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.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,’ With a Typical Executive Disclaimer of Responsibility)

J. B. Biggley [played by Rudy Vallee, on the left with Robert Morse]: “I realize that I'm the president of this company, the man that's responsible for everything that goes on here. So, I want to state, right now, that anything that happened is not my fault.”— How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), based on the novel by Shepherd Mead, adapted into a Pulitzer and Tony-winning musical with book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, movie written and directed by David Swift

For years, I’ve heard many politicians—I won’t say from which party—express their belief that government should be “run more like a business.” I wonder if the business they have in mind is J.B. Biggley’s World Wide Wicket Company?

Well, I’ll tell you: that statement of his that I’ve highlighted here is, for all intents and purposes, the continued default option for corporate executives who run into trouble, whether in the form of product or service failure, a disastrous earnings report, even fraud or misconduct. Their most common method for avoiding responsibility is to blame a predecessor.

Now that I think of it, a politician I can think of immediately has also taken this very course.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Affairs of Dobie Gillis,’ on a Subject on the Minds of Many College Males Shortly)

Advisor [played by Donald Elson]: “What subjects would you like to study?”

Dobie Gillis [played by Bobby Van]: “Well, I don't rightly know.”

Advisor: “What are you interested in?”

Dobie: “Women.” — The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), screenplay by Max Shulman, directed by Don Weis

This post is for a friend of mine (AND HE KNOWS WHO HE IS!!!) whose favorite subject was women when he entered college five decades ago—and it remains so to this day.

The Affairs of Dobie Gillis turned out to be a diverting surprise when I came across it a couple of weekends ago on TCM. I had heard of (but was way too young to watch when it originally aired) the TV sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. The show, which ran from 1959-1963, starred Dwayne Hickman as the title character and a pre-Gilligan’s Island Bob Denver as his beatnik friend, Maynard G. Krebs.

In the movie musical, Dobie was played by Bobby Van, who enjoyed a busy career on the big screen, television, and the stage without ever achieving the level of stardom that his dancing talent deserved, while his fresh-faced, funny girlfriend was played, in her ingenue stage, by Debbie Reynolds—who certainly did achieve celebrity.

I didn’t expect The Affairs of Dobie Gillis to be Singin’ in the Rain or The Band Wagon, let alone the stage and screen musical classics later brought to life by Van’s onscreen friend Bob Fosse, Cabaret and Chicago. But it transported me to a time and place in which the biggest crisis was Reynolds’ klutzy experiment in a chemistry class.

And that, during these last fevered weeks in American history, couldn’t have been more welcome.

Song Lyric of the Day (Cole Porter, on Why You Should ‘Be a Clown’)

“If you become a doctor, folks'll face you with dread,
If you become a dentist, they'll be glad when you're dead,
You'll get a bigger hand if you can stand on your head.”—American lyricist and composer Cole Porter (1891-1964), “Be a Clown,” performed by Gene Kelly and Judy Garland in the movie musical The Pirate (1948)