LA LA LAND Galas

Damien Chazelle. His debut, GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH, was a loving ode to the city of New York, and to being young and in love; his follow-up feature, WHIPLASH, took audiences by storm with its intense take on a young drummer’s self-destructively ambitious pursuit of music-making. Chazelle fully embraces the big-budget glamour of the classic Hollywood musical for his new film LA LA LAND, which, like many of the best musicals ever made, is also about Hollywood itself. Ryan Gosling is a principled and penniless jazz pianist whose life intersects with Emma Stone as a would-be starlet washed up on the shores of Tinseltown rejection. As they navigate the highs and lows of the “City of Stars” (referencing one of the film’s catchiest songs), the beats of these two lonely hearts begin to sync as one.