Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of La La Land. It’s another one of those movies where the critics can’t seem to find enough good things to say about it and us regular people get annoyed by the sheer amount of cringe and unrealistic romance shoved into the movie. It stars Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone. There’s quite a lot of singing. The movie follows the main actors while they essentially fall in love while chasing their dreams. What a plot line!
But even if you had heard about this Damien Chazelle-directed movie before, are you sure there’s not more things to find out about it? Of course there are! Let’s take a look at some mind-blowing facts about La La Land, that might help convince you to go watch it (or wait until it gets released on Netflix).
It holds the record for most Oscar nominations
Granted, the movie has to share this record. La La Land joins Titanic and All About Eve on the very short list of movies that scored 14 Oscar nominations. This also means it could break the record of most Oscars won by a single movie. This is currently held by Titanic, Ben-Hur and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at 11 wins. While this might seem unrealistic, The Return of the King was only nominated for 11 Oscars and won every single one.
Ryan Gosling plays all the piano parts himself
While at first the parts were recorded by a professional pianist, Ryan Gosling spent two hours a day, six days a week practicing the piano. By the time filming started, Ryan could play all the parts without needing any fancy computer help, like how Dr. Strange does his magic. John Legend, who plays in this movie and is a classically trained pianist, was apparently jealous of how quickly Ryan learned the instrument.
It has the record for most Golden Globe wins
The Golden Globes have pretty much been the best indicator of the Oscars for as long as anyone can remember. La La Land currently holds the all-time record with 7 Golden Globes to its name. That’s looking good for the Oscars! La La Land beat One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Doctor Zhivago, Love Story, The Godfather and A Star Is Born. All of these movies are considered to be classics, so La La Land certainly beat some tough competition!
The story has strong ties to Emma Stone’s life
Where La La Land is about Mia, a high school dropout moving to LA to pursue a career in acting, Emma herself is also a high school dropout that moved to LA at the age of 15 to pursue a career in acting.
The audition scene is inspired by a Ryan Gosling audition
In the movie, Mia’s emotional audition gets interrupted by the casting director to take a call. This is actually something that happened to Ryan Gosling. I hope that casting director didn’t know who Ryan was at the time! At least his mistake inspired a scene in this amazing movie.
