Damien Chazelle has accomplished a lot in a short few year. His low-budget drama “Whiplash” made a huge splash and reinvented JK Simmons, who until then was either known as the guy from “Oz” or as J. Jonah Jameson from the better “Spider-Man” movies (and the one really, really bad one), and that opened the door to an even more ambitious and even more personal project: “La La Land.”
‘La La Land’ was Chazelle’s passion project
Just watching the Film, you can tell it’s a film Damien Chazelle has been dying to make his whole life. It oozes a love for the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals of the ‘50s, as well as romance and jazz music.
He struggled to get funding for the film because it was risky, but the risk paid off as it tied the record for most Oscar nominations with 14 and grossed over $300 million. While it failed to receive the Best Picture award (although it was announced that it had it), there was a Best Director gong with Chazelle’s name on it (literally), making the 32-year-old the youngest person ever to receive the award.
Chazelle already has his next film lined up, a biopic of astronaut Neil Armstrong, reuniting him with Ryan Gosling, who will be starring.
