Damien Chazelle

I'm predisposed to never be in pure celebration mode.

— Damien Chazelle

I feel like a lot of directing is casting.

— Damien Chazelle

My first movie was totally improvised.

— Damien Chazelle

I've always wanted to make movies that are fever dreams.

— Damien Chazelle

I'm a terrible procrastinator.

— Damien Chazelle

I handle screenings and award ceremonies really badly.

— Damien Chazelle

I love the ending of 'The Wrestler.'

— Damien Chazelle

I tend to latch on to things and not let go.

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

My version of a stress dream is, really, showing up on a concert stage with a drum set and not knowing the…

— Damien Chazelle

'Whiplash' was always the song I hated the most because it's a song designed to screw with drummers.

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

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…

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

I like the idea of working my way up. I don't feel impatient to immediately jump into something that could literally bring…

— Damien Chazelle

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'…

— Damien Chazelle

I find L.A. kind of romantic, actually. As a movie junkie, it's a city that was built by the movies. There's something…

— Damien Chazelle

It was only through getting interested in more out-there and avant-garde forms that the musical suddenly seemed like such a wonderful genre…

— Damien Chazelle

My hands were constantly blistered or bloody; my ears were always ringing. I tore through drumheads and drumsticks like there was no…

— Damien Chazelle

I had seen a lot of music movies that celebrated music or that showed the kind of joys from playing music, which…

— Damien Chazelle

I was in this public high school in Princeton, and it had this topnotch jazz program - if you were a musician…

— Damien Chazelle

Certainly, I've loved musicals for a while, so I did some short films in college that had musical numbers and things like…

— Damien Chazelle

It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style…

— Damien Chazelle

One interesting thing about jazz, or art in general, but jazz especially is such an individual art form in the sense that…

— Damien Chazelle

I hadn't seen that many movies that really go deep enough into the fears of playing music or the language that musicians…

— Damien Chazelle

In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation,…

— Damien Chazelle

I remember when I first met Jason Reitman with the 'Whiplash' script; he quickly became a mentor figure who guided me through…

— Damien Chazelle

I wanted to look at the mentality that can breed that sort of intensity, that kind of cutthroat, pressure-cooker feeling, especially a…

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

My dad is a big jazz fan, and that was the reason I first got into jazz.

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

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

— Damien Chazelle

Mozart was born Mozart. Charlie Parker was born Charlie Parker.

— Damien Chazelle