Damien Chazelle

It's interesting when you wind up distilling all your ambitions and your goals and dreams into one single person. It's giving that person a lot of power. ”

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

I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him. It was his face. It was whether or not he'd approve of my playing. ”

I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him. ”

I'm too self-serious for a comedy. ”

I like the idea of working my way up. I don't feel impatient to immediately jump into something that could literally bring down a studio if I don't do it well. ”

I love the idea of thinking of cinema as not that far from music. A lot of my favourite movie makers, the way they move their cameras or the way they cut just feel very musical - even if the movies have no music in them at all. ”

I had seen a lot of music movies that celebrated music or that showed the kind of joys from playing music, which is a big part of it of course, and not something that I would want to deny. ”

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

One interesting thing about jazz, or art in general, but jazz especially is such an individual art form in the sense that improvisation is such a big part of it, so it feels like it should be less soldiers in an army and more like free spirits melding. And yet, big band jazz has a real military side to it. ”