Damien Chazelle Quotes
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My dad is a big jazz fan, and that was the reason I first got into jazz.
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I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him.
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I tend to latch on to things and not let go.
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There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out of tune, or stopping and starting me for hours in front of the band as they watched.
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I'm predisposed to never be in pure celebration mode.
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I love being in the editing room and playing with tempo and with the rhythm of shots.
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My motivation for being a good drummer was born out of fear, which, in a way, seems so antithetical to what art should be.
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As delicate as 'Guy and Madeline' was, it was important that 'Whiplash' come off as more of a fever dream.
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Certainly, grades only matter so much when you're in Hollywood. But I became an utterly motivated, devoted, committed student. I was a good student because I was convinced that it would somehow help me in my quest to become a filmmaker.
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I remember being inspired myself when smaller films, whether it's 'Beasts' or 'Winter's Bone,' wound up in the Oscars lineup.
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There are no large-scale original musicals being made right now. They're all Broadway adaptations and jukebox musicals or catalog musicals, and they just don't interest me as much.
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I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him. It was his face. It was whether or not he'd approve of my playing.
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My hands were constantly blistered or bloody; my ears were always ringing. I tore through drumheads and drumsticks like there was no tomorrow.
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I'm too self-serious for a comedy.
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I don't think of 'Macbeth' as the villain. I don't think of 'King Lear' as the villain. I don't think of 'Hamlet' as the villain. I don't think of 'Travis Bickle' as the villain.
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It's a little difficult when something goes from being an utter obsession - a thing where your skill defines you as a person - to it just being a thing you occasionally do.
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I want to do an American 'Umbrellas of Cherbourg.'
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I never desperately wanted to be a jazz drummer. If anything, I was motivated a lot by fear. Fear of the conductor, fear of the future.
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I would break a lot of cymbals. You whack the cymbals hard enough, and they will crack in half. Drums are not actually as sturdy as they look. They're actually somewhat fragile instruments.
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I remember moving out to L.A. straight after college and just starting to try to write scripts and trying to get stuff off the ground.
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If you look at 'West Side Story,' a lot of those numbers are actually pretty cutty, but the cuts are always musically motivated.
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Certainly, my manager Gary Ungar was the first person to give me any attention and hustle for me. This was back in 2009.
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One interesting thing about jazz, or art in general, but jazz especially is such an individual art form in the sense that improvisation is such a big part of it, so it feels like it should be less soldiers in an army and more like free spirits melding. And yet, big band jazz has a real military side to it.
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I actually grew up wanting to be a filmmaker. I wanted to make movies, and music was a detour, almost.