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It’s a small detail that has rubbed Ryan Gosling up the wrong way for a decade. Now, the La La Hand saga finally comes to an end…
Damien Chazelle’s La La Land is set to return to cinemas to mark its tenth anniversary next month. It starred Gosling and Emma Stone as a couple who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles. Stone won the Oscar for Best Actress and Chazelle won Best Director at the 2017 ceremony, and the film was infamously announced as the winner of Best Picture before the correct winner, Moonlight, finally got the top gong.
To mark the 10-year rerelease, the film’s team has decided to alter the film’s poster – which features that upsetting detail.
You see, Gosling hasn’t been shy or silent about how much he hates the poster. It’s not the streetlights, the Los Angeles skyline, the colour grading or his snobbish “white person saves jazz” demeanour. It’s his hand – specifically the position of his wrist, which is bent, with his hand poised flat in the air in the middle of a dance with co-star.
“I didn’t know this would become the poster for the movie,” Gosling told the Wall Street Journal in a 2024 interview. “We were supposed to have our hands up, and I thought it would be cool to put my hand [flat] even though everyone told me it wasn’t cool. I was sure it was cooler… It just killed the energy that way. I call it La La Hand.”
Well, he’ll be able to sleep soundly once more, as Lionsgate have issued the following statement: “Over the years, Ryan Gosling has noted on more than one occasion that he would love to fix his “La La hand” from the original poster… Well, Ryan, you have been heard! Lionsgate is thrilled to announce that an updated version of the poster is now officially available below.”
We’re in two minds about this.
On the one hand (sorry), we’re glad that Gosling is getting his way and that a minor upset has been fixed. Plus, this fix doesn’t fall into the “Photoshopped-to-hell-and-back” poster atrocities we’ve been subjected to over the years.
On the other hand (not sorry), going back and tampering with the past in a form of revisionism will only create another Mandela Effect – the fascinating phenomenon that refers to people sharing a collective, inaccurate memory (an event, an image, a phrase) that never happened. Except it did.
RIP Ryan’s limp wrist. You shall be missed.