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" 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. "

Damien Chazelle

Movies

Music

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" People like Art Blakey and Buddy Rich, you look at them playing music, and it's just like looking at a heavy metal drummer. I mean, they're playing with the same amount of ferocity. It's not to say all jazz is like that. "

" The end result of my personal story is that I became a really good drummer, and I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't have without this really tough conductor and this really cutthroat hostile environment I was in. "

" 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. "

" It's easy to show terrible people's behavior on screen, and we all just kind of nod and go, 'Isn't that terrible.' It's more interesting when you can show terrible behavior in the interest of something good. "

" If you look at 'West Side Story,' a lot of those numbers are actually pretty cutty, but the cuts are always musically motivated. "

" I guess art itself is insane. Its actual function is rarely clear, and yet people give their hearts and souls and lives to it, and have for all of history. "

" 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. "

" There are a lot of musicians in my life. But movies came first for me. That was my original passion. "

" It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style is very military influenced. The snare drum comes from the military and becomes the core kind of sound of jazz drums. "

" I was a jazz drummer, and it was my life for a while: what I lived and breathed every day. "

" If you're on the varsity team, the responsibilities are a lot bigger and there's more stress, but you also walk around feeling probably like you can hold your head high. "

" 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. "

" Nothing is guaranteed to last, so you should just enjoy it as it happens. "

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

" If you're an artist, you want to draw from real life; you want to draw from experiences, emotion, and it's something that a lot of musicians juggle with. I've always found it so fascinating. "

" The greatest thing has been that projects that were pipe dreams before 'Whiplash' are now feeling more realistic. "

Damien Chazelle

Now

Greatest

" My motivation for being a good drummer was born out of fear, which, in a way, seems so antithetical to what art should be. "

" The go-to reflex all over Hollywood is still likeability. I've always had a problem with it because I think I have a weird barometer in the sense that some of the characters I've cared about the most in movies are characters that are often thought of as despicable. "

" I think, especially living in L.A., it's very easy to get wrapped up in weekend announcements and the trades and the whole social life of the city, and to get divorced from what actually matters. "

" When you're trying to paint a portrait of a very specific world, you're trying to show what makes the world different. So, sometimes it means exaggerating certain kind of aspects, but I don't think it's that important or it's that much of an issue as long as you get an emotional truth across. "

" 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. "

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