“La La Land,” written and directed by Rhode Island native and Harvard grad Damien Chazelle, earned 14 Oscar nominations Tuesday morning, which means it has tied “Titanic” and “All About Eve” as the most nominated film in the history of the Academy Awards.
For that reason, it’s a prime time to see the movie’s blueprint, Chazelle’s 2009 Boston indie musical, “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench.”
Chazelle’s first film, which he made locally while at Harvard, is a jazz-infused love story like “La La Land” that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2009. Chazelle told us at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall that “Guy and Madeline” paved the way for “La La Land,” and that his big-budget version of a movie musical was almost set in Boston. (A scene at the Griffith Observatory in LA would have been set at our Museum of Science.)
Despite Chazelle’s rise to fame, “Guy and Madeline” isn’t easy to find these days. The Harvard Film Archive, which screened the picture in 2010, said the movie is not a part of its collection. We found it on Amazon, but the site says it’s temporarily out of stock. It’s available on iTunes for $9.99.
New York Times writer Wesley Morris, who was a critic at The Boston Globe when “Guy and Madeline” was released, gave the film three stars in 2010. He wrote in his review, “What’s most exciting about ‘Guy and Madeline’’ is that Chazelle bothered to make it at all. Other artists his age (he’s 25) and a little older make stage musicals and wind up with ‘Bat Boy,’ ‘Urinetown,’ ‘Avenue Q,’ and ‘Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.’ He made a movie musical, instead. I hope he loves the art form enough to make more.”