Gosling says, “I do love movies but I love making them more. I’ve never found something professionally that engages me as much as that. You work with such a large group of people and it’s this constant problem solving process that gets you to this end, whatever that is. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s always a crapshoot.”

“It’s also nice when you know the people you’re working with,” he added when asked about Stone. “Most of the time, everyone’s a stranger. It’s fine. That’s your job to make it seem like you have a relationship. But it certainly makes it a lot easier when you have one. And you listen to the way that person says their line more closely. You watch the way they’re playing the scene because you know each other. You’re more engaged in the scene than you would be otherwise.”

“We’ve been asked to improvise a lot in the films that we’ve done together,” he went on to say. “I think even in our first audition we were asked to improvise. That just kind of connects actors in a way that just saying dialogue doesn’t do.”

During one of the funniest bits of La La Land, Stone’s character is auditioning for a small role in a film when the casting director takes a call as she’s doing her read. According to Gosling, this was a true story that actually happened to him. “Yeah, where I had to cry and this lady took a call in the middle of it. And then just told me to go on, “Pick up where I left off.” That was part of what was great about making this film was Damien encouraged us to bring our experiences to these characters.

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