49 Fun Facts About La La Land

Which actor plays Bill, the restaurant boss who fires Sebastian for straying from the Christmas set list in La La Land?

J. K. Simmons sacks Sebastian for playing jazz at all; a year earlier he had won an Oscar as a teacher who torments a young jazz drummer for not playing well enough, in Chazelle's previous film.

What does Sebastian plan to call the jazz club he dreams of opening in La La Land?

Chicken on a Stick, he insists, honours Charlie Parker, who he says was nicknamed Bird for his love of chicken; Mia's verdict is that no one will come to a place with that name.

Which musician plays Keith, the bandleader who hires Sebastian for his pop-jazz band in La La Land?

John Legend had barely acted before, though he already had an Oscar for the song 'Glory'; he co-wrote and sings 'Start a Fire', the hit that pays Sebastian's bills and pulls him away from his own music.

Which two actors were attached to La La Land before its eventual stars, Gosling and Stone?

Miles Teller and Emma Watson were the original pairing: Watson left to star in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and Teller was dropped after negotiations over his fee dragged on.

Which earlier film written by Damien Chazelle was the hit that finally got La La Land financed?

Whiplash, his drama about a young jazz drummer, cost $3.3 million and won three Oscars; Chazelle wrote it only after La La Land had stalled, as an easier film to sell, and its success reopened the doors.

Who composed the score and songs of La La Land?

Justin Hurwitz met Chazelle at university, where the two first worked the idea up as a student film; he wrote the music for that film and for every feature the director made up to La La Land.

Which duo wrote the lyrics for nearly all of La La Land's songs?

Pasek and Paul came from the stage: their musical Dear Evan Hansen opened on Broadway the same month the film reached cinemas, and within half a year the pair had an Oscar for one and a Tony for the other.

Which song opens La La Land with drivers dancing on a gridlocked freeway?

Another Day of Sun was the first thing shot, on a closed ramp arcing 100 feet above the 105-110 interchange, over two days when the temperature passed 100 degrees; the designer feared someone would fall off.

Damien Chazelle said the freeway ramp curving toward downtown in La La Land's opening made him think of which classic musical?

The Wizard of Oz: when the camera pulls back to show the downtown skyline, he said, the ramp becomes the yellow brick road leading to the Emerald City; ordinary traffic can be seen passing below.

Which 1955 film do Mia and Sebastian watch together at the Rialto in La La Land?

Rebel Without a Cause comes up when Mia lands a call-back for a show she likens to it, and Sebastian offers to take her 'for research'; the print burns in the projector just as their hands touch.

Where do Mia and Sebastian share their first kiss in La La Land?

Griffith Observatory is where they drive when the film they are watching breaks down: they slip inside after hours, switch on the planetarium projector and waltz up among the stars before they kiss.

In La La Land, Mia works as a barista on the lot of which studio?

Warner Bros. is where Mia serves coffee between auditions; walking Sebastian round the backlot, she points out the window Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman looked out of in Casablanca.

In La La Land, which 1980s hit does Mia request to needle Sebastian when she finds him in a party cover band?

'I Ran', the Flock of Seagulls hit, is her revenge for his rudeness months earlier; he complains that asking a serious musician for it goes too far, and she pounces on the words 'serious musician'.

In La La Land, Mia retreats to her hometown in which state after her one-woman play flops?

Nevada: Sebastian drives to Boulder City with news of an audition and finds her house because she once told him it stood across the street from the library where she fell in love with acting.

In La La Land's 'Audition (The Fools Who Dream)', whom does Mia sing about?

Her aunt, a stage actress who once lived in Paris, is the song's heroine: she jumped into the Seine and, as Mia tells it, would have done it again. The casting directors had asked only for a story.

Five years on, La La Land's epilogue finds Mia working as what?

A film star: the epilogue opens with Mia ordering an iced coffee at the studio café where she used to serve, where every eye turns to her and the manager tries to give it to her on the house.

In La La Land's epilogue, what tells Mia the club she has wandered into is Sebastian's?

The sign she once drew hangs on the door: it reads 'Seb's', the name and lettering she sketched for him years earlier, when he was set on calling his club something else.

Which French director's musicals were the main inspiration for La La Land's style and tone?

Jacques Demy made The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which Chazelle screened for his cast and crew during rehearsals; one Lionsgate executive helped win the director over by knowing Demy's films shot by shot.

One studio wanted La La Land's jazz-playing hero turned into what?

A rock musician was Focus Features' request, along with a changed opening number and no bittersweet ending, for a version costing about $1 million; the project stalled and Chazelle set it aside.

La La Land was the third film to pair Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone; which was their first?

Crazy, Stupid, Love came first, in 2011: Stone was brought in to improvise scenes with an already-cast Gosling, and has joked that she is not sure he knew who she was; Gangster Squad followed in 2013.

Emma Stone first met Damien Chazelle about La La Land while starring on Broadway in which musical?

Cabaret had Stone playing Sally Bowles; Chazelle came to watch on a night she was full of cold medicine, which she calls her unofficial audition, and she says the run gave her the stamina for a film musical.

Which mishap from Ryan Gosling's own auditions was written into La La Land for Mia?

The casting director took a call while Gosling was crying his way through an emotional scene; he told Chazelle the story, and it went into the script as one of Mia's auditions.

Who choreographed La La Land's dance numbers?

Mandy Moore, not the singer but a choreographer from So You Think You Can Dance, drilled the two leads for months in a warehouse rehearsal space, because both had to learn to dance for the film.

La La Land's 'A Lovely Night' dance had to be filmed within what brief window each day?

The 'magic hour' at sunset gave the crew only minutes of usable light, and the six-minute number was staged as one unbroken take, so they managed just eight attempts across two evenings.

Which downtown funicular, shut since a 2013 derailment, ran for a single day so La La Land could film on it?

Angels Flight, built in 1901 to carry passengers up Bunker Hill, was out of service at the time; Chazelle's crew arranged to run it for one day's shooting, and it reopened to the public in 2017.

La La Land was framed in the extra-wide 2.55:1 shape of which 1950s screen format?

CinemaScope gave 1950s musicals their sweep, and Chazelle wanted that look for Los Angeles; the original process no longer exists, so the film was shot on 35mm stock through anamorphic lenses instead.

At which festival did La La Land have its world premiere in August 2016?

Venice opened with the film on 31 August; Chazelle, shaken by poor test screenings, kept his eyes shut for half an hour of the premiere, then heard a standing ovation, and Emma Stone left with the best actress prize.

Which awards show gave La La Land a then-record seven prizes?

The Golden Globes gave it all seven prizes it was up for, beating the six won by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and by Midnight Express; seven weeks later it lost the biggest prize of Oscar night.

With fourteen Oscar nominations, La La Land tied the record then shared by Titanic and which other film?

All About Eve set the mark of fourteen and Titanic matched it nearly half a century later; both went on to win Best Picture, the prize La La Land was handed by mistake and had to give back.

Which La La Land song won the Oscar?

City of Stars beat the film's own 'Audition (The Fools Who Dream)' in the category; it was sung live on set, not mimed, and Emma Stone says she laughed twice mid-song because she was out of tune.

Which presenters wrongly announced La La Land as Best Picture at the 2017 Oscars?

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were there to mark fifty years of Bonnie and Clyde; handed the duplicate Best Actress envelope, Beatty hesitated over the card and showed it to Dunaway, who read out the film's name.

Which film actually won Best Picture after La La Land was wrongly announced?

Moonlight's makers reached the stage only after the La La Land producers had begun their speeches; its director, Barry Jenkins, said that even in his dreams this could not be true.

Which La La Land producer took the microphone at the Oscars to say Best Picture had been wrongly announced?

Jordan Horowitz cut into his own team's celebration: 'There's a mistake… This is not a joke', he said, then took the winning card from the presenter's hand and held it up to the cameras.

Which accounting firm was responsible for the envelopes at the 89th Academy Awards?

PricewaterhouseCoopers keeps a full set of envelopes on each side of the stage, which is how a spare for the previous award reached the presenters; the firm took the blame and apologised within hours.

At 32, La La Land's Damien Chazelle became the youngest winner of which Oscar?

Best Director went to Chazelle at 32 years and 38 days, 222 days younger than Norman Taurog had been in 1931; before the night was over his film had been wrongly named Best Picture.

Where does Sebastian first sing 'City of Stars' in the film?

The song won Best Original Song at both the Golden Globes and the Oscars.

Which drama did Chazelle direct after La La Land, in 2018?

First Man, the story of Neil Armstrong, reunited him with Ryan Gosling; Chazelle saw a link between the two films, since the space programme, he said, set a goal without knowing how to reach it.

La La Land was first written as a love story set in which city, before Damien Chazelle moved west?

Boston was the setting of the first drafts, and of Chazelle's first feature, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench; that film's title turns up again in La La Land, on a fake 1930s poster on a studio wall.

In February 2023 it was announced La La Land would be adapted into what?

Producer Marc Platt and Lionsgate are behind the stage version.

What did La La Land's 10th-anniversary poster change after Ryan Gosling said the original haunted him?

The angle of his hand: on the 2016 poster Gosling tilts his raised hand flat instead of matching Emma Stone's, a choice he came to call 'La La hand'; the 2026 artwork straightens it.

Who interrupted a Telluride Q&A for his own film Sully to rave about La La Land?

Tom Hanks had seen it at a Telluride screening the day before; with Clint Eastwood on stage beside him he broke off to praise a rival studio's musical, joking that Sully's distributor would not thank him.

Which editor spent nearly a year cutting La La Land with Chazelle to get the tone right?

Tom Cross and Chazelle were hunting for the tone, and at one point cut the freeway opening number from the film altogether; it went back in once they saw a musical has to announce itself at the start.

Which instrument did Ryan Gosling spend three months practising for his role in La La Land?

The piano: Gosling had to play jazz for real, so for three months he practised in one room of a warehouse rehearsal space while Emma Stone worked on her dancing in another.

A fake Ryan Gosling accepted La La Land's prize on live TV in 2017 at which country's Goldene Kamera awards?

Germany's Goldene Kamera went to a Munich cook, Ludwig Lehner, who greeted the audience with 'Good evening, I am Ryan Gosling'; two TV comedians had invented a fake agency to book him in.

Which festival's audience-voted People's Choice Award went to La La Land in 2016?

Toronto's audiences voted it their favourite; the same prize had earlier gone to Slumdog Millionaire, The King's Speech and 12 Years a Slave, which all went on to win Best Picture, as La La Land so nearly did.

Which actor, the previous year's Best Actor winner, handed Emma Stone her La La Land Oscar?

Leonardo DiCaprio presented it; Stone said backstage that she was still holding her winner's card when a duplicate of it got her film wrongly announced as Best Picture.

Which Paul Thomas Anderson film did Damien Chazelle screen for La La Land's cast alongside Singin' in the Rain and Top Hat?

Boogie Nights, a drama about the 1970s porn business, shared the Friday-night bill with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg during rehearsals, an unlikely companion piece for a romantic musical.

At which real jazz club does Sebastian try to win Mia over to the music in La La Land?

The Lighthouse Café has presented jazz since 1949; in the film Sebastian lectures Mia there on why the music has to be seen live, and she slips out to take a call about a call-back.

What are Mia and Sebastian looking for as they dance through 'A Lovely Night' in La La Land?

Her parked car, a Prius whose key fob beeps in time with the music: the pair tap-dance along a hilltop road while insisting, in song, that the evening is wasted on the two of them.