Damien Chazelle

ANDREW: But do you think there's a line? You know, where you discourage the next Charlie Parker from becoming Charlie Parker?FLETCHER: No. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.

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ANDREW: But do you think there's a line? You know, where you discourage the next Charlie Parker from becoming Charlie Parker?FLETCHER: No. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.

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I do truly believe that the smallest stories can wind up being the biggest because it's through the specific that a writer can best access the universal.

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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.

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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.

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I like movies that are specific. Movies that home in on a very specific subculture, a specific discipline, a specific world.

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I was always pretty decent at fast stick work or doing stuff that seems impressive that's not really; I was pretty tasteful and had good ideas musically. But I had a terrible sense of tempo, which is like being a blind painter. The conductor would just rip into me, and it lasted for years.

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I was always pretty decent at fast stick work or doing stuff that seems impressive that's not really; I was pretty tasteful and had good ideas musically. But I had a terrible sense of tempo, which is like being a blind painter.

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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.

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First time that I cried at a work of art was at a drum solo that I saw. A drummer named Winard Harper, part of the Billy Taylor Trio, gave back in - I would have been in high school - 2005 or something.

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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.

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By the end of high school, I had this fork-in-the-road moment where part of me considered going to vocational music school to really pursue it.

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If you look at 'West Side Story,' a lot of those numbers are actually pretty cutty, but the cuts are always musically motivated.

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I would break a lot of cymbals. You whack the cymbals hard enough, and they will crack in half. Drums are not actually as sturdy as they look. They're actually somewhat fragile instruments.

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It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style is very military influenced. The snare drum comes from the military and becomes the core kind of sound of jazz drums.

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Quotes by Damien Chazelle