2020-04-01_Total_Film



FILM

BUFF

TOTAL FILM | APRIL 2020

THE BIG SHOT

LA LA LAND’S

DUSK DANCE

H

ow do you top an opening number set on an LA freeway and

boasting 30 dancers, 60 cars and more than 100 extras? By opting

for an intimate soft-shoe shuffle between Ryan Gosling and

Emma Stone on an overlook just off Griffith Park’s Mt. Hollywood

Drive. A violet sky, the city of angels glimmering below, tapping two-tone

shoes and that yellow dress.

dance routines of the ’30s (Top Hat,

Shall We Dance).

“I’d like to make a contemporary

musical... starting with the LA we know

but slowly building to a vision of the

city as romantic metropolis – one that

is actually worthy of the dreams it

inspires,” said Chazelle. “I’d like to

make a musical about the way LA’s

peculiar rhythms can push its residents

to the edge of their emotions – be they

hope, desperation, or love... It pushes

them all the way, into song!”

Writer-director Damien Chazelle

conceptualised La La Land while at

Harvard University with composer

Justin Hurwitz. They were in an indie

pop band, Chester French, and

envisaged a Hollywood musical that

would revive MGM’s CinemaScope

extravaganzas of the ’50s (Singin’ In

The Rain, An American In Paris), Jacques

Demy’s French New Wave classics of

the ’60s (The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg,

The Young Girls Of Rochefort) and Fred

Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ one-take