Trailer
Plot summary
Mia Dolan auditions for parts and serves coffee to movie stars at a shop on the Warner Bros. lot. Sebastian Wilder plays piano in bars and at cocktail parties, and he dreams of a jazz club of his own. Told to stick to Christmas songs at a restaurant engagement, he improvises instead and is dismissed; Mia, passing by, hears him. Months later they run into each other at a party where he plays in a cover band.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about La La Land (2016)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Miles Teller and Emma Watson were originally slated to star in the leading roles; Watson dropped out to honor her commitments to Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast remake and Teller exited via long contract negotiations, while Gosling had turned down the Beast role in favor of La La Land.
- With the script at Focus Features on a budget of around $1 million, the studio demanded the male lead change from a jazz pianist to a rock musician, the complicated opening number be altered and the bittersweet ending be dropped; Chazelle refused and put the project on hold.
- Presenter Faye Dunaway incorrectly announced that La La Land had won Best Picture, reading from a card that was actually a duplicate of the Best Actress card for Emma Stone; it took the show's producers more than two minutes, during which nearly three speeches were made, to fix the mistake.
- German comedians Joko Winterscheidt and Klaas Heufer-Umlauf arranged for a Ryan Gosling impersonator to be awarded the "Best International Film" prize for La La Land; broadcaster ZDF then asked for the trophy back, saying it would be given to the real Ryan Gosling, and the incident became known as "GoslingGate".
- The now-iconic six-minute-long "A Lovely Night" scene, in which the two search for the parked car, had to be completed during the brief "magic hour" moment at sunset, and it took eight takes and two days to shoot.
- The opening freeway number was originally planned for a stretch of ground-level highway until Chazelle decided to shoot it on the 105-110 interchange, which arcs 100 ft in the air; production designer David Wasco said, "I thought somebody was going to fall off and get killed."
- The production secured permission to use the Angels Flight funicular, built in 1901, for a day; the railway had been closed in 2013 after a derailment, and attempts to repair and re-open it had come to nothing.
- During rehearsals Gosling practiced piano in one room while Stone worked with Moore in another; Gosling, with no previous experience, had to learn how to play the piano for real, and no hand models were used.
