I find L.A. kind of romantic, actually. As a movie junkie, it's a city that was built by the movies. There's something really weird and surreal about it that I find energizing.

'La La Land' is about the city I live in. It's about the music that I grew up playing; it's about movies that I grew up watching. Even the big spectacle of the movie feels private to me in that way.

In a weird way, I'm always going to ground myself. I'm an insecure kind of pessimist, but I'm always kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I actually grew up wanting to be a filmmaker. I wanted to make movies, and music was a detour, almost.

I guess I'm kind of interested in that elusive search for a bond between life and work and between compassion and competitiveness. There's always something at the end you have to find to live a full life, but it's hard to find.

The go-to reflex all over Hollywood is still likeability. I've always had a problem with it because I think I have a weird barometer in the sense that some of the characters I've cared about the most in movies are characters that are often thought of as despicable.