How a rejected musical about Los Angeles became a global cinematic phenomenon
In short: Damien Chazelle’s La La Land was once dismissed as an extinct genre, with studios demanding he replace the jazz pianist lead with a rock musician. Instead, he held out, eventually creating a $526.4 million hit that captured the poetic, bittersweet reality of chasing dreams in the sprawling city of Los Angeles.
Conceived by Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz while students at Harvard University, La La Land was designed to pay tribute to the 1920s city symphony films. After moving to Los Angeles in 2010, Chazelle struggled for years to find financing. Studios were skeptical of an original contemporary musical featuring no familiar songs, and even requested that he alter the bittersweet ending and the lead character’s profession. It was only after the critical and commercial success of his 2014 film Whiplash that Summit Entertainment and Black Label Media agreed to back the project with a $30 million budget.
The film’s production was defined by its commitment to practical, old-school filmmaking techniques. Chazelle insisted on shooting on 35mm celluloid film rather than digital, utilizing Panavision anamorphic lenses to achieve a widescreen CinemaScope look. Many sequences were filmed in single, continuous takes to capture the energy of the performances. This included the opening number on the Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange, which required over 100 dancers and two days of filming on a highway ramp 100 feet in the air. The production team also secured rare access to the historic Angels Flight trolley, which had been closed since 2013.
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone were cast as the leads, bringing their own personal experiences as aspiring artists to the roles. To prepare, Gosling learned to play the piano from scratch, while Stone drew on her early struggles in Hollywood. Despite the film's success—earning a record-tying fourteen Oscar nominations and winning six—it was not without its imperfections. Gosling famously lamented his hand positioning in a key promotional still, a detail he jokingly dubbed 'La La Hand.' This minor regret was finally addressed in 2026, when a 10th-anniversary re-release featured a corrected poster, reflecting the enduring legacy of a film that remains a definitive portrait of the creative struggle.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: La La Land
- Also: Wikidata — Los Angeles · CC0
- Also: Wikidata — La La Land · CC0
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