The New York Times just published an interview with director Damien Chazelle about the look and feel of his new movie La La Land . Featuring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, the film is a swoon-worthy song and dance ode to old Hollywood, modern Los Angeles, and its native dreamers.
Chazelle, who directed Oscar-winning Whiplash, set the movie in Los Angeles, shooting scenes on the Colorado Street Bridge and at the Griffith Observatory and Grand Central Market, at least from what we can tell from previews. There’s even a bombastic dance number with more than 100 dancers that was, according to Deadline, filmed over two very hot days on the 105/110 interchange. Chazelle got the freeway shut down, but he got Angels Flight—a funicular that used to ferry riders to the top of Bunker Hill and which has been closed for a few years now—up and running for another scene.
“L.A., even more so than any other American city, obscures, sometimes neglects, its own history,” Chazelle told the Times. “But that can also be its own magical thing, because it’s a city that reveals itself bit by bit, like an onion, if you take the time to explore it.”
He tells the Times that as much as possible he refrained from using digital effects and instead used “real L.A.”
The Times proclaims that the biggest star of the movie, 'may be the city itself.'
We can’t wait to see it.
- L.A. Transcendental: How ‘La La Land’ Chases the Sublime [New York Times]