Damien Chazelle

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Damien Chazelle (; born January 19, 1985) is an American director, screenwriter and producer, best known for writing and directing the films Whiplash (2014) and La La Land (2016). Whiplash received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. La La Land won all seven of its Golden Globe nominations, including Best Picture - Musical or Comedy, Best Director and Best Screenplay. It also received a record-tying fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning six including Best Director, making Chazelle the youngest winner in both Best Director categories.

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Early life

Chazelle was born in Providence, Rhode Island to a Roman Catholic family. His father Bernard Chazelle, is the Eugene Higgins Professor of computer science at Princeton University, and was born in Clamart, France. His mother, Celia, is from a Canadian family, and teaches medieval history at The College of New Jersey. Chazelle was raised in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended a Hebrew school for four years due to his parents' dissatisfaction with other local schools. Chazelle has a sister, Anna, who is an actress. Their maternal grandfather, John Martin, is the son of stage actress Eileen Earle and a father who worked for Paramount Pictures in London after World War I.

Filmmaking was Chazelle's first love, but he subsequently wanted to be a musician, and struggled to make it as a jazz drummer at Princeton High School. He has said he had an intense music teacher, who was the inspiration for the character of Terence Fletcher in Chazelle's breakout film Whiplash. Unlike the film's protagonist Andrew Neiman, Chazelle stated that he knew instinctively he never had the talent to be a great musician, and after high school, pursued filmmaking again. He studied filmmaking in the Visual and Environmental Studies department at Harvard University and graduated in 2007.

At Harvard he lived in Currier House as roommates with composer and frequent collaborator Justin Hurwitz. The two were among the original members of the indie-pop group Chester French, formed during their freshman year.

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Career

Chazelle wrote and directed his debut feature, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, as part of his senior thesis project with classmate Justin Hurwitz at Harvard. The film premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2009 and received various awards on the festival circuit, before being picked up by Variance Films for limited release and opening to critical acclaim.

After graduation, Chazelle moved to Los Angeles with the ultimate goal of attracting interest to produce his musical La La Land. Chazelle worked as a "writer-for-hire" in Hollywood; among his writing credits are The Last Exorcism Part II (2013) and Grand Piano (2013). He was also brought in by J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions to re-write a draft of 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) with the intention of also directing, but Chazelle ultimately chose to direct Whiplash instead.

Chazelle initially described Whiplash as a writing reaction to being stuck on another script: "I just thought, that's not working, let me put it away and write this thing about being a jazz drummer in high school." He stated he initially did not want to show the script around, as it felt too personal, and "I put it in a drawer." Although nobody was initially interested in producing the film, his script was featured on Black List in 2012 as one of the best unmade films of that year. The project was eventually picked up by Right of Way Films and Blumhouse Productions, who suggested that Chazelle turn a portion of his script into a short film as proof-of-concept. The 18-minute short was accepted at Sundance Film Festival 2013, where it was well-received; financing was then raised for the feature film, and in 2014 it was released to an overwhelmingly positive critical reaction. Whiplash received numerous awards on the festival circuit and earned five Academy Award nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay for Chazelle, winning three.

Thanks to the success of Whiplash, Chazelle was able to attract financiers for his musical La La Land. The film opened the Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2016 and began a limited release in the United States on December 9, 2016, with a wider release on December 16, 2016. It has received rave reviews from critics and numerous awards. Chazelle was particularly praised for his work on the film and received several top honors, including a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Director, making Chazelle the youngest director to win both awards.

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Future projects

Chazelle will reunite with Gosling on First Man, a film from a screenplay by Josh Singer for Universal Pictures. The biopic is based on author James R. Hansen's work First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, written about the astronaut. It is scheduled to be released on October 12, 2018.

In early 2017, Oceanside Media optioned the rights to produce Chazelle's mystery-thriller screenplay The Claim, which made the Black List in 2010, with an expected release in 2018.

Chazelle is also set to direct the first two episodes of the Netflix musical drama television series The Eddy. The series will be written by Jack Thorne, while Grammy-winning songwriter Glen Ballard and Alan Poul are attached as executive producers.

On January 25, 2018, Apple announced that they were partnering with Chazelle for a new original television series. Chazelle will write and direct the entire first season.

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Personal life

Chazelle married producer Jasmine McGlade in 2010; they divorced in 2014. In October 2017, he and actress Olivia Hamilton, a Princeton University graduate and former McKinsey & Company consultant, announced their engagement.

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Filmography

Films

Television

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Awards and nominations

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References

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External links

• Damien Chazelle on IMDb

Source of the article : Wikipedia