Damien Chazelle

At 39 years old, Damien Chazelle has this physical status:

Damien Sayre Chazelle (born January 19, 1985) is a French-American filmmaker, film director, and screenwriter best known for his films Whiplash (2014), La La Land (2016), and First Man (2018).

He received several awards for his work, including the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Director, making him the youngest person to win both awards at age 32.

Early life and education

Chazelle was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to a Catholic family. Bernard Chazelle, a Frenchman, was the Eugene Higgins Professor of computer science at Princeton University and was born in Clamart, France. Celia, his mother, is from an English-Canadian family based in Calgary, Alberta, and she teaches medieval history at The College of New Jersey.

Chazelle was born in Princeton, New Jersey, where, although Catholic, he attended a Hebrew school for four years due to his parents' dissatisfaction with other local schools. Anna, Chazelle's sister, is an actress. John Martin, the son of stage actress Eileen Earl Earle, was born in England.

Chazelle's first passion was filmmaking, but he later aspired to be a jazz drummer at Princeton High School and failed to make it as a jazz drummer. He has claimed that he had an intense music tutor in the Princeton High School Studio Band, who was influenced by Terence Fletcher's character in Chazelle's breakout film Whiplash. Chazelle, unlike film's protagonist Andrew Neiman, said he knew instinctively that he did not have the talent to be a great drummer and started filmmaking again after high school. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University's Visual and Environmental Studies department, where he graduated in 2007.

He lived in Currier House with composer and frequent collaborator Justin Hurwitz while still at Harvard. The two were among the first members of Chester French, an indie-pop band that formed during their freshman year.

Personal life

Chazelle married producer Jasmine McGlade in 2010; the pair divorced in 2014. The couple married September 22, 2018, Chazelle Hamilton, a Princeton University grad and former McKinsey & Company consultant, revealed their engagement in October 2017. They have a son who was born in November 2019.

Chazelle is a natural French speaker, and he speaks in French fluently.

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Career

Chazelle produced and directed his debut film, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, as part of his senior thesis research with classmate Justin Hurwitz at Harvard. The film premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2009 and received several accolades on the festival circuit before being picked up by Variance Films for limited release and debut to critical acclaim.

Chazelle left Los Angeles after graduation with the express intention of attracting attention to produce his La La Land. Chazelle worked in Hollywood as a "writer-for-hire"; among his writing credits were The Last Exorcism Part II (2013) and Grand Piano (2013). He was also brought into by J. J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions to re-write a draft of 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) with the intention of also directing, but Chazelle eventually decided to direct Whiplash instead.

Chazelle's first reaction to being stuck on another script was Whiplash: "I just thought, that's not working, let's not worry about being a jazz drummer in high school." He said he didn't want to read the script around because it was too personal, and that "I put it in a drawer." Although no one was initially involved in making the film, his script was included on Black List in 2012 as one of the year's best unmade films. Right of Way Films and Blumhouse Productions were eventually hired on the project, who recommended that Chazelle convert a portion of his script into a short film as proof-of-concept. The 18-minute short was accepted at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, where it had been well-received; funding was then increased for the feature film, and it was broadcast with largely positive critical response in 2014. Whiplash received five Oscar nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay for Chazelle, winning three of them, among others on the festival circuit.

Chazelle's musical La La Land attracted financiers thanks to his La La Land's success. On August 31, 2016, the film opened the Venice International Film Festival and launched a limited release in the United States, with a wider opening on December 16, 2016. Critics and many accolades have lauded the book. Chazelle was lauded for his work on the film and was given numerous top accolades, including a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Director, making Chazelle the youngest director to win both award at age 32.

Chazelle and Gosling were reunited on the film First Man (2018) for Universal Pictures. The biopic is based on author James R. Hansen's book First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, which was based on author James R. Hansen's biography of the astronaut. "Chazelle orchestrates a dashingly original mood of adventure drenched in anxiety," the film's writer Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote.

The Eddy, a Netflix musical drama television miniseries that premiered in May 2020, was directed by Chazelle. Jack Thorne is the author of the book, with Grammy-winning songwriter Glen Ballard and Alan Poul as executive producers. The series is set in Paris and consists of eight episodes.

Variety announced on July 15, 2019 that his next film, Babylon, a 1920s Hollywood blockbuster, was set to be released in 2021. Chazelle was considering Emma Stone to appear; Brad Pitt has also been considered to appear; Babylon would have a limited release on December 25, 2022, before expanding into wide release on January 6, 2023, according to The Hollywood Reporter on November 11, 2019. Li Jun Li was cast as Anna May Wong, and Margot Robbie was in talks to replace Stone as Janelle May Wong on December 3, 2020. Apple TV+ had granted the director a direct-to-series order for an untitled drama series to be made for the streaming service in 2018, but no further details had been released as of yet.

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