Damien Chazelle

Damien Chazelle (born January 19, 1985, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.) is an American director and screenwriter who won numerous awards for his first two major films, Whiplash (2014) and La La Land (2016).

Chazelle was the son of university professors, and as a child he had an interest in both filmmaking and music. He attended Princeton High School in Princeton, New Jersey, and played drums in the school’s highly competitive jazz band. Chazelle then studied filmmaking in Harvard University’s Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (A.B., 2007). His debut as a filmmaker was Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009), a black-and-white expansion of a student film about a failed romance between a trumpet player and a graduate student that was filmed in New York City and Boston; it featured music written by Chazelle’s friend Justin Hurwitz (who also wrote the scores for Whiplash and La La Land) and won favourable notice at the Tribeca Film Festival.

After moving to Los Angeles, Chazelle began working as a screenwriter. He produced scripts for the horror movie The Last Exorcism Part II (2013) and the thriller Grand Piano (2013) but was unable to generate interest in a script that he had written on his own. Abandoning that effort, he began writing a screenplay based on his experience with a taskmaster music instructor when he was in high school. With veteran actor J.K. Simmons as the instructor and Johnny Simmons as the drummer, Chazelle created an 18-minute short film of a scene from his Whiplash screenplay and submitted to the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the short-film jury prize and enough financing to create the feature-length version. That film, also featuring Simmons but with Miles Teller as the drummer, was nominated for the Academy Award for best picture and won three Oscars (for best supporting actor [Simmons], film editing, and sound mixing). In addition, Chazelle received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay.

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La La Land, a charming 21st-century musical starring Emma Stone as an aspiring actress and Ryan Gosling as an ambitious jazz musician, won over critics and audiences alike and garnered numerous awards, including the BAFTA award for best film and the Golden Globe Award for best musical or comedy. It was nominated for a record-tying 14 Academy Awards and captured six. Chazelle again received a writing nomination, and he took home the prize for best director. At 32 years of age, he was the youngest-ever recipient of that award at the time of his win.

Chazelle’s next film, First Man (2018), reteamed him with Gosling, who played astronaut Neil Armstrong as he prepares for the legendary space mission that will send him to the Moon. Chazelle received critical acclaim for his character-driven approach to the story. He then turned to television, codirecting the Netflix miniseries The Eddy (2020), a musical drama set in a Paris jazz club. In 2022 Chazelle directed and wrote Babylon, a dramedy set in Hollywood during the 1920s. The lavish production featured an all-star cast that included Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt, both of whom played actors facing the industry’s transition from silent films to talkies.