5 items to know about Oscar winner Damien Chazelle

Damien Chazelle’s musical “La La Land” won major at this year's Oscars, and Chazelle himself took dwelling the award for ideal director. Chazelle, 32, became the youngest director to win an Oscar, tying a record that was set far more than 80 years...

27 February 2017 Monday 01:01
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5 items to know about Oscar winner Damien Chazelle

Damien Chazelle’s musical “La La Land” won major at this year's Oscars, and Chazelle himself took dwelling the award for ideal director.

Chazelle, 32, became the youngest director to win an Oscar, tying a record that was set far more than 80 years ago by Norman Taurog.

Chazelle wrote “La La Land,” which also won for original score and original song.

“We wrote this thing as a sort of pie-in-the-sky, you know, concept, pondering, ‘Sure, you know, we’ll make this when we can make this,’” Chazelle mentioned. “So what I wrote on the web page, what I sort of conceived there ideal in the moment, was essentially what you see correct there on the screen. It is just, we had no concrete, realistic road map for actually having it off the ground.

Right here are five points to know about the now Oscar-winning director.

Though “La La Land” is set in Los Angeles, where Chazelle lives, he’s from the East Coast.

He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, but moved to Los Angeles immediately after college. Developing up, Chazelle said he only knew of Los Angeles by way of films he watched, which typically portrayed the city's targeted traffic jams.

“That to me was L.A.,” Chazelle mentioned. “I came to L.A., and realized it has its charms and sooner or later I fell in love with L.A.”

This thought provided the inspiration for the opening scene of “La La Land,” which takes spot through a traffic jam on a Los Angeles freeway.

“I liked the notion of trying to begin this movie with the very thing that we most associate in a unfavorable way with L.A., which is men and women stuck in visitors, and tried to see could there be some thing lovely about that,” Chazelle mentioned.

As a kid, Chazelle mentioned, he would “cringe” when people today began singing in a film, but he sooner or later fell “head more than heels” for musicals.

He said he created “La La Land” with the hope of trying to update the language of the old musicals he loved. “I just don’t believe we see movies like that any longer,” he mentioned.

Some of Chazelle’s favourite musicals involve “Singing in the Rain,” “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” and these starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

“I do consider that musicals are this extremely emotional expressive genre that just permits you to do issues that other genres do not permit you to do. I feel there’s so significantly freedom in musicals,” said Chazelle.

Chazelle wrote “Whiplash” primarily based on his experiences of being a drummer in a competitive jazz band. He admitted he hardly ever plays the drums these days.

“I’ve got the drum set sitting in my garage gathering dust fundamentally. If I attempt to play it, the neighbors complain,” he said. “I used to play music a lot, but at this point … the closest I get to playing music is producing a movie about music.”

“La La Land” composer Justin Hurwitz, who also composed the score for Chazelle’s films “Whiplash” and “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench,” won an Oscar tonight for finest original score.

Chazelle met Hurwitz at Harvard, exactly where they played in a band collectively and had been roommates.

“We initially met in a rock band. I was playing drums, and he was playing piano,” Chazelle recalled. “I consider our rock star dreams had been promptly dashed, but we did come across that we both shared a enjoy of motion pictures and appreciate of musicals. And so conversations in college about what to do about the musical as a genre are what eventually led to ‘La La Land.’”

When Chazelle took residence a Golden Globe this year for “La La Land,” he became the youngest ever to win for ideal director.

He beat out “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins, “Manchester by the Sea” director Kenneth Lonergan, “Nocturnal Animals” director Tom Ford and “Hacksaw Ridge” director Mel Gibson.

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