Damien Chazelle Quotes

“As a drummer, you're always fighting for a level that you never quite attain.”

“As a kid, I was just writing scripts and taking whatever film classes I could in college.”

“As delicate as 'Guy and Madeline' was, it was important that 'Whiplash' come off as more of a fever dream.”

“At the upper echelon of musicians in general, I guess performers in general, you have to have this kind of live-or-die, cutthroat mentality.”

“By the end of high school, I had this fork-in-the-road moment where part of me considered going to vocational music school to really pursue it.”

“Certainly, my manager Gary Ungar was the first person to give me any attention and hustle for me. This was back in 2009.”

“I actually grew up wanting to be a filmmaker. I wanted to make movies, and music was a detour, almost.”

“I didn't feel the kind of joy every day playing drums that I thought you were supposed to feel.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I guess I'm kind of interested in that elusive search for a bond between life and work and between compassion and competitiveness. There's always something at the end you have to find to live a full life, but it's hard to find.”

“I had seen a lot of music movies that celebrated music or that showed the kind of joys from playing music, which is a big part of it of course, and not something that I would want to deny.”

“I hadn't seen that many movies that really go deep enough into the fears of playing music or the language that musicians can use to treat each other or, like, the way that you can see it dehumanize and the way that it can feel like boot camp.”

“I handle screenings and award ceremonies really badly.”

“I like a set to be a happy place, where people can feel free to experiment.”

“I love being in the editing room and playing with tempo and with the rhythm of shots.”

“I love the ending of 'The Wrestler.”

“I love the idea of thinking of cinema as not that far from music. A lot of my favourite movie makers, the way they move their cameras or the way they cut just feel very musical – even if the movies have no music in them at all.”

“I love the idea of using film language similarly to how musicians use music – combining images and sounds in a way that they create an emotional effect.”

“I remember being inspired myself when smaller films, whether it's 'Beasts' or 'Winter's Bone,' wound up in the Oscars lineup.”

“I remember when I first met Jason Reitman with the 'Whiplash' script; he quickly became a mentor figure who guided me through the process and also protected me and made sure that when it came time to actually make 'Whiplash,' I was able to make exactly the movie I wanted to make.”

“I think there is something to be said for not coddling people and not accepting good as good enough.”

“I want to do an American 'Umbrellas of Cherbourg.”

“I was a kid living in New Jersey, who – I'd wanted to make movies since I was a little kid, so that came before music for me. But I started playing drums just as a hobby, and I wasn't even really into jazz that much.”

“I was a writer for hire. I wrote to pay the bills.”

“I was always pretty decent at fast stick work or doing stuff that seems impressive that's not really; I was pretty tasteful and had good ideas musically. But I had a terrible sense of tempo, which is like being a blind painter.”

“I was in high school, and when you get to be 14, 15, you start to feel a little more like your own person so that you can assert your adulthood a little bit.”

“I was in this public high school in Princeton, and it had this topnotch jazz program – if you were a musician of any kind of caliber, your holy grail was to be in that orchestra. It was that claim to fame of the school, of the town, other than the university. But it was better than the university band.”

“I was interested in music and making movies about musicians, but my own experiences, and doing what it felt like for me to be a drummer? Nah, I wasn't interested in that.”

“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.”