Hollywood actor Tom Hanks interrupted the Q/A session of his upcoming drama Sully at the Telluride Film Festival, and began to heap praise Damian Chazelle’s La La Land. “I like to think we approach movies the same way we approach being members of the audience in that you just want to see something you have never seen before. It’s funny,” he told the audience, before asking: “Who saw La La Land yesterday?”
Met with applause, Hanks continued: “When you see something that is brand new, that you can’t imagine, and you think ‘well thank God this landed’, because I think a movie like La La Land would be anathema to studios. Number one, it is a musical and no one knows the songs.”
La La Land, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, has an original screenplay written by Damian Chazelle. The movie comes at a time when superhero films and sequels seem to have a strangle hold over Hollywood. This impressed Hanks, who said, “This is not a movie that falls into some sort of trend. I think it is going to be a test of the broader national audience, because it has none of the things that major studios want. Pre-Awareness is a big thing they want, which is why a lot of remakes are going on. (La La) is not a sequel, nobody knows who the characters are…But if the audience doesn’t go and embrace something as wonderful as this then we are all doomed,” he added.
Recommended
Incidentally, Hanks’ praise for the Chazelle’s film was a way of creating awareness about the filmmaker’s struggle over arranging finances for the project. Chazelle had reportedly had the story of La La Land in mind for years but shelved it, instead writing Whiplash, a less risky investment, in order to get the kind of calling card he needed for his dream musical. Whiplash went on to get nominated in five categories in the 87 Academy Awards, winning three of them including Best Sound Mixing. Chazelle’s La La Land features Ryan Gosling and Emma Watson, and is set to follow the love story of a jazz singer and a struggling actress.
Meanwhile, Tom Hank’s film Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood, is based on the true story of a US Airways flight captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger. Sullenberger had successfully executed an emergency water landing on the Hudson River in 2009. While the real Sully faced little criticism for the emergency landing, the film will explore whether Sully was indeed a hero who saved the lives of 155 people on board.
The film, produced by Warner Bros, is slated to release on 9 September.
Feature Image Credits: Variety.com