Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz: La La Land

La La Land tells the very Hollywood story of a romance between aspiring actress Mia, played by Emma Stone, and Ryan Gosling's Sebastian, a jazz musician who dreams of running his own nightclub.

Now, the musical is Oscar nominated for best picture, best director, best original screenplay, best song (twice!), best actor and actress -- and those are only some of the 14 nominations for the film. That's a total that shares the record with only two other films: 1950's All About Eve and 1997's Titanic.

But getting to that point was far from easy. For years, it looked like the film might never even get made.

La La Land was written and directed by 32-year-old Damien Chazelle, who was on The Business two years ago when his drama Whiplash was contending for Oscar. Should he prevail in the directing category now for La La Land, he'd be the youngest winner ever.

The music of La La Land comes from composer Justin Hurwitz, also 32. Hurwitz majored in music at Harvard, which is where he and Chazelle met. When we sat down with both of them, they told us about the movie's origins, the countless obstacles they faced along the way, and why they purposefully didn't want to cast a modern-day version of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for their musical leads.