One of the standout memories from my last semester of college was hearing the strong word-of-mouth around the breakout from that year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Whiplash.” I can remember the excitement around a new, potentially generational filmmaker bursting onto the scene, as well as an intense, young actor starting to make his mark in films like “Rabbit Hole,” “The Spectacular Now,” and now this. Moreover, having just binged the HBO prison drama “Oz,” I was thrilled by the possibility of one its ensemble cast members, J.K. Simmons, taking on a role that required him to lean on his more sociopathic abilities.
The first time I saw the film, winner of both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize, it was followed by a Q&A with Simmons in which he spoke on the animalistic nature of his character, jazz instructor Terence Fletcher, and how, despite Damien Chazelle‘s youthful appearance, he was impressed by the writer/director’s confidence, as well as the preparation he brought to the project. Ironically, to hear Chazelle tell the story today, he was actually the one with reservations regarding Simmons rather than the other way around.
“The big question in my head about J.K. — and he and I talked about this — was if he could be convincingly scary enough,” Chazelle said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “‘Oz’ to me was the one sort of big exception in his career, but it had been long enough ago and specific enough that, yeah, part of me worried that he lost that side of him because, you have to remember, the things he was really known for in more recent memory right before we did ‘Whiplash’ were things like ‘Juno,’ playing the dad everyone wishes they had, you know, the ideal kind of father figure, and J. Jonah Jameson in the ‘Spider-Man’ movies, where he’s certainly yelling a lot, but it’s very much in this comical way.”
Even with this hesitation, Chazelle knew how much of a get Simmons would be, especially considering he was trying to cast him in the short that would later become the feature “Whiplash.” The filmmaker recalls being “humbled and flattered to be meeting him at all,” but with his artistic vision top of mind, Chazelle was nonetheless concerned over whether Simmons could “intimidate on screen enough” or if his interpretation of the character would be viewed as “tongue-in-cheek.”
“Then he came in on day one of the short, started playing the role, and I was scared and just immediately astounded and he basically played the role the same way in the future, we would adjust here and there,” said Chazelle. “But that was definitely a case of an actor coming on the set with a sort of fully formed vision of the character that just worked instantly.”
In terms of casting the lead role of student drummer Andrew Neiman, Chazelle shared how it differed from casting Simmons in that he had Teller “in mind” when writing the script. While he wasn’t able to get Teller for the short (Johnny Simmons took the park, no relation), the actor did step in for the feature version and recalled how even taking in the script was a trying experience.
“It was still very early on in my career and I remember getting the script and reading it and just being exhausted reading it,” Teller said to IndieWire. “And I remember I was talking with my agent, and I was just finishing like a four-month shoot on something up in Chicago, and I was basically gonna have to go right from that pretty much right into this project. And I just remember saying, ‘Well it’s gonna be relentless, there’s so much output from this character. It’s gonna be a really intense experience.’”
That it was, but it helped that Teller had some drumming experience under his belt. Shortly after meeting Chazelle, he was able to show him his skills, which came as a massive bonus for the director, as he intended on faking most of the drumming with a real, professional player. However, even having the training he did, Teller was still intimidated by the prospect of learning all the music and executing it in the way Chazelle needed it for the film to work.
“I only had like two and a half weeks,” Teller said of the amount of time he was given to learn everything. “Because Damien sent me, ‘Whiplash’ and ‘Caravan’ and the solo and all this stuff, and I think I responded like, ‘Holy fuck, who’s gonna play this?’ And he just responds, ‘You are.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, oh my god.’ But yeah, it worked really well. I was familiar because I had drummed in some garage rock bands in Florida — we just wanted to start some mosh pits, sell some merch, play a couple of shows and stuff — but I was familiar. I was very comfortable behind a kit. It took me a while to get comfortable holding the sticks traditionally, but I studied a lot of classic, big band jazz drummers and their posture.”
Teller went on to share how his first concern was making sure the audience would “buy” him as a skilled jazz drummer, but other issues, like making sure he looked like he was sweating the proper amount for whatever situation he was in, would, at times, take precedent.
“There’s always crew members and different department heads that are very focused on continuity and stuff, but we’re moving at such a frantic pace,” said Teller. “I remember the only time I got kind of frustrated was when, if my shirt for this take was wrinkled slightly differently than the last take, but we’re in the middle of playing, I’m like, ‘Just let me go, let me go, let me go, please.’”
Reminded of this experience as well, Chazelle added, “The first few takes on something, we sort of run in with the spritz or whatever to help the sweat, but then you could gauge it with your watch that, by take whatever, you didn’t need to do that anymore.”
In the 10 years that have passed since I first saw “Whiplash,” I was astounded at how potent the subject of toxic mentorships has become not only on a personal level, but also seeing it continue to be reflected back in art. Shows like “Hacks,” which just took home the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series for its third season, as well as “Industry” are both more recent examples, but it’s a topic that has continued to serve as fertile narrative ground as far back as “Faust.” To craft his own version of this cautionary tale, Chazelle called upon his real-life experiences studying drumming under a harsh academic.
“I wrote it very much sort of thinking of a teacher I’d had and experiences I’ve had as a drummer. I definitely embellished, exaggerated, I never went through what Miles’ character goes through in the movie, but there was a kind of visceral fear I felt or related to this teacher and then with that, you kind of ask, ‘Well, why didn’t you just quit?’ But with that fear was this equally visceral sort of need or desire to… seek their approval?” Chazelle said. “Their approval became the most important thing to me in the world. And by that same token, I look back and I know I became a much better drummer than I would have minus that approval because I didn’t even go into it caring so much about drumming. This conductor had such an effect on me that suddenly drumming and jazz drumming just became everything, like life or death, and so a certain kind of work ethic comes from that that might not otherwise have been there. I look back on it obviously with lots of mixed feelings. Again, I have to stress that this person was not abusive the way that J.K. in the movie is, but I think it kinda helped spark the idea of that dilemma for me: What if you had a teacher who was that abusive?”
For Teller, he said facing the pressure Chazelle dealt with under this teacher would’ve been detrimental to his growth in the arts, but, having played a lot of sports growing up, understands that coaching can come in many different forms and what’s needed is different for every person.
“I never minded being coached hard,” Teller said. “I’m not gonna say I enjoy it, but I would rather we do whatever we gotta do to get to that place. I don’t want to tiptoe around it. Now, obviously what J.K. is doing in this movie, it certainly crosses that line, but even [shooting] films — there is this like no asshole policy and I 100% agree with that — but sometimes you need to go through some conflict to get to the thing. I think that just means a lot of the time when the stakes are high and the pressure is high and you wanna achieve something together, it’s not always gonna be [easy].”
Chazelle believes that, no matter the set or who he’s working with, he has to find “some sort of balance,” but that no one “needs to resort to cruelty in order to get the best out of people.” While this may run in contrast to the message of the film, for both actor and director, the process of making “Whiplash” remains a touchpoint as their careers have continued to thrive. Even after winning the Best Director Oscar for his work on “La La Land” and serving as co-lead of one of the highest grossing films of all time, “Top Gun: Maverick,” respectively, Chazelle and Teller still think some of their best lessons were learned while making “Whiplash.”
“I definitely think back to this shoot at any time I sort of feel up against the wall on schedule or resources or things like that because we had a very tight shoot on this, especially with what we wanted to do with it,” Chazelle said. “Sometimes I have to sort of remind myself, ‘Ok, well, ‘Whiplash,’ we did X Y Z.’ It kind of becomes a little bit of a barometer of what’s possible to do within a short period of time.”
Echoing this sentiment, Teller added, “I’m just always reminded that you can make a kick ass movie that looks great and sounds great with great acting, cinematography, directing, all this stuff, and in 19 days on a pretty low budget. The last week of filming, I think we averaged over 100 set-ups a day and we were filming like 15-16 hour days.”
The work ultimately paid off with Simmons receiving an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and the film winning for Best Film Editing and Best Sound Mixing. It was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. To add to this, following a poll taken at the beginning of this year, it was voted as the top Sundance film of all time by over 500 filmmakers and critics. Quite a legacy for two kids in their late twenties just trying to kickstart their careers, but one that continues to grow.
Sony Pictures Classics will re-release “Whiplash” on 4K DCP, in theaters September 20.
