lalaWritten and directed by: Damien Chazelle
Original Music by: Jason Hurwitz
Lyrics by: Benj Pasek and Justin Paul
Choreographed by: Mandy Moore

Genre: Buddy Love

LA LA LAND is an extremely rare breed of film in the current mainstream marketplace: a live action break-into-song musical love story with original songs written directly for the screen. These kinds of films, popular in Hollywood’s heyday of the 1950s, went out of fashion soon thereafter. Break-into-song musicals continue to be successful in the realm of the animated film but not in live action where conventional wisdom dictates that contemporary audiences will no longer accept songs sung directly to the audience as a kind of narration or inner monologue. This technique is thought to be hopelessly outdated, at least when it’s not already vetted by Broadway audiences (Rent, Les Miserables), but even then results are often mixed.

LA LA LAND achieves a nearly impossible feat by showing that when executed with ingenuity, passion and panache, this form will not only be accepted by audiences but they will embrace it with an open heart. The film was a gargantuan leap of faith on the part of everyone involved in bringing it to the screen (greater than the leap required to get any film made!), but that seems fitting since the “leap of faith” is what this movie is all about.

Great films are usually great right from the beginning and LA LA LAND is no exception. After seeing the film, most people come away remembering the opening number as that part of the movie where people dance on top of their cars and roller kaufen scooters in freeway traffic, and while watching it, this may not seem particularly relevant to the story to come: the love story between the central characters Mia (Emma Stone) and Seb (Ryan Gosling). After all, those two are not seen in the opening number.

But if one digs deeper, one finds that the opening number is a kind of overture (another old-fashioned technique rarely seen in contemporary films) where song and dance are used to foreshadow the story to come. According to Blake Snyder, the opening of a film (aka the “Opening Image”) should “set the tone, mood and style of the movie…” Part and parcel with “tone and style” is this film’s relatively unique identity as a “break-into-song” musical where characters sing their feelings to the audience without irony or self-mockery. This has to be communicated as quickly as possible, and LLL proclaims itself as such in 30 seconds.

Another thing LLL is trying to establish is a particular energy, an infectious urgency, that celebrates the break-into-song form itself but also the pursuit of the arts in general. This movie is about artists (actors and musicians, writers and filmmakers) pursuing their dreams here in “La La Land.” The mood and tone is celebratory. The filmmakers are not casting a cynical eye on the proceedings, but glorifying it — inviting us to their party. That intention, that point of view (that “tone”) is part of what we get in the opening number and it grows directly from its Save the Cat!® genre identity, “Buddy Love.” Yes, this is a love story on almost every level imaginable, not just between Mia and Seb, but between fellow artists and perhaps most of all, the filmmakers to their subject. It’s all here in the first song: “Another Day of Sun.”

Opening Image / Story-Specific Problem

Panning off a blue sky we reveal cars stuck in traffic. And not just any traffic, but the most horrendous traffic imaginable: standstill traffic high upon an overpass during a heat wave. To any Los Angeleno, this is instantly recognizable as a universal, ubiquitous and “primal” problem. Stasis = Death every day here in La La Land, uniting us bumper-to-bumper where we separate ourselves with our music and our cell phones — which is precisely what we see in the opening frames. Despite this, LLL does not erupt in road rage as one might expect. No, it’s the exact opposite — it combusts in celebratory communion.

This is how it starts: the camera settles on the lead character of the opening number, a character I’ll call the Brunette in the Yellow Dress (“BYD”), who is singing to herself. Is she singing along with the radio? Is she improvising? We don’t know we’re in a break-into-song musical until she hops out of her car and starts dancing along to the lyrics:

I think about that day
I left him at a Greyhound Station west of Santa Fe
We were seventeen, but he was sweet and it was true
Still I did what I had to do
‘Cuz I just knew

Blake said that the Opening Image should start with a “before” snapshot of the main character. The main character of the opening song is the BYD and she starts with a memory of “life before” she came to La La Land. In the song, she elaborates:

Summer Sunday nights
We’d sink into our seats
Right as they dimmed out all the lights
The Technicolor world made out of music and machine
It called me to be on that screen
And live inside its sheen

This is the universal actor’s story — everybody who pursues this calling has a similar tale to tell, which includes a “Catalytic Moment” when you are “called” and you “just knew.” The BYD is a symbol for all actress/actors called to La La Land. She is primal and archetypal. The next verse provides more universal specifics:

Without a nickel to my name
Hopped a bus, here I came
Could be brave or just insane
We’ll have to see
‘Cuz maybe in that sleepy town
He’ll sit one day, the lights are down
He’ll see my face and think of how he used to know me

When she leaps out of her car and starts dancing between traffic lanes there is no protest from the other drivers, no mocking and no hazing. Instead, a strange miracle (only found in musicals) happens: they jump out of their cars and join her! A “production number” begins uniting these characters in the story of the song, a story they all seem to share, exemplified by the uptempo chorus:

Behind these hills I’m reaching for the heights
And chasing all the lights that shine
And when they let you down
You’ll get up off the ground
As morning rolls around
And it’s another day of sun

On the literal level, “another day of sun” simply describes the mundane fact that Los Angeles routinely has over 300 days of sunshine a year, but like most aspects of this song there is a deeper layer, an essential metaphor: another day of sun is another day of hope, and another day of faith required by the artist in the face of omnipresent opposition — those who will inevitably “let you down.” This song is a mantra for every artist in La La Land and every artist everywhere. It’s the universal lesson the artist must relearn every single day in order to find the courage to create anything.

Jumping ahead to later in the film, when Mia experiences her “All Is Lost / Dark Night of the Soul” moment, her problem is the exact inverse of this song: she experiences a crisis of faith in herself and gives up. Seb persuades her to try again and give her dream one more shot, which she does. So this song — the very title itself — is LLL‘s Theme Stated. The sun, by the way, is also an inexhaustible resource, much like optimism, if one only chooses it. Attitude is everything.

B Story

Though everyone on this freeway overpass seems to be involved in the song, there are only two principal soloists: the BYD and a man in black slacks, white button-down shirt and thin tie (“MBS”). Whereas the BYD sings about her dream as an actress, the MBS sings about his calling as a musician:

I hear them everyday
The rhythms in the canyons that will never fade away
The ballads in the ballrooms left by those who came before
They say we got to want it more
So I bang on every door

He, too, is archetypal. His identity as a musician is underscored when he opens the back of a truck to reveal a jazz ensemble playing along with the song that escalates this ebullient celebration of artists to wonderfully absurd levels (and injects another layer of musical energy). Later, once the story proper begins, we discover that Mia is an aspiring actress and Seb is an aspiring jazz musician, so looking back it seems clear that these two soloists, with their respective song lyrics in addition to their costumes, are intended to be more than archetypes — they specifically represent Mia and Seb.

Very few people will remember this opening scene, let alone what the principal soloists were wearing, when Mia and Seb dance their duet on the Mulholland curve at sunset, but these costumes are repeated exactly during the song “A Lovely Night” when Mia and Seb begin falling in love: yes, Mia is wearing a yellow dress and Seb is wearing black slacks, a white-button down shirt and thin dark tie (more or less his uniform when he’s performing). This is an intentional association that is almost subliminal in its subtlety, employed quite consciously by the filmmakers. Seb is Mia’s “B Story” – the person through whom she will learn her spiritual lesson of finding “Another Day of Sun” in her heart one more time after she gives up, and he is present here in the opening number in the guise of the MBS.

Another clue to decoding the filmmaker’s intention that the MBS symbolizes Seb is that when he opens the truck to reveal the jazz ensemble, the truck is a deep marine blue inside and out. This is a very unusual color for a truck, and one could interpret this in a number of ways, including a means to communicate how La La Land at this moment is a Technicolor world of primary colors (there are a lot of reds, greens, yellow and golds in the car color and wardrobe).

I’m sure that’s part of the layering here because the kind of musical LLL is most often referencing are the musicals from the 1950s which were almost all shot in Technicolor, often in Cinemascope (like this film!), and bursting with the primary color spectrum. As for the blueness of the blue truck, later we discover that Seb’s ambition is to own a jazz club and the one he wants, which we see when he shows it to Mia, is this exact blue color on the outside (it’s also a big, square box in shape). Later still, once he achieves that ambition, and we see the club on the inside (in a pivotal scene during the Finale), it is also the exact color blue as the blue of the inside of this truck.

Again, this is not accidental; it is a conscious choice by the filmmakers to use set color, action and choreography to foreshadow essential story elements relating to the main characters. Not only is the B Story foreshadowed (Seb himself) by the MBS, but also Seb’s dream (his nightclub) by the truck with the musicians. This song carries a heck of a lot of story freight in its payload! Back to the lyrics:

And even when the answer’s no
Or when my money’s running low
The disc and mic and neon glow are all I need
And some day as I sing the song
A small-town kid will come along
That’ll be the thing to push him on and he’ll go

These lines overflow with details of the artist’s plight, shared by the actor and musician alike (and anyone pursuing an artistic dream in Hollywood): the inherent opposition (the word “no!”), the costs of trying to make it (“money running low”), but also the self-sustaining joy of creation (“all I need”) and how that may achieve the goal of all art, which is to in some way inspire others (“that’ll be the thing to push him on and he’ll go”). The verse ends on a literal high note, both musically and emotionally.

From this point, the song erupts with energy and intensity on every level, expanding its theme of uniting artist/performers, which now include skateboarders, hula-hoopers, BMX bicyclists and acrobatic dancers (this is LA – they’re all here!) in a multi-ethnic “lala”-paloooza. Then the camera itself joins the fun and becomes another dancer as it moves and soars with the brassy instrumental and cranes upward to show everyone singing the final chorus of the song, leaping and cavorting upon their car tops in perfect synchronization: Another Day in the Sun – Another Day in the Sun – Another Day in the Sun! I use the word “fun” intentionally here because it points to another STC! structure step on full display in this opening number:

Fun and Games / The Promise of the Premise

Blake said the “Fun and Games” beat of the movie is the core and essence of the movie’s poster. It’s where we aren’t as concerned with the forward progress of the story as we are concerned with having “fun.” The Fun and Games section answers the question: Why did I come to see this movie? What about this poster, this movie idea, this premise, is cool? This opening song is the distilled essence of the Fun and Games provided by LLL start to finish — it exemplifies the breathless, playful and exuberant spirit of this story of aspiring artists in present day Los Angeles through the prism of the classical break-into-song musical, rife with references, allusions and associations to that legacy but also to itself. That is the promise of the premise of LA LA LAND, that is its Fun and Games, and it never disappoints.

It is an astonishing achievement. I suggest there’s yet one more STC! structure step implicitly present: Break into Two. Blake says that Break into Two is where we leave the “old world,” the “Thesis Statement,” and enter the world of Antithesis — the upside-down world of opposition. When the BYD sings of her life back in Santa Fe, before she “just knew,” that is the universal world of “Before” shared by everyone who makes it to the universal upside-down world of La La Land (showbiz). This backstory (and Act Break) is shared by everyone dancing on that freeway.

As required by a love story, Mia and Seb will each enter a new upside-down world of relationship once they fall in love with each other, part of the particulars of the macrocosmic story that is to come, but for now they, along with everyone else present here, not only share the same story specific problem (the traffic jam that is in fact also shared by Mia and Seb as we immediately discover once the song ends), but also share the same world of Antithesis (again, showbiz — and traffic!) here under the sunny skies of Los Angeles in this ecstatic explosion of Synthesis (singing and dancing together) — this “shared dream” that begins when the BYD jumps out of her car and ends with everyone returning to their cars and their isolation and the world of naturalness, i.e., non-stylized break-into-song when the music suddenly dies out and the ambient sound of freeway traffic returns.

Yes, the whole of the opening number could have been happening exclusively inside the mind of the BYD, or the MBS, or Seb or Mia herself — long after it debuted inside the mind of writer/director Damien Chazelle. The entire thing is an audacious expression of the leap of faith required by love and art.

One final note: given how this story resolves in its Final Image, to begin with this particular Opening Image, this rousingly upbeat and energetic song and dance that unites artists with each other and their calling, strikes me as the perfect contrasting bookend. I’m sure the filmmakers considered this, as well, when they opted to begin the story here.

This film has its critics, but when people criticize the opening production number as irrelevant to the story, I profoundly disagree. Rarely do opening scenes come this densely layered. On a purely story level, this opening scene accomplishes what few films ever attempt: it provides a glimpse of seven of Blake Snyder’s 15 beats — the Opening Image, Theme Stated, Set-Up, Catalyst, Break into Two, B Story, and Fun and Games/Promise of the Premise — in a vibrant four minute and forty-one second prologue of song and dance car culture spectacle.

Did I say astonishing? More like miraculous. And that fits neatly inside the genre, too. Love stories are always little miracles, after all — in movies as in life. And if we dare take the leap with them, then we too just might dance among the stars.