Cakebug Tranch

I'm now imagining a version of La La Land where Mia is walking past that restaurant and hears piano music being played, and walks in to see a mid-thirties version of I want to see THAT love story.

With all this action, I started to think that at 12 pages this was some big, impressive thread that was starting to take on historic standards. Then I went and looked up our High School Musical thread. 32 pages! http://forum.earwolf.com/topic/44961-musical-mondays-week-10-high-school-musical-1-2maybe-3/page__hl__%2Bhigh+%2Bschool+%2Bmusical__fromsearch__1 Good lord, we're monsters.

Sorry, I forgot the lingua franca in this forum is gifs.

THERE WAS A WINKY FACE THERE TAYLOR FFS ;)

But I'm not preventing anyone from processing those opinions. I'm just making observations about the other side of it.

Yep, mostly from me, because I was starting to get irked about the Seb-bashing when Mia's no prize, either. I am mostly just trying to unpack a lot of these moments from multiple angles, before this turned into the crucifixion of Sebastian thread. I like both of these characters plenty, but he's been taking a pounding, so I thought I would look at her with a little more scrutiny. In their end, they're both horrible garbage people.

But she's very clearly positioned as being a 'prestige film' type of actress. From the way she's put together, Mia hasn't been the voice of a dog in Marmaduke. She did the experimental film in Paris and aside from the second poster (what was on that? anyone remember?) we don't know. She might have done a bunch but like everyone keeps saying, they don't show us so it doesn't exist. Heck, I'm surprised Damian Chazelle didn't have her dragging an Oscar around in her purse.

Yeah, agreed. She's walking around like she's Judi Dench or someone, but really she can't have been in any more than a handful of films in five years. She's walking with an affected gravitas that seems unearned.

Still doesn't quite answer how they went from 'I will always love you' to 'oh right, that guy I used to know years ago'. They left on cordial terms, it seems astonishing to me that they wouldn't stay in touch. Maybe an email saying 'congrats on your new movie role, I thought you'd be happy to hear I finally opened my club, and by the way I will be using your intellectual property for my logo'?

Yeah, I would have been much happier at the end if she wasn't this superstar, but was a modestly rising actress, finally living her dream. This gives us an all-or-nothing take, in an unfeasibly short window. And on what date with Mia and Seb lose touch? Is there no Facebook in this fantasy world? How could she not know he's started his club unless they are no longer on speaking terms (even though the last thing we hear them say is that they will always love each other)?

Or, maybe Seb's request that she comes on the road with him was a cry for help? He tells her this could all take months or years, but he doesn't seem thrilled about it. Maybe John Legend's fiancee is on tour with them and Seb is thinking "hey, maybe that would stop me feeling so empty all these weeks on the road..." And Mia calls Seb right before the ill-fated dinner party saying 'I don't know what city you're in now... Boston?'. If his schedule is that he's supposed to be all the way at the other end of the country, what happened to allow him to bust all the way back to LA for a single dinner before heading to Idaho? I can't get past the fact that he's made a huge effort (likely at considerable cost, maybe he missed a show, maybe he got an unscheduled day off and the only person he wanted to see was Mia, so he spent more time on an airplane to get to her than he would have with her in person), and one poorly placed question makes him the bad guy? That's just not fair.

No, he doesn't say 'blow it off', he says 'you can do that there', which she could. Taylor's right about all the legwork she'd need to do in the run-up, and i already said he didn't phrase it correctly, but I don't waver from my conviction that his intentions were good.

But I think if she'd been working, we'd know about it. There is no mention of small roles or opportunities, we never see her in classes or at the gym, we see this fantasy version of life where you can just prettily swan around LA and eventually you'll get to be a superstar in Paris. The reality of the grind isn't part of the story he wanted to tell because it's inconvenient and ugly. She has a barista's job but lives in a huge apartment, drives a Prius, doesn't seem to come from wealth... She might get rejected a bunch, but nearly all of her audition bits are terrible (the only good one she does is the one that gets interrupted by the assistant). I just never get the feeling she's earned her stardom. She's fallen backwards into success and acts like she's entitled to it the entire time. Six years of not getting cast? I can hear a legion of hard-working people in LA saying 'boo-hoo' in chorus.

But he just came home from tour just to surprise her and to suggest she comes with him! Surely she doesn't think that this is sustainable with her being unemployed in LA and waiting for the phone to ring? I don't buy this at all.

Yeah, but he's not wrong about 'can't you rehearse anywhere'. It's a one-woman show she's directing herself in, and she's not using the theatre space yet. Arguably she could go and rehabilitate her relationship in Idaho and work on her lines in the hotel room. And I say this as a long-time theatre professional, so this does not come from a place of disrespecting the art. I get that she's close to opening but it's not as though she had to work on her wirework or firebreathing. He was blunt, but she shot down his bid without discussion. He's come home unexpectedly, which surely must have taken a great effort, and sprung this idea of her coming on tour too, so her reaction was pretty shitty. This is the other reason I don't see the real connection between this film and 'The Last Five Years' - in this film, Mia NEVER has an acting job. Not one until Paris. There's no montage of her being in shitty commercials, or working background, or being on a pilot that got canned. If he was saying 'hey, rehearse in my hotel room' and she was at Groundlings or UCB or training (SHE ALSO NEVER TRAINS - GET SOME CLASSES AND MAYBE YOU'LL WORK MORE), then she might have a point. But literally the first time she ever acts is when Seb suggests she makes her own work, and then she's surprised no one comes. I know we've been spending a lot of time on how shitty Seb is, but Mia isn't doing herself any favors. At least in 'L5Y' Cathy is slogging it out auditioning but is also doing Summer Stock in Ohio, which at least tells me that she is talented enough to make it if she keeps pushing. We never see that from Mia so I find her success cheaply earned.

No, but it is correct that sitting back and waiting to be 'discovered' is an exponentially worse way of going about making a career. I counsel my graduating students all the time that work begets work, and always point them towards Fringe NY or the like, just to get work up and running, because it's about the hustle and the networking that happens after the shows that gives you a shot at being seen in something bigger. I think EvRobert has the right attitude towards making things happen by continuing to write things that are fulfilling, even if the waiting and the rejection is harder to take. But I have friends in their 40's who are still waiting tables, convinced that they will 'make it' one day but are not willing to hustle to make it happen. I have some incredibly talented friends back home who were not willing to do the work and are still doing the tiny gigs, whereas another one of my friends, never the most talented of us all but the hardest-working, is now a global superstar, playing arenas. So much of this industry is about not giving up and letting everyone else drop away around you, and creating work (in Seb's parlance, gigging or working as a session musician rather than auditioning) is definitely the smartest approach. He over-simplifies, but he also recommends she does something that is good for her soul. And it's the advice that changed her life, because, well, work begets work. And as someone who has also written a bunch of scripts that will likely never be seen, I think you'll agree with me, EvRobert, that it's less about the production and more about the personal catharsis of writing that is the point.

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I always thought it was a play on words. Given the smog and light pollution in LA, I'm not sure how many actual stars are super visible there (maybe that's "City of stars/There's so much that I can't see"?), but I always saw this as an ode to the possibility that LA presents to everyone, the lure of stardom and the crazy dream that you could actually join those stars one day (be the star insisting on paying for your coffee instead of being the barista she ignores)...

I thoroughly enjoyed the soft-shoe work in the 'Lovely Night' scene, particularly the legwork on the bench. And then I started watching Fred and Ginger in 'Swing Time' to get ready for 'Unspooled', and the grace of those two makes Seb and Mia look like a pair of elephants... Of course, who COULD we compare to Fred and Ginger and the way they move together?

Oh sure, but I always find it funny how the entire crowd is stock still, waiting with bated breath to see what note he's going to plunk out next. After the awesome ensemble work of the prior piece, I just find it funny that everyone's reverentially watching like it's Ray Charles risen from the grave for a one-night only performance.

Yeah, if I haven't made it clear yet, I really love this movie. Regardless of its flaws, this may well be in my top ten all-time.

As much as I love the Dream Ballet at the end of the film, the fact that in the fantasy they wind up in exactly the same place (Mia goes to Paris with Seb, she becomes a star, they have a baby, get in the same traffic jam, take the same exit, go to the same jazz club) felt unsatisfying to me. The film seems to suggest that with some different choices, they would be in exactly the same place but without that ache of 'what if'. But really, it seems like it's just Seb that is missing something (Mia seems very happy married to Shades) because there's no suggestion that he's with someone new. I don't think that was the place for a Sliding Doors-style alternate track, but the fact that the circumstances change but the results are the same seems a little odd. In that sense, during the Dream Ballet sequence, why are the rowdy jazz crowd so reverentially silent as Seb plunks out his 'Mia and Sebastian's Theme' after he sees Mia? Maybe he shows off the intricacies of the later parts of the theme like he does in the Christmas restaurant, but after the detailed jazz that we've just seen, it feels like it's everyone indulging the owner of the club picking out a few notes on the keyboard...

(also: I'm very aware that most of us liked the movie a bunch: just trying to steer us into discussions of things we liked, since we all gleefully jumped into HDTGM mode)