Damien Chazelle

Real practice means working on stuff you're not good at. Real practice is about butting your head against the wall repeatedly until you get it right. ”

There's something very particular about the kind of rage you feel when you're alone in a practice room by yourself, unable to master a simple thing like a rudiment. ”

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. ”

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

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. ”

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. ”

There something to be said for having even unrealistic dreams. Even if the dreams don't come true - that, to me, is what's beautiful about Los Angeles. It's full of these people who have moved there to chase these dreams. ”

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

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

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