La La Country Director Damien Chazelle Breaks Downwardly Jazz'south Popularity Problem

Director Damien Chazelle and Emma Stone on the set of LA LA LAND.

Director Damien Chazelle and Emma Stone on the set up of La La Country. Photograph: Dale Robinette/Lionsgate

Damien Chazelle makes movies virtually people who care — a lot, peradventure too much — about jazz. You'd retrieve that'd make the 31-twelvemonth-sometime author-manager of Whiplash and La La Land something of a beacon to other jazz lovers. Yet while the latter film is being touted as an Oscar front end runner, some writers have pointed to what they see as Chazelle's clichéd and narrow view of jazz, particularly as espoused by Ryan Gosling's character Sebastian. (For what it's worth, La La Country's charming soundtrack draws far more than from mid-20th-century musicals than it does from Miles Davis.) All of which means that Chazelle finds himself in the curious position of trying to stoke popular passion for a genre while simultaneously drawing criticism for his films' attitudes toward that same style of music.

Speaking on the phone from Los Angeles, Chazelle talked about the relationship between his films and jazz, the challenge of overcoming nostalgia, and why jazz lost its popularity.

La La Land is full of allusions to archetype jazz, things like nods to John Coltrane and Harold Land album covers and famous jazz clubs. Even the movie'southward promotional posters are modeled after jazz album covers of the 1950s and 1960s. What are some reasons for these allusions other than other than providing a hit of nostalgia?
At that place's the personal reason and and then the intellectual reason. On a personal level jazz is of import, has always been important, and volition ever be important to me. I grew up playing it and having it in the household. And so the allusions are there for that reason, because the music matters to me. As far as the intellectual reason, at that place was something about the idea of jazz and it's connection to the Hollywood musical — a lot of my favorite sometime Hollywood musicals, and musicals from the French New Wave, take a relationship with jazz. It'south not completely 1-to-one, the music in those movies isn't strictly jazz, if you wanted to nitpick. And yet the music is absolutely based in a jazz vernacular. Information technology's just dressed up with strings and European-style orchestration. So I liked the thought of trying to get at the idea of jazz existence at the root of the musical.

And then stressing these musical connections through visual allusions?
Yeah. You know, when musicals beginning began, jazz was the popular fine art form of America. Then these two forms had sort of a conjoined nativity. I just wanted to go at that a footling bit. And besides, if nosotros're talking the specifics of the pic, so we should as well talk about Ryan Gosling'south grapheme, Sebastian, who has a stubborn human relationship with jazz and the by, and it'southward a relationship that mirrors the flick'southward relationship with the past. In some ways information technology's my own human relationship with the past and with jazz, also. As much as I may want to update things and exist contemporary, I tin can't pretend I don't accept a deep reverence for the history of that music.

John Legend's character in the film, a successful musician who stopped playing "pure" jazz, occupies a tough position. He'south trying to tempt Sebastian into giving upward his artistic dreams by playing a commercially friendly style of jazz. Yet you conspicuously made an effort to depict him sympathetically. Was he a hard character to calibrate?
I wanted to thread the needle with that character. The reason why I wanted to cast John Legend was related to what you but described. I wanted to bandage a real musician who could kind of bring an actuality to the office that would go along information technology from simply being a elementary plot device. I also wanted someone who had enough presence, charisma, charm, and weight to persuade Sebastian to do something that goes against his ain impulses. And in that location's something most John — simultaneously he has this kind of slick charisma and a warm humanity.

His character also voices an argument that when you become too invested in an art class's past, it becomes almost incommunicable to bring something new to information technology.
Yeah, John's character has a vision of art that I think is hard to argue with. Which is this idea that — and y'all can certainly argue with the merit of the music he plays in the film —but this idea that if art doesn't keep progressing, information technology dies. As soon an art class becomes encased in bister, then information technology stops being an fine art form.

Isn't role of the charm ofLa La Land that it does put things in this sort of amber glow? Nostalgia is broiled into the picture show.
Well, basically my own attempts at trying to residue nostalgia and modernity would exist even another reason that I liked the thought of jazz beingness a major part of the story line. I understand the temptation to romanticize jazz. And I know it'due south an art form that's faced questions nearly its relevance more than than a lot of other art forms. The same thing applies to the musical. When you tell people that you lot're going to brand a musical where people sing and trip the light fantastic and fall in love, there'south the sense that you're fundamentally going into the by. And then instead of deny that, I wanted to try to really highlight elements of the past, certain tropes that I loved in those movies and sure styles of music. The promise was to update those tropes in some way by tying them to modern Los Angeles reality, and to try and detect a residual at every moment, so that we're never completely in the historic or mod reality.

Do yous think you lot were able to find that balance in La La State?
We tried our best. Maybe I was trying to have my cake and swallow it, as well, when it comes to nostalgia for jazz and musicals. I empathise if people have the criticism that the picture show is too nostalgic, just I think it's truly okay to write a love letter of the alphabet to aspects of an art form that you love fifty-fifty if those aspects are 50 years former. Information technology's okay to reach back into those traditions. Simply it likewise behooves you to make a case every bit to why it'south all the same relevant and detect a style of making it relevant. Yous want to extend a tradition, non just repeat it. That's the goal.

Can you explain a scrap most the your approach to shooting the jazz that's played onscreen in bothWhiplash and La La Land? The editing is and so kinetic.
I thing I'd say was absolutely in mutual between La La State and Whiplash and even my very first moving picture Guy and Madeline, was trying to find a way to, for lack of a meliorate way of putting information technology, film jazz in an heady fashion. Sometimes that means emphasizing the physicality of the music, like in Whiplash, and sometimes that means emphasizing the rhythms. The editing and the camera movement both need to swing with the swing of the music.

Information technology's a very different approach to how you lot typically see jazz performances filmed.
What I did was partly motivated by was a sense that jazz gets a bad rap, especially from young people today, equally a music that's best listened to while sipping a martini or in the back of a eatery; this is idea that it'southward a very genteel music. To me, that's and so the opposite of the greatest jazz. Jazz was born as rebellious dance music cramped houses in New Orleans. Jazz was an artistic rebellion in the 'forty with the bebop players.  You retrieve of the dandy jazz drummers — Art Blakey, Buddy Rich, Chick Webb — these guys had a blowing and energy that we don't always associate with jazz anymore. So I've wanted to showcase that side of jazz in all my movies. Like I said before, you lot're ever wanting to remainder honoring the past and bringing things upward to the present. And that's a hard residue to achieve, for me or anyone.

You mentioned musicals earlier, and it does seem similar every now and then, whether it's an animated movie, or Rent, or Hamilton, something comes along to rekindle a mass appreciation of that particular musical form. But jazz hasn't had a truly pop cultural moment since fusion in the '70s. Why do you think that is?
It goes back to a argue between artistry and commercialism. At a certain betoken, jazz was enjoying pop success, only the musicians kept pushing alee, even when that meant leaving audiences behind. If you look at the history of jazz, you lot see an art form where the entire arc — something that usually takes hundreds of years for art forms to experience — happened in the course of the 20th century. Jazz is an art that went from A to Z really apace. And so once you got to the '40s and '50s you started having this group of musicians who were adamant most pushing the music alee, and that ultimately meant the terminate of its mass popularity.

Not to mention the fact you can't dance to information technology and it'south hard to sing along to.
Yep, you can't really dance to Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker. Merely you await at John Coltrane, you look at Ornette Coleman — you're talking nigh some of the greatest artists in the history of music. And they're almost certainly not populists. I think it's upwardly to individual listeners to determine how much that fact matters.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Damien Chazelle on La La Land'south Jazz Nostalgia