La La Land is about to hit a big milestone. The almost-Best Picture winner turns ten this year, and to celebrate, it has just returned to theaters. Nowadays, the movie musical is thought of as a modern classic. But I just learned that when it first came across one producer’s desk, he had very low expectations for it.
CinemaBlend attended the La La Land 10th anniversary event at Los Angeles’s very own Griffith Observatory. There, producer Fred Berger reflected on the early days of the project. As he shared:
The funny thing about it is, it's [been] 10 years, which is surreal. I can't believe it, because it took almost as many years to actually bring it to the theater. So, that means that we're officially old. And, part of why it took so long is because it was one of the worst pitches we've ever heard. ‘An original musical love letter to LA about a jazz musician and actress falling in love, and don't end up together.' One of the hardest parts was ‘love letter to LA’, because everyone wants a love letter to Paris or London or New York, but LA is the city you fall in love with a bit more gradually.
La La Land’s writer/director Damien Chazelle actually wrote the screenplay for the genre-bending movie musical back in 2010. But for years he had no luck getting it greenlit. He linked up with Fred Berger years before it was made, but the studios initially wouldn't finance it unless he made a lot of changes. For example, they asked him to change Ryan Gosling’s character to be a rock musician, and for the couple to get together at the end, but Chazelle wouldn’t do it.
Ultimately, the filmmaker decided to make Whiplash first since it was thought of as a more commercially viable idea. As Berger added:
I think part of why this movie exists is because we were young, naive kids who didn't know better, and we had come from the East Coast and fallen in love in LA gradually. As the city reveals itself to you, you find your community.
From Berger’s perspective, Chazelle’s idea was “one of the worst pitches”, and there are a few reasons why. For one, it romanticizes a place people don’t often romanticize. Secondly, it’s about a couple who break up, and thirdly, it’s about a jazz musician. As the producer added, a cherry on top of the bad pitch was Chazelle saying it was “non-negotiable” that his college roommate, Justin Hurwitz, do all the music.
Thankfully, they ultimately took a chance on it, because it’s one of my favorite films, and one of the most critically-acclaimed movies in recent years. And it brought back the Old Hollywood musical with a modern twist we really haven’t seen much of in the 21st century. Berger also said this:
The traffic sequence at the beginning is about saying not how beautiful the city is. It's, ‘Hey, we get it’, it's a lot of self-absorbed people in a lot of traffic in a city with no seasons. You really wanna make it, and hear ‘no’ every day. We're in on the joke, but by the end of the movie, through Ryan and Emma and their journey, hopefully you fall in love with the city and all its beautiful places.
La La Land has since become a tour of Los Angeles for audiences, and fans use it as inspiration when they visit the California city. Hermosa Beach’s Lighthouse Cafe specifically has become a famous place thanks to the movie. It also brought out some of the best performances from Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.
At the anniversary event, Lionsgate also unveiled an updated version of the poster that fixes an aspect of it that “haunts” star Ryan Gosling. So, it's clear they're all acknowledging the bumpy yet beautiful journey that led to the making of this classic movie.
You can watch La La Land in theaters now – alongside a host of 2026 movies and anniversary re-releases like The Return of the King!
