Quotes by Damien Chazelle

ANDREW: But do you think there’s a line? You know, where you discourage the next Charlie Parker from becoming Charlie Parker?FLETCHER: No. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.

FLETCHER: The truth is I don’t think people understand what it is I did at Shaffer. I wasn’t there to conduct. Any idiot can move his hands and keep people in tempo. No, it’s about pushing people beyond what’s expected of them. And I believe that is a necessity. Because without it you’re depriving the world of its next Armstrong. Its next Parker. Why did Charlie Parker become Charlie Parker, Andrew? ANDREW: Because Jo Jones threw a cymbal at him.FLETCHER: Exactly. Young kid, pretty good on the sax, goes up to play his solo in a cutting session, fucks up -- and Jones comes this close to slicing his head off for it. He’s laughed off-stage. Cries himself to sleep that night. But the next morning, what does he do? He practices. And practices and practices. With one goal in mind: that he never ever be laughed off-stage again. A year later he goes back to the Reno, and he plays the best motherfucking solo the world had ever heard. Now imagine if Jones had just patted young Charlie on the head and said “Good job.” Charlie would’ve said to himself, “Well, shit, I did do a good job,” and that’d be that. No Bird. Tragedy, right? Except that’s just what people today want. The Shaffer Conservatories of the world, they want sugar. You don’t even say “cutting session” anymore, do you? No, you say “jam session”. What the fuck kind of word is that? Jam session? It’s a cutting session, Andrew, this isn’t fucking Smucker’s. It’s about weeding out the best from the worst so that the worst become better than the best. I mean look around you. $25 drinks, mood lighting, a little shrimp cocktail to go with your Coltrane. And people wonder why jazz is dying. Take it from me, and every Starbucks jazz album only proves my point. There are no two words more harmful in the entire English language than “good job”.

There something to be said for having even unrealistic dreams. Even if the dreams dont come true - that, to me, is whats beautiful about Los Angeles. Its full of these people who have moved there to chase these dreams.

The greatest thing has been that projects that were pipe dreams before Whiplash are now feeling more realistic.

Its interesting when you wind up distilling all your ambitions and your goals and dreams into one single person. Its giving that person a lot of power.

Ive always wanted to make movies that are fever dreams.

When someone is playing drums, they arent actually moving around a space; theyre just moving their arms and limbs. Theyre stuck behind the drum set. So to film someone playing the drums and make it feel as kinetic as a car chase or a shootout or a battle scene was the challenge.

I love movies where you can sense that the director risked biting off more than they can chew.

The go-to reflex all over Hollywood is still likeability. Ive always had a problem with it because I think I have a weird barometer in the sense that some of the characters Ive cared about the most in movies are characters that are often thought of as despicable.

I find L.A. kind of romantic, actually. As a movie junkie, its a city that was built by the movies. Theres something really weird and surreal about it that I find energizing.

I like movies that are specific. Movies that home in on a very specific subculture, a specific discipline, a specific world.

La La Land is about the city I live in. Its about the music that I grew up playing its about movies that I grew up watching. Even the big spectacle of the movie feels private to me in that way.