment, but it isn't true CinemaScope, since that technology no longer exists.
- #065
Costume designer Mary Zophres saw Emma Stone on a red carpet in a yellow dress and thought she looked stunning, which is why Mia wears yellow for the film's signature "Duet" dance.
- #066
During pre-production they visited Gene Kelly's widow Patricia and got to see the work and mementos from her husband's career. As Damien Chazelle tells it: "I'm a normal person so I bring a bottle of wine. Emma is a normal person so she brings some flowers, our choreographer Mandy Moore is also a normal person so she brings another bottle of wine, and then Ryan Gosling shows up with a 25 lb apple pie." Apparently there's a place in Los Angeles that specializes in these, though Chazelle, alas, won't say which for those of us who might be interested.
- #067
Ryan Gosling on what sets Emma Stone's Mia apart: "She's one of a kind and she brings that same quality to Mia. But you also see that Mia is a little different and not what these people in the entertainment world are looking for; here they usually want people who are interchangeable with each other. She isn't."
- #068
Chazelle wanted the dancing to feel natural, telling choreographer Mandy Moore that dancing, singing and acting were all one thing in this film and that "he wanted the audience to feel that Sebastian and Mia were real people who for a moment transcend the limits of everyday life."
- #069
Shortly before the interchange opened to the public in 1993, a key scene of "Speed," with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, was filmed here. The freeway's E-Z pass ramp was closed on a Saturday and Sunday in August 2015 to shoot the opening number, titled "Traffic."
- #070
Emma Stone first met Chazelle in 2014, while she was on Broadway in Cabaret; she had a cold the night he told her about the film. Doing Cabaret gave her the confidence that she could handle the dance numbers, and she was so passionate about the project that she said yes to playing Mia.
- #071
"Gilmore Girls" fans will recognize parts of the Warner Ranch used in the series. When Mia shows Seb the window Bogart and Bergman look out of in "Casablanca," they're on the block known as French Street; a few minutes later they walk right past Miss Patty's Dance Studio and on toward the storefront used as Luke's Diner. The facade used for the police station they watch in "Rebel Without a Cause" is just around the corner.
- #072
In this scene Mia walks past a mural called "You Are the Star," in which old Hollywood stars sit in a movie theater watching passersby as if they were the ones on screen; Thomas Suriya painted it in 1983.
- #073
Damien Chazelle's first film, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, was a love story told through song and dance, a reimagining of the old MGM musical, made in 2009 as his Harvard thesis. Its composer was his Harvard classmate Justin Hurwitz, who went on to score Whiplash and La La Land; Chazelle says he hopes Justin will score everything he ever makes.
- #074
Emma Stone on Mia and Sebastian: "I think Mia and Sebastian inspire each other to do things differently. They're both in a rut when they meet and feel creatively stuck. But the most beautiful thing Sebastian does for her is ask the question: 'Why aren't you creating your own stories to tell as an actor?' I think Mia needs that because she's even forgotten that she has that ability. Mia gives Sebastian the idea that he can expand and sustain his art in ways he hasn't explored before."
- #075
Sebastian's outfit for "I Ran (So Far Away)" is a very close copy of what Mike Score, A Flock of Seagulls' singer, keyboardist and guitarist, used to wear.
- #076
Mia points out to Sebastian the window from the Paris hotel where Ilsa and Rick part in Casablanca. It's a role shooting in Paris that eventually takes Mia away from Sebastian, who stays in Los Angeles, the city that also stood in for Casablanca. And like Rick, Sebastian ends up running a nightclub with a piano after they part.
- #077
Among the sets being built in the soundstage scene is the painted backdrop that comes back in the final scene, "so Ryan and Emma are literally peering into the movie that they're then going to be a part of."
- #078
The black sci-fi keyboard Sebastian plays at The Messengers' concert is pricey: a Roli Seaboard that costs around $5,000.
- #079
This scene was filmed on Hermosa Beach pier, a few hundred meters from the Lighthouse Café. The production designers added the street lamps for the shoot, and because the film became so popular, the City of Hermosa Beach has been considering making them a permanent fixture.
- #080
The same street lamps turn up in many scenes: on the path Emma and Ryan walk in their first dance, on Hermosa Beach pier, outside the soundstage as Mia and Seb walk through the movie theater (tucked away outside the building, showing they're just set dressing), and again as Mia runs from her dinner with Greg, his brother and his wife down the street toward the Rialto. The lamp is front and center on the poster too.
- #081
Producer Fred Berger on Gosling's Sebastian: "Ryan portrays Sebastian as a man with real determination. That's what fuels his stubbornness about staying in Los Angeles and saying that he's going to make it here as a jazz artist on his own terms. Sebastian's stubbornness doesn't come from ego or any corrosive quality. It comes from real belief and passion that Ryan instilled in the character so beautifully."
- #082
Los Angeles officially declared April 25, 2017 "La La Land" day, and a historic-site plaque with the film's shooting dates and details was put up beside Hermosa Beach pier.
- #083
In some ways the opening is modeled on Love Me Tonight (1932), which begins with a cacophony of street noise: Paris wakes at dawn, shutters open, people sweep the streets, and the sounds pile up, fall into rhythm and become a number.
- #084
Chazelle says: "Musicals… are a genre you can't enter with a protective shield. The scary side of the genre, the invigorating side, is that it forces you to wear your heart on your sleeve. One of the great pleasures of watching this film was watching (Emma) go to a deeper and darker place than we're used to."
- #085
Contains a major spoiler — show
The heroine of Mia's play is called Genevieve, after Catherine Deneuve's character in "Umbrellas of Cherbourg."
- #086
Damien Chazelle felt for the man who jumps into the pool at the party; that shot was done something like thirty-five times.
- #087
Justin Hurwitz wrote more than 1,900 piano variations before landing on the main theme.
- #088
Test screenings went badly: with the studio wanting a score above 70, the film came in at 65, and only after more work did it reach 75.
- #089
The opening featured more than 100 cars and over 90 singers and dancers. The sky was overcast for the first half of the prologue shoot, and the crew had to wait for the sun to finally come out.
- #090
Talking about a stool in his apartment, Sebastian tells his sister "The Baked Potato threw it away"; The Baked Potato is a well-known Los Angeles jazz club.
- #091
Sebastian's 1980s Buick Riviera convertible, a car that becomes a character in its own right, was pitched to Chazelle by production designer David Wasco and set decorator Sandy Reynolds-Wasco.
- #092
A hand double was kept waiting in a nearby trailer to play the piano, but on the first day it was clear Ryan Gosling didn't need one. "We let him go in one day." They knew Gosling had been training, but within the first week of production they realized they'd struck gold.
- #093
Damien Chazelle fielded anxious questions and comments about lighting Sebastian's apartment with the green light from outside the curtains, a choice he says he'll "defend to my dying day," inspired by a recent viewing of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
- #094
La La Land's opening was shot at Los Angeles's 105/110 interchange, also known as the Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange, which stands 130 feet tall. When it was built it was the first to combine three modes of transport, with separate levels for cars, buses and light rail.
- #095
Production designer David Wasco on the "Epilogue": "Damien wanted to go into this highly exaggerated fantasy world of L.A. and Paris on a studio backlot."
- #096
The retro Dairy Mart was based on an Alta Dena grocery store popular in the 1950s. Van Beek's Tapas and Tunes is really Burbank's original moderne-style Magnolia Theatre, which later became Evergreen Recording Studios, whose clients included Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond and Frank Sinatra.
- #097
Mia's one-woman show was shot at the Hayworth Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
- #098
Chazelle wanted to explore the alternate reality without dialogue, through image, music and dance alone. Inspired by An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain, he wanted to revive a tradition musicals used to have and have lost entirely.
- #099
Chazelle says Justin was already working on the musical theme before a word of dialogue was written, and while Chazelle edited, Hurwitz was composing on the other side of the room.
- #100
Going straight from the Cinemascope logo to the bright Los Angeles sun before cutting to the cars was producer Fred Berger's idea, and Damien Chazelle fought it for two months, preferring to get lost among the cars. "He wound up winning me over eventually." In return, Berger was the one who pushed back against cutting the opening number.
- #101
The post-party song and dance under the Los Angeles sunset was shot over two nights to get the sky, the performances and the camera work exactly right; to waste no more light, everyone had to go back to the start after every take.
- #102
Mia and Sebastian's movie date is at the Rialto in Pasadena, a real theater that's no longer in use. It had to be lit and dressed to look alive, though later in the film it appears closed.
- #103
Mia's one-woman show is the most personal thing Chazelle wrote, drawn from the rough reception audiences gave his first film, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009). He recalls one Q&A where a man asked him, "Are you happy with the movie?" and then followed up with "Why?"
- #104
Composer Justin Hurwitz describes the opening song as a way of establishing Los Angeles's personality, a city of dreamers chasing a future "that may or may not happen." Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote the lyrics to "Another Day of Sun," say Chazelle wanted the song to capture the difference between Los Angeles and New York.
- #105
Costume designer Mary Zophres says Emma's blue dress was inspired by the Atelier Versace gown she wore to promote The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
- #106
Marius notes that Emma's "Audition" number comes "after a long musical silence in terms of production numbers." It's interesting, he points out, that La La Land breaks with tradition here, since in its third act the sung or performed music largely drops away until that point. But, Marius concludes, "it works because it tracks the curve of Sebastian and Mia's relationship, disappearing for awhile as things get dark." He credits not only Emma Stone for her remarkable vocals throughout but also vocal coach Eric Vetro for keeping her 'in shape for the game' despite all the choreography and the several colds she had during production.
- #107
The observatory was built in 1935 and named after Griffith Jenkins Griffith, who came to Los Angeles from Wales in 1881 and used the fortune he made in silver mining and real estate to donate the land and the money for his dream of bringing astronomy to everyone. Architects John Austin and Frederick Ashley oversaw the Art Deco building.
- #108
Contains a major spoiler — show
Sebastian at first insists on calling his dream club "Chicken on a Stick," because Charlie Parker was known for eating chicken. Near the end, he goes home and cooks chicken on the stove before heading to his new club.
- #109
Costume designer Mary Zophres based Mia's barista blouse on a 1940s photo of Ingrid Bergman in something similar. Zophres has worked with the Coen Brothers on thirteen films, including The Big Lebowski, Fargo and No Country for Old Men.
- #110
Costume designer Mary Zophres and Chazelle treated color as a tool of emotion, deciding, say, that one scene would be neutral with yellow accents while in another the men would wear dark colors and the women bright ones; what they wanted was something that felt relevant today. Color was key to Sebastian's look, from the sable brown suit at the start to the dark blue blazer. Zophres was especially pleased with his two-tone shoes: popular in the 40s, they seemed to say quirky, light-hearted and in love with life, and they became Sebastian's signature because they carry his passion for the past into the present.
- #111
Reworking scenes in the edit created a continuity error with Sebastian's shirt that nobody pointed out to Damien Chazelle: we see him in a brown shirt, then arriving home to hang out with his sister in a blue one, and then, once she leaves, sitting down at the piano in the brown one again. For him to point it out now, he says, would be terribly distracting.
- #112
In the film Sebastian jokes that his sister should set him up with a guy with a face tattoo; coincidentally, Gosling's character in The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) has one. Gosling chose that tattoo himself, and after the first day of shooting he was so embarrassed by the choice that he asked to have it removed; the director told him "absolutely not."
- #113
The neon-sign montage features several haunts from Hollywood's glamour years: the Formosa Café, frequented by Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable because it sits across the street from Warner Bros.; Musso & Frank Grill, Hollywood's oldest restaurant, open since 1919; the Knickerbocker Hotel, dating back to 1929, where Graham Nash was living in 1968 when Cass Elliot introduced him to Stephen Stills and David Crosby; and the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood, where Paul Reubens introduced Pee-Wee Herman in 1981.
- #114
The pianist in the hat who takes Sebastian's place at The Lighthouse is Randy Kerber; throughout the film, the piano we hear is played by Ryan Gosling.
- #115
Damien Chazelle wanted the production numbers to capture the imagination and narrative freedom of mid-century musicals while also carrying the energy and tempo that speak to the iPhone and YouTube generation.
- #116
Talking with Chazelle, Hurwitz came to see "Audition" as an optimistic song about never giving up on your dreams, but one with a bittersweet tone. His first version opened on pitched notes; as they shaped the scene, they realized Emma had to slide from speech into song, so the opening had to be unpitched.
- #117
The widening CinemaScope opening copies something Damien Chazelle remembered from Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956).
- #118
"City of Stars" started out as one of Mia's songs.
- #119
The Messengers' rehearsals, this scene included, were shot at East-West Studios in Hollywood, in the very room where Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys recorded Pet Sounds. Other famous recordings made in the building include The Mamas and the Papas' California Dreamin', The Beach Boys' California Girls, Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On and U2's Rattle and Hum.
- #120
The first thing Emma Stone heard at her first meeting with Chazelle about the project was the demo of "Audition," and the director believes recreating that moment was one reason she signed on. Hurwitz says: "This song is really special to me and I'm very proud of it. I think this scene and this song are exactly what we imagined."
- #121
The service station at the back of the film set was inspired by an Ed Ruscha painting.
- #122
In 2017, German comedians Klaas Heufer-Umlauf and Joko Winterscheidt, posing as a celebrity management agency, pranked the jury of the "Golden Kamera Award 2017" by telling them their client Ryan Gosling would be in Germany and could appear on the show. The jury invited him and decided to give him the "Best movie International" award for "La La Land" (they said they chose that category because "Best Actor international" had already gone to Colin Farrell). A Ryan Gosling lookalike took the stage (Ludwig Lehner, mostly a cook, who had been told he looked like Gosling since 2014), accepted the award with a dedication "to Joko and Klaas," and quickly left the audience dumbfounded. When the prank came out, the jury demanded the award back, but in the end decided to give it to "La La Land" anyway. The German media dubbed it "Goslinggate." Joko and Klaas said they wanted to show how trivial some award shows are, inventing categories just to lure celebrities and inflate their own importance.
- #123
Ryan Gosling himself added the line "that's L. A. They worship everything and they value nothing"; his wife Eva Mendes had said it as a joke, and he felt it fit the film.
- #124
Ryan Gosling's solo dusk dance to "City of Stars" was shot on Hermosa Beach Pier.
- #125
As Mia and Sebastian walk onto the soundstage, you can spot the streetlights that later decorate the Hermosa Beach pier scene.
- #126
The Rialto's marquee is hung with classic posters of Hollywood golden-age stars, such as Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms.
- #127
This is the exterior of Club Fais Do-Do, a famous underground club in the early 1960s where John Coltrane, Sam Cooke and Billy Preston performed.
- #128
This part of the Mia-Sebastian fantasy was shot at Orcutt Ranch Park, built in 1919 by William Orcutt as a country home for his family. A small grove of oaks on the property is over 700 years old, and branches from those trees were among the wood burned with limestone in a kiln to make the mortar for Los Angeles's first Spanish settlement in 1797.
- #129
The film's planetarium isn't the real one; it's a replica built on a soundstage.
- #130
Chazelle summed up what his leads were taking on: "They're doing something very difficult in this film; grounding the most ungrounded genres."
- #131
Damien Chazelle dreamed up the film as a student with his Harvard classmate Justin Hurwitz. He wrote the La La Land screenplay in 2010 but couldn't find a studio willing to finance it without changes; after his 2014 film Whiplash, Summit Entertainment took it on.
- #132
Chazelle's original La La Land script was set in Boston, with the iconic Griffith Observatory scene taking place at the Boston Museum of Science.
- #133
The opening sequence was cut and put back several times as they tested the film with and without it; in the end it stayed. An opening overture was cut as well. Damien Chazelle asked composer Justin Hurwitz which cut had broken his heart more, and he said the opening number; fortunately, Chazelle and test audiences decided to bring it back.
- #134
Before La La Land, Emma Stone had never made a musical.
- #135
Emma Watson was due to play Mia but pulled out because of her commitment to the musical adaptation of Beauty and the Beast.
- #136
Director Damien Chazelle's sister appears for just a few seconds in the opening song, "Another Day of Sun."
- #137
The opening sequence's hires included a skateboarder and a parkour runner.
- #138
Emma Stone has loved musicals since seeing Les Misérables at the age of eight: "bursting into song has always been a dream of mine." Her favorite film is Charlie Chaplin's bittersweet 1931 comedy City Lights, and one of her earliest jobs was voicing a dog on The Suite Life of Zach and Cody.
- #139
A small acting touch: when Sebastian overhears Mia's tense phone call with her mother, he absentmindedly starts tying his tie backwards.
- #140
This building started life in 1928 as the Broadlind Hotel, named for its corner of Broadway and Linden. When it opened, its tenants were mostly men, many of them naval officers docked in Long Beach.
- #141
Chazelle shot this scene in one continuous, uncut take.
Production Story (155)
- #142
Contains a major spoiler — show
When Damien Chazelle first talked to investors about financing La La Land, one wanted Sebastian changed from a jazz pianist to a rock musician, and the same backer wanted the bittersweet ending dropped. Chazelle refused both and went his own way.
- #143
Songwriter Benj Pasek says a pop song is about how it makes you feel, whereas a theater song is a verb that tells you what will change. With "Audition" they wanted a verb: a song that conveyed not just an emotion but how things would change for Mia once she sang it. It was shot in a single take with no picture editing, so the perfect take had to happen in one go, and luckily for the film's fans, it did.
- #144
Damien Chazelle also wanted everything done in camera rather than added in post-production, which took a great deal of planning. For aspect ratio and framing he wanted something extremely anamorphic, to give the film the extra sweep of the classics. Sandgren had Panavision make new lenses for the film, which he felt really added to its spirit, and used colored lights to build its palette of cool blues, greens and pinks.
- #145
The film was first planned to be shot at Focus Properties for under a million dollars, but a change of regime there killed it entirely. They spent several years on the script and the search for money, making Whiplash in the meantime, and eventually got a proper green light from Lionsgate.
- #146
The crew had a limited 30-minute window to shoot the magic-hour, deep purple twilight Hollywood Hills dance scene over two days (cinematographer Linus Sandgren said the time was exactly between 19.20 and 19.50). According to Damien Chazelle, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling managed to do five takes in two days; after each take, they would return to the starting point while assistants wiped their sweat before they began the dance routine again. The fourth take is the one used in the final film.
- #147
The moment Sebastian and Mia stop being happy, the film stops being a musical. The next song is sung when Mia begins to feel joy again at the audition.
- #148
Because Damien Chazelle wanted to shoot the scene in the old musical tradition without cuts or editing, Ryan Gosling practiced playing the piano on the first day of shooting and played the piano himself in a single continuous take. John Legend, a classically trained pianist, says he was "jealous" of how quickly Gosling learned to play.
- #149
Sebastian's tip about increasing your car's range by holding the remote under your chin works, but it is not expected to cause cancer. Most fobs use a frequency that resonates well with water, and the human brain is mostly water.
- #150
During shooting, Ryan Gosling's partner Eva Mendes was looking after their daughters, pregnant with their second child, and her brother, who was undergoing cancer treatment. During his award acceptance speech at the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards in 2017, Gosling thanked Mendes in tears for her strength during the period when he was busy with dance and music practice, and dedicated his award to her brother, who passed away after shooting was completed.
- #151
Damien Chazelle is known for using long, unbroken takes in the film, but he also uses a reversed version of at least one scene. In the final scene in the planetarium, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone fall from above and land perfectly in their seats, then kiss, and the camera moves in for a close-up before fading to black. The sequence was shot in reverse: it begins with black and pulls away toward the kiss, zooms out to two shots, then a wide shot, then Stone and Gosling are lifted out of their seats, and then the entire sequence is run backwards. That is why they settle into their seats so perfectly and effortlessly: they never "land" at all. They are already seated, the zoom-in is actually a zoom-out, and so on.
- #152
Chazelle was also influenced by the concept that you will meet someone in your life who transforms you. This sets you on a path toward becoming the person you dreamed of being. But you still have to travel that path alone. Chazelle finds this concept beautiful and heartbreaking, and ultimately wanted the film to be about that.
- #153
While Mia is showing Sebastian around the Warner Brothers backlot, she shows him a window used in Casablanca (1942). Much later, near the end of the film, when Mia and her husband go to Sebastian's club and Sebastian is stunned when he sees them, this is a clear homage to the famous scene in which Ilsa and Victor go to Rick's Café Americain and Rick is stunned when he sees them.
- #154
In the film, Ryan Gosling plays a pianist and John Legend plays a guitarist. In real life, Legend is a classically trained pianist and Gosling was a guitarist; both had to take lessons to play their new instruments.
- #155
Before filming, Damien Chazelle, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone visited Gene Kelly's widow and had the chance to look through many of Kelly's film memorabilia, including a leather-bound copy of the script for Singin' in the Rain (1952). At the end of the visit, Kelly's widow's dog ran off and Chazelle and Gosling started running through traffic to rescue it. Chazelle told Gosling, "We will not kill Gene Kelly's widow's dog." He confirmed that they succeeded in saving the dog.
- #156
Justin Hurwitz's song "When I Wake" first appeared in Whiplash (2014), and the two main characters listened to it on a date. The same thing happens in La La Land; the song comes to the fore in the background as Sebastian and Mia talk about jazz — exactly the same subject the two characters in Whiplash argue about.
- #157
Emma Stone comments: "Even though Mia has a happy marriage and a baby, this film celebrates the loves that came before and that they are at least as important as the love you have now."
- #158
"Using the tools that only a musical can use to flesh it out and run with it." Chazelle says: Emma Stone calls this finale an exploration of what could have been, "Let's give them the old-fashioned musical version of their story, where there is no real conflict and we can leave it to the imagination — is that better than what actually happened? That's the question the audience can leave with." Chazelle continues, "This is a film about people growing up, and part of growing up is realizing that life does what it wants."
- #159
Mia's canary-yellow dress was initially used as a backup during dance rehearsals, but Emma Stone admired it so much that she was allowed to wear it in the film.
- #160
When Damien Chazelle first spoke with investors about financing La La Land, someone wanted the character of Sebastian changed from a jazz pianist to a rock musician. The same financier also wanted the story's bittersweet ending removed. Chazelle refused to change these elements and went his own way.
- #161
Producers Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz and Damien Chazelle made an agreement that Seb and Mia would under no circumstances end up together at the end of the story.
- #162
Producer Marc Platt recounted that on the final day of shooting, the sun was setting and Damien Chazelle postponed the film's announcement, instead grabbing a handheld camera to start filming the sunset. Platt realized that Chazelle did not want production to end. As darkness fell, Platt went over to Chazelle and told him there was nothing left they could shoot without light, and Chazelle reluctantly agreed to wrap the production.
- #163
As Sebastian and Mia walk through the studio lot, they pass two actors shooting a romantic scene; these actors are actually Ryan Gosling's and Emma Stone's body doubles.
- #164
Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz came up with the film's idea in 2010 during their final years at Harvard University, with Hurwitz writing the musical pieces and Chazelle building on them with dialogue. They initially found two financial backers and a producer for a budget of $1 million. However, numerous demands for script changes caused them to abandon the project. After Whiplash (2014) achieved critical success, the project was revived when the studio raised the budget to $30 million, which allowed the filmmakers to rent the Griffith Observatory for shooting (where a full day's rental costs $10,000).
- #165
The sequence Moore calls 'dance independent of gravity' — "We wanted the audience to feel that Sebastian and Mia have fallen into this beautiful waltz, because at that moment they have no choice but to dance." According to Chazelle, the coupling of Stone and Gosling was alchemical. He says, "There's a shorthand between Ryan and Emma not just personally, but on screen."
- #166
The girlfriend of writer and director Damien Chazelle plays a customer in a cafe in the first half of the film who asks for her money back for her pastries.
- #167
The express-lane freeway ramp used for the opening number Another Day Of Sun is the same freeway extension used in the iconic "bus jump" sequence in Speed (1994); there, a 15-meter section of the ramp was digitally removed using CGI to create the gap the bus had to jump over.
- #168
Neither Gosling nor Stone were professionally trained dancers. Moore trained both of them herself at her own personal boot camp before shooting.
- #169
Mia and Sebastian's first and last meetings happen because of traffic, one of Los Angeles's most recognizable traits. At the start of the film they pass each other in a traffic jam. Their final encounter also comes about because of a traffic jam; Mia and her husband miss a friend's premiere because of it and instead decide to go to dinner, and then visit Sebastian's jazz club.
- #170
The location at Warner Bros. where Mia tells Sebastian that she hates jazz is the exact filming location of the cover of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here album.
- #171
Stone's rendition of "City of Stars" was performed live on set to keep her completely present and in the moment. Stone says: 'It was challenging but it was also something I felt really powerful doing.' The actress says she had done Cabaret on Broadway and saw how a live performance adds something. Even if your voice cracks or goes a little off-key, something irreplaceable is added to the performance.
- #172
Stone points out that the goal in the dance movements was not perfection. "Our characters are struggling artists, so were never asked to be incredibly brilliant dancers and singers." Damien Chazelle wanted Mia and Sebastian's relationship to feel alive and pure in a way, even though they are part of these cinematic dance numbers. He welcomed the small flaws and imperfections as a way of making it more real.
- #173
On the first day, Zophres and Chazelle toured the film's scenes scene by scene, discussing their color palettes. For Sebastian, Zophres wanted to emphasize elegance with an unusual touch in his costumes. Zophres continues: "The look is definitely not fashionable. It's a look that you feel he has developed and curated. Sebastian is not a man you see wearing a T-shirt. Instead, he has a very specific, subtle silhouette that expresses respect for tradition and formality."
- #174
The plot has strong ties to Emma Stone's real-life background. The film is set in Los Angeles, and Mia is revealed to be a college dropout chasing her dreams as an actress. Stone herself is a dropout who moved to Los Angeles at 15 to pursue an acting career.
- #175
While passing through downtown Los Angeles, Mia and Sebastian visit the food stalls at Grand Central Market (317 S. Broadway) and, among all the eateries, choose Sarita's Pupuseria. It is a real Salvadoran food stall. The scene, which lasts only 3 seconds, drew international attention to the small spot, now recognized as an unforgettable place in Los Angeles.
- #176
For John Legend, the chance to work with Ryan Gosling was exciting. "Ryan is one of the best actors working right now, so I came into it with a real humility," he said. Legend says, "Gosling was very helpful and supportive. He really encouraged me to feel 'OK I can do this.'"
- #177
Chazelle wanted to make Los Angeles one of the film's main characters. In film history, Los Angeles has been the backdrop of film noir, a beach and bikini paradise, and a dystopian setting… However, Chazelle wanted to explore Los Angeles as a Muse, a moving canvas of inevitable encounters, endless traffic and ceaseless striving, where everyone chases their dreams, sometimes in vain and sometimes transformatively. Considering all these qualities, Chazelle calls Los Angeles a widescreen city. That is why he chose to shoot in widescreen and show the city as big and magnificent as a classic Hollywood musical.
- #178
The song "Someone in the Crowd" is a harbinger of Mia's ultimate success as an actress, because the casting director is "someone in the crowd" at Mia's one-woman show.
- #179
The original ending followed Mia as she went out and got into her car, and then watched her drive off against the sunrise. In fact, they realized that closing on Sebastian's face as he begins to play the piano was much more poignant.
- #180
Costume designer Mary Zophres's design for the character Mia included dresses that started with vivid colors to emphasize her character's youthfulness. As Mia matures and focuses on her work, the color saturation decreases, and she wears black and white during her one-woman show.
- #181
The set that Mia and Sebastian pass by after meeting at the cafe in the studio lot is the same film set where they dance in the dream scene at the end of the film.
- #182
According to Legend, Chazelle's main instruction regarding the song was to make "Start a Fire" a fun song that you could see as a single but that still carried a jazz influence. Legend says: "Writing the song was like threading a needle because you don't want it to be so bad that it's embarrassing, but you want it to be something Sebastian wouldn't want to do. You want it to be something he wouldn't be proud of."
- #183
J. K. Simmons was technically the first person cast in the film, because Damien Chazelle first asked him whether he would play this small leading role while Whiplash was still shooting. "We both enjoyed the joke that he's the same guy as in Whiplash, but years after being fired. He decided that he hates jazz and wants to listen only to Christmas songs for the rest of his life."
- #184
The word 'Fall' represented not only the season but also the decline to come in their relationship. It was also the only season shown against a black background and the one that did not look as cheerful as the others.
- #185
In the film's first 60 seconds, while the camera shows locked cars, dents can be seen on the hoods and roofs of many of them. This is probably from dancing during rehearsals and earlier shoots.
- #186
When the film won Best Picture at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, Chazelle revealed that this ending sequence was partly inspired by the 1927 film 7th Heaven, starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. In that film, Farrell goes to war and dies, but Gaynor, upon learning of his death, clings to an unreasonable hope that he is still alive. The studio made the director shoot a happy ending in which Farrell returns alive. This gave Chazelle the idea that both realities could exist at the same time, because the woman's love for the man is strong enough to make it so. In this case, time and the laws of physics disappear. Therefore, one way to interpret the ending of La La Land is that it is as 'true' as the narrative of which the Epilogue is a part.
- #187
Gosling says of his character Sebastian: "His heroes were born 70 years ago, and in this era, a great pianist playing real jazz is condemned to work in bars where people don't even stop their conversations to listen to you. So how much do you compromise on being the artist you want to be? Gosling continues, I think Sebastian is struggling with the difference between being a purist and being a snob." "Ultimately", Gosling continues: "Sebastian faces the question many creative people encounter: Should I keep doing this work that truly feeds me, or should I accept that it's just a job and I need to pay the bills?"
- #188
The production reopened two locations for filming: the Rialto Theatre in South Pasadena and the Angels Flight railway in downtown Los Angeles. The Rialto has been closed since 2007 because it could not sustain itself as a single-screen cinema. Angels Flight has been closed to the public since 2013 due to safety issues. The producers managed to overcome this problem by noting that the railway was opened for service for one day while they secretly shot the scene as a private function. Angels Flight reopened for operation in 2017.
- #189
One of Emma Stone's favorite numbers in the film is "Duet". She says this is where their characters truly connect for the first time. Stone says she, Ryan and Chazelle thought it was important that you feel that joyful moment where the pair literally keep step with each other.
- #190
Director Damien Chazelle said of the inspiration for this opening number: "I always wanted to do a shot where you go from car to car, with every radio playing a completely different kind of music. I wanted it to feel like a city overflowing with music. "and that he wanted to use the soundscape to"Create an opening musical number and have a fantastical musical number emerge from a series of realistic city sounds."
- #191
The opening scene (including the CinemaScope logo) continues for about 6 minutes without a noticeable cut. It is actually three shots connected by quick pans.
- #192
After one of her auditions, Emma Stone mentions that the film has a plot similar to Rebel Without a Cause (1955). One of "Rebel"'s most iconic pieces is James Dean's red jacket; Emma wears a similar jacket both at the audition and at the callback.
- #193
Chazelle says some of the difficulties of shooting the opening sequence included: choreography that brought the dancers very close to the edge of the freeway ramp, the curved structure of the freeway was different from the opening sequence rehearsals in a flat parking lot, and camera cranes nearly hitting the dancers.
- #194
The futuristic keyboard Gosling used during the Messenger performances is a Seaboard Grand synthesizer invented in 2013 by Roland Lamb, founder of ROLI, a music technology company in the United Kingdom. The Seaboard Grand allows the pianist to play between the keys or notes of a normal piano, simulating the expanded palette a wind or string instrument might have. Instead of keys, the surface is silicone, and when pressed harder, the musician can deepen the sound and bend the pitch. La La Land's Executive Music Producer Marius De Vries knew the instrument and suggested Sebastian use it in his Messengers performances.
- #195
The film literally enters 'La La Land' at the very end. As Sebastian plays his and Mia's melody on the piano, both he and Mia imagine what their relationship could have been. The audience sees what the film would be like if it were a traditional, full-fledged musical. The atmosphere is larger than life and dreamlike. Both potential customers get what they want (including each other). Everything is happy and perfect. When the melody ends, the audience returns to reality and is reminded that the 'epilogue' they have just witnessed is entirely a fantasy.
- #196
Gosling brought some of his personal experience as an aspiring artist to the film. While Gosling was performing a crying scene for an audition for another film, the casting director took a phone call. This piece was used for the character Mia in the film.
- #197
Justin Paul explains it, "In New York, you grind and grind to pursue your dreams and… get up the next day and it's muddy and gross." Paul says of Los Angeles: "You pursue your dream, you go to bed and you get up the next day and it's a gorgeous day. It encourages you one breath, and the next breath it denies that you're failing miserably."
- #198
At the start of the film, the radio announcer heard in Ryan Gosling's car says: "three-time Oscar winner, including Shakespeare in Love (1998)…" This is likely a nod to costume designer Sandy Powell, who won Academy Awards for The Aviator (2004), The Young Victoria (2009) and Shakespeare in Love (1998). In 2015 she was also nominated for two more films, Cinderella (2015) and Carol (2015).
- #199
The film's producer is one of the spectators cheering when the truck drum and dance number begins during "Another Day of Sun." A noticeably elderly man stands on the left side of the frame.
- #200
Hurwitz composed "City of Stars" from an emotional place. He says it moves back and forth between a major cadence and a minor cadence because he thinks the song is about that. In life you have great moments and then you have less great moments.
- #201
Gosling says the costumes Zophres put him in helped him walk the line between the 1940s and a contemporary sensibility. For the big dance numbers Zophres focused on fit, but she also focused on functionality, dressing the leads in clothes that looked even more striking in the middle of performances full of swaying, spinning and high-flying moves. Zophres says that while researching the film and watching Gene Kelly musicals, she could see that once the dancers got into their routines, the lining of their clothes became lighter, less heavy. To get ideas for the lead character's costumes, Zophres consulted a huge magazine collection dating back to the 1930s, including Life and Vogue.
- #202
In the scene where Mia and Sebastian walk through the Warner Bros studio, they are stopped by an assistant director. This person was played by the real second assistant director, Brett Robinson.
- #203
Choreographer Mandy Moore calls the planetarium scene 'the heart of the film.' Moore said the sequence was originally planned to take place underwater before it was decided to move it to the sky.
- #204
While Mia is writing her one-woman play, the script shows the lead character's name as Genevieve.
- #205
For the opening dance scene on the freeway, they used both directions of the westbound carpool lane of the freeway from 105 to 110. On location, half the cars are facing backwards.
- #206
Executive music producer Marius de Vries says that for the engagement party song they wanted to use their own song melodies as an underscore, and this scene features a reimagining of the roommates song from earlier in the film, performed by Ryan. To bring Mia and Sebastian's Theme to life, he says Ryan Gosling had to start working with piano teacher Liz Kinnon four months before shooting, because he was essentially a beginner. When they went to shoot the scene where the piano version is first played, everyone was nervous. But Marius says this: "after Ryan's first filming attempt, there was at least 10 seconds of astonished silence then much deserved applause."
- #207
The "City of Stars" scene on the Hermosa pier was nearly ruined when a large US Navy warship, which had a limited window to shoot at sunset, suddenly sailed into the camera line. Producer Marc Platt disappeared for 10 minutes, and when he returned, the warship had moved in time for the cast and crew to shoot the scene.
- #208
When Mia comes to see Sebastian play with "The Messengers," the band leader Keith is wearing a red leather jacket with a red guitar strap over his shoulder, reminiscent of the 80s-style red leather George Michael jacket Sebastian wore at his earlier party concert. In both groups, instead of focusing on the piano he loves so much, Sebastian has to juggle the kitsch second keyboard (the key-tar at the party, the synthesizer with The Messengers). The implication is that the flashy stage band is just a better-paying gig that lures him away and takes him further from his dreams.
- #209
Damien also wanted everything to happen in camera rather than by adding effects in post-production. This required a great deal of planning. In terms of aspect ratio and frame size, Chazelle was after something highly anamorphic to give the film the extra scope of classic old movies. Sundgren had to have Panavision make new lenses for the film, which he felt genuinely contributed to its spirit. Sundgren also used colored lights to develop the film's palette of cool blues, greens and pinks.
- #210
Damien Chazelle rehearsed the opening number with the dancers, recording the scene himself on his iPhone.
- #211
Costume designer Mary Zophres said her favorite garment worn by Emma Stone was the white dress seen toward the end of the film.
- #212
Ryan Gosling told the director that his dancing made him feel like a 'slimy monkey.' "My extremities are everywhere; it's hard for me to control my body."
- #213
Damien Chazelle's love of That Thing You Do! (1996) led to Tom Everett Scott being cast as Mia's husband. "Growing up as a kid drummer, there are not many movies where the drummer is the hero." Stone and Gosling were equally in love with it and spent a great deal of time quoting the film.
- #214
Executive music producer Marius de Vries says that for the song "City of Stars," before filming there were many permutations of the duet, the female lead and the male lead before it was locked into its current position. The whistling in the song was done by Justin Hurwitz because Ryan Gosling cannot whistle.
- #215
Stone says of her character: "Mia is driven by something she perhaps doesn't fully understand. She wants to be an artist in a city where there are so many people who look just like her." Stone continues: "Mia feels there is something special inside her but doesn't quite know what it is. I can relate to her being an actress and going to auditions, but more importantly, there was something very exciting about taking her into this musical world where you can suddenly turn on the street or burst into song. It was a beautiful thing. A great challenge."
- #216
Zophres saw Emma Stone wearing a yellow dress on the red carpet and thought she looked stunning. This led her to dress Mia in yellow for the film's signature "Duet" dance scene.
- #217
During pre-production, they visited Gene Kelly's widow Patricia and had the pleasure of seeing the works and memories left from her husband's career. "I'm a normal person so I bring a bottle of wine," Damien Chazelle said: "Emma is a normal person so she brings some flowers, our choreographer Mandy Moore is also a normal person so she brings another bottle of wine, and then Ryan Gosling shows up with a 25 lb apple pie." Apparently there is a place in Los Angeles that specializes in making these. Unfortunately, Chazelle does not reveal the name of the place for those of us who might be interested in such a thing.
- #218
The 1,200-seat Rialto theatre was built with a 30-foot-deep stage to host live Vaudeville shows. Other films shot at the Rialto cinema include The Rocketeer, The Player, Nightmare on Elm Street, part 4 and Scream 2.
- #219
Chazelle thought there should be a naturalism in the dance. He told choreographer Mandy Moore that in this film dancing, singing and acting were one single thing. Chazelle told Moore that "he wanted the audience to feel that Sebastian and Mia were real people who, for a moment, transcended the limits of everyday life."
- #220
Shortly before the highway interchange opened to the public in 1993, an important scene from "Speed," starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, was shot here. The E-Z pass ramp section of the highway was closed on Saturday and Sunday in August 2015 to film the opening number titled "Traffic."
- #221
Miles Teller, the star of director Chazelle's film Whiplash, was initially considered for the role of Sebastian. After Gosling was cast, director Chazelle decided to make the characters a little older, with the experience of struggling to realize their dreams.
- #222
Director Chazelle used filmmaker Max Ophuls as a model for how to move the camera in La La Land. Ophuls is considered one of the masters of camera movement in cinema history. As Chazelle described it, "the idea is to have a camera that in itself feels melodic, feels like a dancer" the camera "never gets in the way of the dancing onscreen but becomes part of the choreography nonetheless."
- #223
"Gilmore Girls" fans will enjoy seeing some parts of the Warner Ranch used for the series. When Mia shows Seb the window that Bogart and Bergman look out of in "Casablanca," they are actually on a block called French Street, and a few minutes later they will walk directly in front of Miss Patty's Dance Studio and on toward the storefront used for Luke's Diner. The building facade used for the police station they watch in "Rebel Without a Cause" is just around the corner.
- #224
In this scene, Mia passes by a mural titled "You Are the Star." Here, old Hollywood celebrities sit in a movie theatre and watch passersby as if they were the stars of a film. The mural was made in 1983 by Thomas Suriya.
- #225
Emma Stone on the relationship between Mia and Sebastian: "I think Mia and Sebastian inspire each other to do things differently. Both are in a rut when they meet and feel creatively stuck. But the best thing Sebastian does for her is ask the question: 'Why don't you create your own stories to tell as an actress?' I think Mia needs that because she's forgotten she even has that talent. Mia gives Sebastian the idea that he can expand and sustain his art in ways he hasn't explored before."
- #226
The costume Sebastian wears while "I Ran (So Far Away)" plays is a very close copy of the costume worn by Flock of Seagulls lead singer, keyboardist and guitarist Mike Score.
- #227
The Angels Flight funicular railway in downtown Los Angeles opened in 1901 but closed in 1969. It reopened briefly in the early 2000s but closed again shortly afterward. The city opened it for one day so the film's producers could shoot there.
- #228
Mia points Sebastian to the window where Ilsa and Rick part ways in Casablanca. The window was supposed to belong to their hotel in Paris. It is her first role shot in Paris, which causes Mia to leave Sebastian. Sebastian chooses to stay in Los Angeles, which also doubled for Casablanca in the film. Like Rick in the film, Sebastian becomes the owner of a piano bar after they part ways.
- #229
The scene they see while it is being set up in the soundstage also includes the painted backdrop that returns in the film's final scene. "so Ryan and Emma are literally peering into the movie that they're then going to be a part of."
- #230
Keith is played by ten-time GRAMMY® winner and Oscar®-winning singer, songwriter John Legend. Legend considered the chance to appear in the film and said: "I thought it would be a great opportunity to move more into acting in a role that felt pretty familiar to what I already do to make a living, which is making music." Another thing that fascinated Legend was the conflict between Keith and Sebastian over how a person adapts to a rapidly changing culture. Legend also said, "Keith's philosophy is, let's not try to preserve something that happened 50 years ago; let's take what we've learned and make something for these times."
- #231
Chazelle says the dance movement in the opening sequence was influenced by the opening of Jaques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort, and that the athletic nature of the opening dance number was inspired by Michael Kidd's choreography in the classic MGM musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
- #232
The same street lamps appear in many scenes, including the path Emma and Ryan walk in their first dance scene; the pier at Hermosa Beach; outside the soundstage as Mia and Seb walk in the movie theater (hiding outside the building, showing that they are only set dressing); and again as Mia runs out of the restaurant where she is dining with Greg, her brother and his wife and runs down the street toward the Rialto. The same light also features prominently on the film's poster.
- #233
In the epilogue sequence, while walking in Paris, the camera focuses on a clock showing the time as 12:00, a gentle nod to Midnight in Paris (2011), starring Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams. Just as we did in Midnight in Paris, here too we question the reality of what happens in the film. Rachel McAdams was Ryan Gosling's co-star in The Notebook (2004).
- #234
Producer Fred Berger says of Gosling's character Sebastian: "Ryan portrays Sebastian as a man of real determination. That's what fuels his stubbornness about staying in Los Angeles and saying that he's going to make it here as a jazz artist on his own terms. Sebastian's stubbornness doesn't come from ego or any corrosive quality. It comes from real belief and passion, which Ryan instills in the character so beautifully."
- #235
To help his cast and crew find inspiration, Chazelle held screenings every Friday night of the classic films that inspired La La Land. Among the films he showed were The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Singin' in the Rain, Top Hat and Boogie Nights.
- #236
At the Griffith Observatory, a scroll of paper that looks like an Oscar is thrown at Mia. Emma Stone actually won her Oscar for her role in La La Land.
- #237
The opening scene is in some ways modeled on Love Me Tonight (1932), which begins with a cacophony of street noises; Paris wakes at dawn, shutters open and people sweep the streets, and all these sounds gradually accumulate, become rhythmic and turn into a number.
- #238
This is Justin Hurwitz playing the piano on stage at the end of the fantasy "what if?" sequence at Seb's.
- #239
Director Chazelle says: "Musicals… are a genre you can't enter with a protective shield. The scary side of the genre is also the invigorating side, meaning it forces you to carry your heart. One of the greatest pleasures of watching this film was watching (Emma) go to a deeper and darker place than we're used to."
- #240
In the film, Ryan Gosling's character is referred to twice by other characters as a famous but deceased 2016 celebrity. Early in the film, his sister calls him Ali, a reference to Muhammad Ali, who died in early June 2016. Later, Mia shouts at him and calls him George Michael, who died on Christmas Day 2016, shortly after the film's release.
- #241
Damien Chazelle felt sorry for the man who jumps into the pool at the party, because we had probably done that shot about thirty-five times.
- #242
The film did not test well. After being told that the minimum score preferred by the studio was above 70, they came in at 65. After some work, they eventually reached 75.
- #243
Chazelle said the opening number was inspired by "living in L. A. And being in traffic all the time, thinking about wanting to shoot myself or dance," and that one of the inspirations for the opening sequence was the single seven-and-a-half-minute traffic shot in Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film Weekend.
- #244
The opening scene featured more than 100 cars and more than 90 singers and dancers. During the first half of the prologue shoot, the sky was cloudy and the crew had to wait until the sun finally came out to film.
- #245
While talking about a stool in his home, Sebastian tells his sister that The Baked Potato threw it away. The Baked Potato is a well-known jazz club in Los Angeles.
- #246
Production designer David Wasco and set decorator Sandy Reynolds-Wasco pitched Chazelle the idea of Sebastian driving a 1980s Buick Riviera convertible (a car that becomes a character in its own right).
- #247
Damien Chazelle received worried questions and comments and was questioned about his decision to light Sebastian's apartment with green light outside the curtains.
- #248
Production designer David Wasco said of the number known as "Epilogue": "Damien wanted to enter this highly exaggerated fantasy world of L.A. and Paris on a studio backdrop."
- #249
Chazelle's main influence, both in style and music, is clearly The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), with additional production nods (for example, an umbrella shop across from the coffee shop in the film's world, and a cast of non-singers in the lead roles). Another, more hidden influence is MGM's Oscar-winning An American in Paris (1951), particularly in Chazelle's decision to complete his film with an extended, surreal ballet that summarizes everything that came before in impressionistic terms, moving in and out of many sets and reflecting a happy ending in place of what actually happens between the characters. While the ballet in An American in Paris (1951) ran an unprecedented seventeen minutes, Chazelle's runs eight minutes.
- #250
The venue where Mia performs her one-woman show was shot at the Hayworth Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. It opened in 1925 as the Masque theatre and was designed by the same architect who designed Los Angeles' El Capitan and Maya theatres. By 1950 the Hayworth was known as the Vagabond Theatre, an art house and revival theatre where many of the films that inspired Damien Chazelle to make La La Land were shown.
- #251
The second 2016 film to include a cover version of A-ha's song "Take On Me." The first: Sing Street (2016).
- #252
Chazelle wanted to explore this alternate-reality idea without dialogue and only through image, music and dance. Chazelle says this sequence was inspired by An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain. He wanted to revive a tradition you used to see in musicals but no longer see at all.
- #253
Chazelle says Justin was working on the film's musical theme before he wrote any dialogue. While Chazelle was editing the film, Hurwitz was working on the music on the other side of the room.
- #254
The process of writing "Start a Fire" advanced Legend's understanding of the characters. "The fun thing was that we could see the transformation of the song as Sebastian and Keith decide what kind of music they want to make." Legend says "it presents Sebastian with a dilemma about how much 'pop' he's willing to get and how far away from the music he wants to play he's willing to go." The song was revelatory for Gosling. He said, "John bringing his contemporary interpretation was a really difficult thing. In terms of sound and energy, it could really clash with the kind of music the film celebrates. Instead, what John brought was so good that it makes my character's dilemma much more complex."
- #255
Before moving to the cars, going directly from the Cinemascope logo to the bright Los Angeles sun was producer Fred Berger's idea, and Damien Chazelle struggled with it for two months, preferring to get lost inside the cars. "He wound up winning me over eventually." The trade-off here is that the person who stayed away from the idea that the opening number should be cut was Berger.
- #256
The post-party song and the dance under the setting Los Angeles sun were shot over two nights to perfectly capture the sky, the performances and the camera work. In order not to lose any more light, they would all have to return to the starting point from the top down after each take.
- #257
The theater where Mia and Sebastian have their cinema date is the Rialto in Pasadena. It's a real theater but it's not really in use anymore. They had to burn it and dress it to make it look alive, but in the second scene later in the film it appears closed.
- #258
Mia's one-woman play experience was the most personal experience Chazelle could write, because Chazelle had had a hard time with audiences, especially with his first film Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009). He recalls a Q&A where a man asked "Are you happy with the movie?" and then followed up with "Why?"
- #259
The film was initially planned to be shot at Focus Properties for under a million dollars, but after a regime change the film was canceled entirely. They spent several years continuing to work on the script and looking for financing, during which they made Whiplash and eventually got a proper green light for this film through Lionsgate.
- #260
Composer Justin Hurwitz describes the opening song as a way of establishing the personality of Los Angeles; a city full of dreamers striving for a future with dreamers. "that may or may not happen." "Another Day of Sun" Lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul recount that director Chazelle wanted them to capture the difference between Los Angeles and New York with the song.
- #261
Marius notes about the upcoming "Audition" musical number that Emma's song came "after a long musical silence in terms of production numbers." He notes how interesting it is that La La Land breaks with tradition in this respect — the music sung/performed in La La Land is generally not found in Act 3 up to this point. But Marius concludes: "it works because it tracks the curve of Sebastian and Mia's relationship, disappearing for awhile as things get dark." Marius thanks not only Emma Stone for her extraordinary vocal performances throughout, but also vocal coach Eric Vetro for keeping Emma 'in shape for the game' despite the competing demands of all the choreography and the several colds Emma had during the production.
- #262
Sebastian at first refuses to call his dream club anything other than "Chicken on a Stick" because Charlie Parker was known for eating chicken. Toward the end of the film, Sebastian goes home and cooks chicken on the stove before heading to his new club.
- #263
Musician D. A. Wallach plays the 80s singer in Seb's band. While at Harvard, Wallach auditioned against director Damien Chazelle for the role of drummer in Justin Hurwitz's band. Chazelle won and Wallach became the band's lead singer. Wallach is the former lead singer of the band Chester French. He now records as a solo artist on Harvest Records.
- #264
Marius de Vries reflects on the opening number; "It was the only song in the film and it was also the most complex in terms of vocal arrangement, staging and logistics. It was really hard to pin down exactly what the song should be about, but Benj and Justin eventually found the perfect balance between poetry and naturalism… in this hymn to the daily routine of Los Angeles."
- #265
According to costume designer Mary Zophres, Mia's barista blouse is based on a photograph of Ingrid Bergman wearing something similar in the 1940s. She has collaborated with the Coen Brothers on thirteen films, among them The Big Lebowski, Fargo and No Country for Old Men.
- #266
On this film, costume designer Mary Zophres and Chazelle focused on color as a tool of emotion and discussed how one scene might be neutral with yellow accents, while in another the men might be in dark colors and the women in bright ones. What they were after was a contemporary quality of immediacy. Color tone was key to Sebastian's look, from the sable brown suit at the opening to the dark blue blazer. Zophres was especially pleased with Sebastian's choice of two-tone shoes. The shoes were popular in the 40s but seemed to evoke a sense of quirk, lightness and love of life, and ultimately became Sebastian's signature because they carry his passion for the past into the present.
- #267
Mia's terrible opening auditions are based on a real incident Ryan Gosling experienced during a phone call at a serious moment with a casting director.
- #268
The reconstruction in the edit resulted in a continuity error involving Sebastian's shirt, but no one called Damien Chazelle out on it. We see him in a brown shirt, coming to his apartment to hang out with his sister in a blue shirt, then the girl leaves and he sits down at the piano again in the brown shirt. Now that he has pointed it out, it is terribly distracting.
- #269
Ryan Gosling's character Sebastian teases his sister in the film about needing to set her up with a man who has a tattoo on his face. Coincidentally, in his role in The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), his character has a tattoo on his face. He chose this tattoo for his character in TPBtP. After the first day of shooting, he asked for the tattoo to be removed out of shame over the choice he had made for his character, at which point the director told him "absolutely not."
- #270
In the montage of neon signs, several establishments from the glamour era of classic Hollywood can be seen, including the Formosa Café, which is on the street across from Warner Bros. and was patronized by Humphry Bogart and Clark Gable. Pay. Opened in 1919, Musso & Frank Grill is the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. The Knickerbocker Hotel, whose history goes back to 1929, was where Graham Nash was living in 1968 when Cass Elliot introduced him to Stephen Stills and David Crosby. The Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood, where Paul Reubens introduced the Pee-Wee Herman character in 1981.
- #271
At the end of the film, Mia enters Sebastian's jazz bar with her husband, played by Tom Everett Scott, the kind of bar Sebastian wanted to own so he could play authentic jazz. This is a tribute to That Thing You Do! Tom Everett Scott's character Guy loves jazz and asks a taxi driver to take him to a bar with "good jazz" (1996).
- #272
Director Damien Chazelle anticipated that the production numbers in the film would reflect the imagination and narrative freedom associated with mid-century film musicals, while also reflecting the energy and tempo that appeal to the iPhone and YouTube generation.
- #273
A song titled "La La Land" was cut from the final film, but Pasek says the song contains many road metaphors. You don't know where you're going, but follow every turn, L.A. will guide you…" Pasek points out the line in "Audition" that picks up this metaphor of "Who knows where it will lead us and that's why they need us".
- #274
In his conversations with Chazelle, Hurwitz understood that "Audition" was optimistic about never giving up on your dreams but with a bittersweet tone. When Hurwitz first composed the song, he started with notes that had specific pitches. While shaping the scene and talking with Chazelle, they realized that Emma had to transition from spoken words into the song, and therefore the beginning had to be without pitch.
- #275
Damien Chazelle wanted the CinemaScope opening to replicate the expanding aspect ratio he remembered seeing in Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956).
- #276
The interiors of Mia's apartment were shot at The Langham Apartments in Los Angeles. The Langham, a 180-room apartment building, opened in 1927 and offers a restaurant, beauty salon, barber shop, billiard room and canteen. In 1927, the show at the Langham was the country's first rooftop swimming pool.
- #277
The rehearsal sessions for the Messengers, including this scene, were shot at the East-West studios in Hollywood. The room where this scene was filmed is also the room where Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys recorded their classic album Pet Sounds. Other famous music recorded in this building includes The Mamas and the Papas' California Dreamin', The Beach Boys' California Girls, Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On and U2's Rattle and Hum.
- #278
The first thing Emma Stone heard at her first meeting with Chazelle about the project was the demo of "Audition." The director believes one reason he agreed to make the film was to recreate that moment. Hurwitz comments, "This song is really special to me and I'm very proud of it. I think this scene and this song are exactly what we imagined."
- #279
The service station at the back of the film set was designed inspired by an Ed Ruscha painting.
- #280
Tom Everett Scott once again marries a character with the surname "Dolan." In this film, he marries Mia Dolan, played by Emma Stone. In That Thing You Do! (1996), the character Guy married Faye Dolan, played by Liv Tyler.
- #281
In 2017, German comedians Klaas Heufer-Umlauf and Joko Winterscheidt joked to the jury of the "Golden Kamera Award 2017," who were posing as a celebrity management agency, that their client Ryan Gosling would be in Germany and could appear on the show. The award's jury invited him and decided to present him with the "Best movie International" award for "La La Land" (according to the jury, they chose this category because the "Best Actor international" award had already been presented to Colin Farrell). A person resembling Ryan Gosling appeared on the show (Ludwig Lehner, mostly a cook and also an employee who has resembled Gosling since 2014), accepted the award, thanked them for the award he received with "dedicates… to Joko and Klaas," and quickly left the audience in astonishment. When the joke came to light, the jury demanded the return of the award. However, in the end they still decided to give it to "La La Land." The event is known as "Goslinggate" in the German media. With this campaign, Joko and Klaas wanted to show how trivial some award programs are and to increase their importance by creating categories just to attract celebrities to their programs.
- #282
The dance scene in the air draws inspiration from a wide variety of films such as 2001, Wall-E and Sleeping Beauty.
- #283
The line "that's L. A. They worship everything and they value nothing," spoken by Ryan Gosling in the film, was actually added by Gosling himself, because it was a remark his partner Eva Mendes said as a joke and he thought it suited the film.
- #284
While La La Land references many films, it is also influenced by painters such as Ed Ruscha and David Hockney, who explored the mythology of Los Angeles. French Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy, known for his ecstatic colors, is also said to have had a visual influence on the film.
- #285
Rialto's marquee is adorned with classic film posters featuring some of Hollywood's brightest stars from their golden age, such as Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms.
- #286
The exterior of Club Fais Do-Do can be seen here. In the early 1960s, it was a famous underground club where names such as John Coltrane, Sam Cooke and Billy Preston performed.
- #287
This part of the Mia-Sebastian fantasy sequence was shot at Orcutt Ranch Park, built in 1919 by William Orcutt for his family in the countryside. A small grove of oak trees on the property is over 700 years old, and the branches from these trees were among those burned with limestone in a kiln to produce the mortar used to build Los Angeles' first Spanish settlement in 1797.
- #288
Emma Stone performed "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)" live on set. She decided when to transition from dialogue to singing, and the song's composer, Hurwitz, played piano in another room where she could hear it. Director Damien Chazelle said this was done so that Stone could have more control over the stage and heartbreaking song.
- #289
Chazelle and Hurwitz were not members of Chester French, the band of D.A. Wallach and Max Drummey, while at Harvard.
- #290
A photographer is seen using a Sony A99 SLT camera. The director wanted the actor to be seen shooting with a camera believed capable of achieving focus in lower light than the optimum shown on set with the AF system. The Sony A99 was Sony's top-of-the-line SLT camera. A full-frame camera, the Sony A99 resembles a DSLR, but its mirror does not move and is translucent to let light reach the sensor. Sony also had mirrorless cameras at the time. They were shooting La La Land, but those turned out not to perform well enough in the dark, so the director decided to choose the A99. Since other cameras in the film (such as Samsung and possibly the Canon AE-1) are visible, this product placement was probably not influenced by Sony (the company that makes it).
- #291
The planetarium in the film is the Griffith Observatory, not a replica.
- #292
Chazelle: "They do something very difficult in this film; grounding the most ungrounded genres."
- #293
The opening sequence was cut from the film several times because they tested it with and without it, and in the end they decided to keep it in. There was also an opening overture that was cut. Damien Chazelle asked composer Justin Hurwitz which one broke his heart more when it was cut, and he answered with this opening number. Fortunately, he and the audiences decided to add it back.
- #294
The Rialto Theatre is in Pasadena, California. Its grand opening on October 17, 1925 premiered the Universal comedy What Happened to Jones.
- #295
In the opening song, "Another Day of Sun," the film's director Damien Chazelle's sister appears on screen for just a few seconds.
- #296
Director Chazelle shoots this scene in a single continuous take with no editing.
Behind the Scenes (9)
- #297
According to composer Justin Hurwitz, all the piano performances were first recorded in pre-production by pianist Randy Kerber. Ryan Gosling then spent two hours a day, six days a week, in piano lessons memorizing the music, and by the start of filming he could play every piano passage in the film without a hand double or CGI.
- #298
The magic-hour Hollywood Hills dance, in deep purple twilight, had to be shot within a 30-minute window over two days (cinematographer Linus Sandgren says exactly between 19.20 and 19.50). According to Damien Chazelle, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling managed five takes across the two days; after each, they went back to their starting marks while assistants mopped their sweat, then began the routine again. The fourth take is the one in the film.
- #299
The opening number "Another Day of Sun" was shot over two days in blistering 109 degrees F (43 degrees C) heat; every performer had two spare costumes kept in the cars to change into between takes. To make the most of shooting time, choreographer Mandy Moore started rehearsals in May 2015 in the parking lot behind the production office, mapping the sequence with miniature cars and Post-it notes. During filming she hid under a car so she could direct the dancers without being caught by the camera on the hill.
- #300
The two actors Sebastian and Mia pass filming a romantic scene on the studio lot are actually Ryan Gosling's and Emma Stone's body doubles.
- #301
In the first 60 seconds, as the camera glides over the gridlocked cars, you can see dents in the hoods and roofs of many of them, most likely from all the dancing in rehearsals and earlier takes.
- #302
According to costume designer Mary Zophres, Mia and Sebastian have more than fifty costume changes between them. She worked closely with cinematographer Linus Sandgren and production designer David Wasco so the costumes would sit in harmony with the film's overall design.
- #303
For the camera movement in La La Land, Chazelle took as his model Max Ophuls, regarded as one of cinema's great masters of the moving camera. As Chazelle put it, "the idea is to have a camera that in itself feels melodic, feels like a dancer," one that "never gets in the way of the dancing onscreen but becomes part of the choreography nonetheless."
- #304
Dancers, choreographers and crew rehearsed the opening for three months before shooting, and many of the cars had to be reinforced to hold the dancers.
- #305
Damien Chazelle worked hand in hand with cinematographer Linus Sandgren, known for his work with David O. Russell on American Hustle and Joy. Jordan Horowitz said: "The camera had to have a very specific energy in this film… and we knew Linus had the skills to bring that." Sandgren adds: "Damien wanted to make an old-fashioned film in a very modern way where the camera is more fluid." The technical challenges were many: they shot on 4-perf anamorphic 35mm, which meant reloading the camera every ten minutes, and Chazelle wanted the big production numbers, what Sandgren called "unbroken reality," done in a single take.
Characters & Cast (16)
- #306
Contains a major spoiler — show
The film stops being a musical the moment Sebastian and Mia stop being happy; the next song only comes at the audition, when Mia starts to feel joy again.
- #307
Because Damien Chazelle wanted the scene done in the old musical tradition, with no cuts, Ryan Gosling practiced on the first day of shooting and then played the piano himself in one continuous take. Co-star John Legend, a classically trained pianist, says he was "jealous" of how fast Gosling learned.
- #308
John Legend, a singer and pianist, had to learn guitar for his part.
- #309
Technically, J. K. Simmons was the first person cast: Damien Chazelle asked him to play the small role while they were still shooting Whiplash. "We both enjoyed the joke that he's the same guy as in Whiplash, but years after being fired. He decided he hates jazz and just wants to listen to Christmas songs for the rest of his life."
- #310
Contains a major spoiler — show
When the film won Best Picture at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, Chazelle revealed that the closing sequence was partly inspired by the 1927 film 7th Heaven, with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. In it, Farrell goes to war and dies, but Gaynor, told of his death, clings to an irrational hope that he's alive; the studio made the director shoot a happy ending in which Farrell comes back. That gave Chazelle the idea that both realities could exist at once, because the woman's love is strong enough to make it so, and time and the laws of physics fall away. One way to read La La Land's ending, then, is that it's as 'true' as the story the Epilogue belongs to.
- #311
After one of her auditions, Emma Stone pointed out that the film's plot resembles Rebel Without a Cause (1955). One of "Rebel"'s most iconic touches is James Dean's red jacket, and Emma wears a similar one at both the audition and the callback.
- #312
Gosling brought some of his own struggles as a young actor into the film: once, while he was doing a crying scene in an audition for another film, the casting director took a phone call. That moment went to Mia.
- #313
In casting his leads, Chazelle wanted to embrace two traditions. On one side were the classic Hollywood pairings, Bogart and Bacall, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Myrna Loy and William Powell, stars who played different roles but always projected a distinct personality. At the same time he wanted Gosling's and Stone's performances to be surprising, even subversive.
- #314
Executive music producer Marius de Vries says "City of Stars" went through many permutations before shooting, as a duet, for the female lead, for the male lead, before settling into its final form. The whistling is Justin Hurwitz's, because Ryan Gosling can't whistle.
- #315
Stone on her character: "Mia is driven by something she perhaps doesn't fully understand. She wants to be an artist in a city where there are so many people who look just like her. Mia feels there's something special inside her but she doesn't quite know what it is. I can relate to her being an actress and going to auditions, but more importantly, there was something very exciting about taking her into this musical world where you can suddenly turn on the street or burst into song. It was such a beautiful thing. A great challenge."
- #316
Miles Teller, star of Chazelle's Whiplash, was first considered for Sebastian. Once Gosling was cast, Chazelle made the characters a little older, drawing on his own years of struggling to realize his dreams.
- #317
To inspire his cast and crew, Chazelle held Friday-night screenings of the classics behind La La Land, among them The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Singin' in the Rain, Top Hat and Boogie Nights.
- #318
Chazelle's main influence, in both style and music, is clearly The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), with extra nods in the production (a parapluie shop across from the coffee shop, for instance, and non-singers in the lead roles). A less obvious influence is MGM's Oscar-winning An American in Paris (1951), above all in the decision to end with an extended, surreal ballet that sums up everything before it in impressionistic terms, gliding in and out of sets and imagining a happy ending in place of what really happens between the characters. The ballet in An American in Paris (1951) ran an unprecedented seventeen minutes; Chazelle's runs eight.
- #319
Mia's disastrous first audition is based on something that really happened to Ryan Gosling, when a casting director took a phone call in the middle of his big emotional moment.
- #320
Contains a major spoiler — show
At the end, Mia's husband, played by Tom Everett Scott, leads her into Sebastian's jazz bar, the place Sebastian dreamed of owning so he could play real jazz. It's a tribute to That Thing You Do! (1996), in which Tom Everett Scott's character, Guy, loves jazz and asks a cab driver to take him somewhere with "good jazz."
- #321
At one point Mia tells Sebastian she could have become a lawyer; Emma Stone had already played a law school graduate in Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), opposite Ryan Gosling.
Easter Eggs & References (6)
- #322
Justin Hurwitz's song "When I Wake" first appeared in Whiplash (2014), playing as the two leads listen on a date. The same happens in La La Land: it rises in the background as Sebastian and Mia talk about jazz, the very subject the two Whiplash leads argue about.
- #323
Contains a major spoiler — show
The word 'Fall' stood not only for the season but for the decline in their relationship; it was also the only season title shown on a black background, and the only one that didn't look as cheerful as the rest.
- #324
J. K. Simmons plays a similarly negative character here and in Chazelle's previous film, Whiplash (2014): there he was a jazz obsessive, here he hates jazz.
- #325
Contains a major spoiler — show
In the epilogue, as they walk through Paris, the camera lingers on a clock showing 12:00, a gentle nod to Midnight in Paris (2011), with Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams, which also leaves us questioning what's real. Rachel McAdams was Ryan Gosling's co-star in The Notebook (2004).
- #326
Twice in the film, other characters call Ryan Gosling's character by the name of a famous figure who died in 2016. Early on his sister calls him Ali, after Muhammad Ali, who died in early June 2016; later Mia calls him George Michael, who died on Christmas Day 2016, shortly after the film came out.
- #327
Marius de Vries on the opening number: "It was the first song in the film and also the most complex in terms of vocal arrangement, staging and logistics. It was really hard to pin down exactly what the song should be about, but Benj and Justin eventually found the perfect balance between poetry and naturalism… in this hymn to the daily routine of Los Angeles."
Deeper Meaning (6)
- #328
Contains a major spoiler — show
Mia and Sebastian's first and last meetings both come down to traffic, one of Los Angeles's best-known features. At the start they pass each other in a jam; at the end, traffic makes Mia and her husband miss a friend's premiere, so they go to dinner instead and then wander into Sebastian's jazz club.
- #329
Executive music producer Marius de Vries says they wanted their own song melodies as the underscore for the engagement party, so the scene features Ryan playing a reworking of the roommates' song from earlier. To bring Mia and Sebastian's Theme to life, Ryan Gosling, essentially a beginner, started lessons with piano teacher Liz Kinnon four months before shooting. Everyone was nervous going into the first scene with the piano version, but, Marius says, "after Ryan's first filming attempt, there was at least 10 seconds of astonished silence then much deserved applause."
- #330
Chazelle said the opening number came from "living in L.A. and being in traffic all the time, thinking about wanting to shoot myself or dance," and that one inspiration was the single seven-and-a-half-minute traffic shot in Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film Weekend.
- #331
A song called "La La Land" was cut from the final film. Pasek says it was full of road metaphors: you don't know where you're going, but take every turn and L.A. will guide you… He points to the line in "Audition" that picks up the metaphor: "Who knows where it will lead us and that's why they need us."
- #332
A photographer is seen with a Sony A99 SLT camera. The director wanted the character shooting with a camera believed able to autofocus in light dimmer than the scene's. The A99 was Sony's top SLT model at the time, a full-frame camera that looks like a DSLR but has a fixed, translucent mirror that lets light through to the sensor. Sony also made mirrorless cameras then, but during the La La Land shoot they proved weaker in the dark, so the director went with the A99. Since other cameras also appear (a Samsung, and possibly a Canon AE-1), this probably wasn't product placement by Sony, the camera's maker.
- #333
This street is near the corner of Franklin and Argyle in Hollywood, close to landmarks like The Magic Castle, Chateau Elysee (one of the old film-star apartment buildings) and the Shakespeare Bridge. The Argyle Arms Castle in the background, built in 1928, was home in its golden age to Hollywood stars such as Clark Gable, Howard Hughes, Ronald Reagan and Cecil B. DeMille.
Career & Awards (3)
- #334
Early on, the radio announcer in Ryan Gosling's car mentions a "three-time Oscar winner, including Shakespeare in Love (1998)…", probably a nod to costume designer Sandy Powell, who won Academy Awards for The Aviator (2004), The Young Victoria (2009) and Shakespeare in Love (1998), and was nominated in 2015 for two more, Cinderella (2015) and Carol (2015).
- #335
Keith is played by ten-time GRAMMY® winner and Oscar®-winning singer-songwriter John Legend, who saw the part as "a great opportunity to make more of a transition into acting in a role that felt pretty familiar to what I already do for a living, which is making music." He was also intrigued by Keith and Sebastian's clash over how to adapt to a fast-changing culture: "Keith's philosophy is, let's not try to preserve something that happened 50 years ago; let's take what we've learned and do something for these times."
- #336
At the Griffith Observatory, someone throws a rolled-up piece of paper shaped like an Oscar at Mia; Emma Stone did win the Oscar for La La Land.
Life & Family (1)
- #337
During filming, Ryan Gosling's partner Eva Mendes was caring for their daughters, as she was pregnant with their second child, and for her brother, who was undergoing cancer treatment. Accepting his award at the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards in 2017, Gosling tearfully thanked Mendes for her strength while he was busy with dance and music practice, and dedicated the award to her brother, who died after filming wrapped.
Related pages
- Les Parapluies de Cherbourg — La La Land comes up in the facts on that page
- Jessica Tandy — La La Land comes up in the facts on that page
- Damien Chazelle — La La Land comes up in the facts on that page
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- Wikipedia
- IMDb
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