Quote of the Day (Roger Rosenblatt, on How ‘Age Concentrates the Mind’)

“Age concentrates the mind. The moment you realize you will no longer do something you’ve done all your life. The moment you realize that you will now need to do something you’ve never had to do before. The moment you realize that what used to be will never be the same. Some of this could lend itself to melancholy. But there is also a bigness to such moments that allows for wonder. A sense that you can’t quite comprehend it all.”— American memoirist, essayist, and novelist Roger Rosenblatt, “The World is a Room with a Piano Waiting to be Played,” The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2026

Flashback, September 2016: Musical Throwback ‘La La Land’ Builds Premature Momentum for Oscar Season

In an effort to build industry word-of-mouth before awards season, the musical dramedy La La Land premiered to North American audiences for the first time in September 2016, at the Telluride and Toronto International Film Festivals, earning such rapturous approval that it became the film to beat for Best Picture Oscar.

The film’s promoters forgot an important lesson, however: don’t peak too soon lest naysayers pick it apart and allow competitors to overtake it. So it proved in the end the following winter, when La La Land walked off with six Oscars except the one most coveted: Best Motion Picture of the Year.

All of that seemed far away when these early audiences responded positively. At Telluride, for instance, the film was greeted with two mid-movie ovations (following the freeway and Griffith Park sequences) and another 20-second one at the end.

What elicited the affection of these and later audiences? Certainly stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, displaying the same chemistry they brought to Crazy Stupid Love and Gangster Squad, as well as a months-long pre-shooting dedication that allowed them to surmount their lack of much prior vocal and dance training.

But the film also functioned as an irresistible double love story: not just between the two attractive young people at its center, but with the city that served as the focus of their entertainment dreams.

Writer-director Damien Chazelle and cinematographers Linus Sandgren and Tom Cross might not have produced the grittiest cinematic depiction of Los Angeles, but they did produce one of the most heartbreaking: a place that forces you to choose between love and ambition. “That's L.A.,” says Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian, a jazz pianist struggling to open his own club. “They worship everything, and they value nothing."

For one reason or another, I didn’t watch La La Land when it was released. It might have stayed that way except that, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed on YouTube a clip of an upbeat early song from the film, “Someone in the Crowd,” featuring Stone’s Mia stepping out with her roommates to attend a Hollywood party where they can be seen and network. 

I was hooked, and I’m sure you would be, too, if you haven’t seen the movie already.

Neither Stone nor Gosling are professional singers or dancers, so you won’t find the pyrotechnics in a Cabaret, All That Jazz, or Chicago. But you won’t find the cynicism rampant in those Bob Fosse musicals, either. This is unapologetic, heart-on-its-sleeve romanticism, with the lovers literally soaring above ground in Griffith Observatory in the “Dancing in the Stars” scene.

Moreover, Stone and Gosling, having trained intensively for their roles (with Gosling, a neophyte on the piano, practicing for months so he could perform the jazz tunes himself with no CGI or hand double) acquit themselves marvelously. 

And Chazelle, with help from choreographer Mandy Moore, have drawn the best possible lessons from those MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, as well as the poignant French 1964 “sung-through” musical, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

What led Moonlight to overtake La La Land in the Best Picture contest?

All the advance word-of-mouth for the latter also provided opportunities for backlash, focusing on how the film seemed crafted to capitalize on Academy voters' penchant for rewarding movies about actors (most notoriously, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan); on how it was more a retro musical than a movie with original content; and how, in violation of jazz history, it depicted a white musician induced to compromise his pursuit of pure craft by an African-American tastemaker (John Legend, inexplicably playing guitar onscreen rather than his familiar piano).

On the other hand, Moonlight came to embody an underdog spirit—particularly following the November 2016 Presidential election, when the film’s entirely African-American cast (a first in the Academy’s nomination history) and its LGBTQ theme represented defiance of what Hollywood deemed Donald Trump’s reactionary politics.

I have not seen Moonlight so I can’t comment on its merits versus La La Land. But the atmosphere of fear now sweeping the entertainment industry constitutes a far different environment from what existed a decade ago, it’s possible that a different Oscar voting outcome might occur today.

I suspect that the moviegoing public would, if given a chance, vote for La La Land, in any case. Box-office grosses are never to be confused with value. 

But during their theatrical runs, La La Land grossed $504.6 million worldwide, while Moonlight pulled in a considerably more modest $65.3 million, even with the help of that Best Picture statuette from the Academy.

Quote of the Day (Cynthia Ozick, on ‘Purpose in Life’)

“To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.” — American novelist, short-story writer, and critic Cynthia Ozick, O Magazine, September 2002

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Simpsons,’ on the Ingredient Behind ‘Bart the Genius’)

[After cheating on an IQ test, Bart Simpson is assigned to a school for gifted and talented students. His father speculates on what led to this outcome and how it might be duplicated within the family.]

Homer Simpson [voice of Dan Castellaneta]: “Frosty Krusty Flakes are what got him [Bart] where he is today. It could be one of these chemicals here that makes him so smart. Lisa, maybe you should try some of these.”

Marge Simpson [voice of Julie Kavner]: “Homer!”

Homer: “I'm just saying, why not have two geniuses in the family? Sort of a spare in case Bart's brain blows up.” —The Simpsons, Season 1, Episode 2, “Bart the Genius,” original air date Jan. 14, 1990, teleplay by Jon Vitti, directed by David Silverman

Song Lyric of the Day (Dolly Parton, on the Indignity of ‘Working 9 to 5’)

“Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living
Barely getting by, it's all taking and no giving.”—American Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, actress, and philanthropist Dolly Parton (1946-2026), “9 to 5,” from her studio LP 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs (1980)
 
Last week, almost immediately after the death of Dolly Parton, ABC ran in prime time the most successful of her few movies, 9 to 5.
 
As I mulled over the lyrics of the title tune, I thought the network could have waited another week, because this 1980 farce was more appropriate for Labor Day and the memory of the star was so vivid, even overwhelming, that people won’t forget her any time soon.
 
So I thought of reproducing a small sample of her lyrics. Which of my readers hasn’t identified, at one point or another in their careers, the sentiment in these verses?
 
(The image accompanying this post, of Dolly Parton accepting the Liseberg Applause Award 2010, was created on Nov. 16, 2010, by Curtis Hilbun.)

Quote of the Day (Sally Field, on Coming From ‘A Working-Class Show Business Family’)

“A working-class show business family is the toughest, toughest job you can imagine. There is no security. You have a job one week and none for months and months and months. It’s a very grueling, tough life. It can be discouraging and humiliating and disappointing and, beyond that, just frightening because you don’t know when you will have another job or how you will live. One day we seemed to have money, and the next day they came and got everything.”—American Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress Sally Field, on growing up with a stuntman-actor (Jock Mahoney) for a stepfather and an underemployed Paramount contract actress (Margaret Field) for a mother, quoted by Ann Donahue, “Women in Hollywood Icon 2006: Sally Field,” Premiere Magazine, October 2007

There are a couple of reasons why I thought of using this quote today besides, most obviously, because of Labor Day.

After 10 years, I finally got around this past week to watch La La Land. For much of the movie, Emma Stone’s character Mia has her dreams of being an actress dashed repeatedly, in just the “discouraging and humiliating and disappointing” fashion recalled by Ms. Field. 

I also recently read a book called Hollywood Unions, edited by Kate Fortmueller and Luci Marzola. It covers numerous occupations, most like the blue-collar, less prestigious jobs in which Field’s parents struggled to make ends meet.

Unions represent an estimated 331,000 workers in the film and television industry, most of whom will experience economic uncertainty rather than the glamour of Oscar night. Even the most successful actors will be quick to say that they might be lucky to receive one call-back out of 100 auditions.

And most of the other professionals in the nation’s entertainment capital will be employed in just the kind of low-paying, insecure, even dangerous work that so many others across the nation must accept.

(The image of Sally Field that accompanies this post was taken during BookExpo America 2018 at the Javits Convention Center in New York City, on June 1, 2018, by Rhododendrites.)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. John Paul II, on ‘Emigration in Search of Work’)

“[T]he person working away from his native land, whether as a permanent emigrant or as a seasonal worker, should not be placed at a disadvantage in comparison with the other workers in that society in the matter of working rights. Emigration in search of work must in no way become an opportunity for financial or social exploitation. As regards the work relationship, the same criteria should be applied to immigrant workers as to all other workers in the society concerned. The value of work should be measured by the same standard and not according to the difference in nationality, religion or race. For even greater reason the situation of constraint in which the emigrant may find himself should not be exploited. All these circumstances should categorically give way, after special qualifications have of course been taken into consideration, to the fundamental value of work, which is bound up with the dignity of the human person. Once more the fundamental principle must be repeated: the hierarchy of values and the profound meaning of work itself require that capital should be at the service of labor and not labor at the service of capital.”—Polish-born pope St. John Paul II (1920-2005), in the encyclical Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”), issued Sept. 14, 1981