whiplash

this movie was amazing imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d_jQycdQGo

For a while I admired its singlemindedness of purpose, even dismissing The Girlfriend in one cruel and apt scene, but I didn't believe a moment of the last 30 minutes.

the twist was pretty great though come on

some discussion from the Oneida thread:

<3 kid millions
haven't seen this movie but i know he is otm about it
http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/kid-millions-talks-whiplash-and/

― vigetable (La Lechera), Monday, January 12, 2015 9:34 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3 kid millions
but he is not otm

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, January 12, 2015 9:39 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Whiplash" is good imo

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, January 12, 2015 9:40 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I haven't seen it, I should refrain from opining.

― vigetable (La Lechera), Monday, January 12, 2015 9:53 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oneida-headz - is there any way to get the recent brah tapes other than on cassette?

― tylerw, Monday, January 12, 2015 9:59 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I haven't seen it either, but the impression I got from the trailer is that it's not really about music as music, or rather that music could be substituted with any competitive young person activity in which there's a teacher-student or coach-student relationship. Like it might just as well be drumline drumming, or some kind of competitive dance team thing. But it also didn't seem totally far-fetched to me that there are musicians out there who might treat jazz big band that way. Although that doesn't square AT ALL with my high school and college big band playing experience -- we did go to competitions, but even when we were competing the director was much more interested in making sure we captured the nuances and feeling of the music than in some kind of tempo contest. I don't see any of that as necessarily meaning it isn't a good movie though.

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Monday, January 12, 2015 11:57 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

saw oneida on saturday with james mcnew playing bass? is that a thing? great show but they got kicked off stage after like half an hour for some macbook dj.

― adam, Monday, January 12, 2015 12:25 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yikes, that sounds criminal. Half an hour is not enough time. McNew has played with them before though.

― grandavis, Monday, January 12, 2015 12:26 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it seems like a movie about abusive teachers who "force greatness" out of their carefully chosen students and that's not my thing at all, movie about drumming and teachers aside. i dunno. maybe it's like the Nadia of drumming movies.

― vigetable (La Lechera), Monday, January 12, 2015 12:48 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seems like mcnew is pretty much in oneida now? at least he's been playing live w/ em for at least the past year or so. don't know if he contributes on record though.

― tylerw, Monday, January 12, 2015 12:55 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the truncated show was a drag but they sounded awesome. two extended kraut jams and a rock and roll song. i spent all my merch table cash on beer, is the brah tapes stuff mailorderable? they def sold me on what they are doing these days.

― adam, Monday, January 12, 2015 1:15 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh man, that saturday bill had chris forsyth on it too...right? and yes - 30 minutes is way too short.

finally got a tape deck -- had a listening session where we went through all 4 brah tapes consecutively. together, it's a pretty massive double album worth of really good material, spanning everything from shorter burners in the vein of preteen weaponry to amorphous imposing improv with the flavor of "a list of the burning mountains", to oscillating, almost-mellow dronescapes. i've yet to digitize anything, but will get around to it if for no other reason than to listen to at work.

lots of stuff to look forward to in 2015, per their site:
+Recording the THIRTEENTH Oneida album (This is Thirteen II—still gotta run that one by the guys).
+Blowin’ the Rhys Chatham/Oneida album for Northern Spy
+Layin’ the fourth People of the North album out on the stoop

till then, here's jam i (roughly) captured from july. pretty sure this is...new?

http://www.youtube.com/v/L4zCl5uSXRg&fs=1&hl=en

― dronestreet, Monday, January 12, 2015 1:22 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nice jam. they didn't play that one on saturday.

chris forsyth w/ band was excellent too, they are playing bk again next month to which i will definitely go.

― adam, Monday, January 12, 2015 2:07 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it seems like a movie about abusive teachers who "force greatness" out of their carefully chosen students and that's not my thing at all, movie about drumming and teachers aside. i dunno. maybe it's like the Nadia of drumming movies.

― vigetable (La Lechera), Monday, 12 January 2015 18:48 (1 hour ago) Permalink

Since that kind of "greatness" is so anathema to what I consider great in drumming, I just feel like I'm going to have to go in not thinking of it as a music film. Then again music films generally tend to be even more fraught with cliches, impossibilities and fanciful myths than biopics in general.

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Monday, January 12, 2015 2:11 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Although it's not totally without precedent in the real world (pretty sure Buddy Rich did see music as that kind of competition, for example).

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Monday, January 12, 2015 2:12 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Whiplash" is good imo

i hope it's good, but have a reaaally hard time imagining that it feels real to anyone with similar experiences. honestly i'm mostly hoping for hilarious camp.

― virtuoso thigh slapper (Jordan), Monday, January 12, 2015 2:24 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i definitely saw all the stuff kid millions criticizes about the film as intentional, that ultimately the whole thing is about the sort of folly some people engage in, people who think you can turn somebody into charlie parker by throwing a cymbal at their head, and how some people have an exceptional kind of magnetism to where they can actually get folks to believe something that self-evidently stupid. that's not really a "jazz" thing per se.

― rushomancy, Monday, January 12, 2015 2:45 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

russian olympic jazz

― walid foster dulles (man alive), Monday, January 12, 2015 2:47 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't buy that this man would sabotage a show for the sake of proving a point.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/whiplash-getting-jazz-right-movies

(Buddy Rich? A loud and insensitive technical whiz, a TV personality, not a major jazz inspiration. As I heard his name in the film, I spoke it in my head as dubiously as Leonardo DiCaprio says “Benihana” in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”)

xp alfred - yeah me neith but still a gut wrenching twist which made the comeback more chest poundingly awesome

xxp what does this movie have to do with oneida

still haven't seen it, but man, i wish they would have looked to jazz drummers who can act a little rather than actors who can kinda drum. or focused on a different instrument that's easier to fake, like trumpet or something.

I loved The Guardian's frame of reference:

For me, it revived (happy) memories of testy Mr Shorofsky and frizzy-haired Bruno Martelli in Fame.

the drummer from Oneida wrote a piece about the movie.

still haven't seen it, but man, i wish they would have looked to jazz drummers who can act a little rather than actors who can kinda drum. or focused on a different instrument that's easier to fake, like trumpet or something.

― virtuoso thigh slapper (Jordan), Thursday, January 15, 2015 11:51 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, but man, I've seen some horrendous trumpet- and saxophone-miming. For some reason, actors think you have to shake the instrument with each note.

ha. i think Mo' Betta Blues is the gold standard of trumpet-mime. maybe Bird for sax?

the thing is, maybe that's not what it's like to study jazz drums, i wouldn't know, but like, if this mischaracterization produced such a great film... who cares?

The drumming in Bird looked hella fake

still haven't seen it, but man, i wish they would have looked to jazz drummers who can act a little rather than actors who can kinda drum. or focused on a different instrument that's easier to fake, like trumpet or something.

― virtuoso thigh slapper (Jordan), Thursday, January 15, 2015 11:51 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the acting was SO GOOD though and i didn't notice anything sketchy about the drumming, assumed he had a body double

at least that's how I remember it, trying to find clips now

maybe Bird for sax?

That actually stood out for me -- Whitaker nailed the miming (and looked like he'd actually studied the fingering to some extent).

Curious to see how Cheadle does in the upcoming Miles film.

ok like here, early in clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2qHFmdojy8

sound is clearly hi-hat, drummer is playing ride

Buddy Rich gets a bad rap :(

the guy playing dizzy seems to be doing a credible job, but I don't play trumpet so IDK

i got whiplash on the Cyclone

xp btw I thought that NYer article was totally wrong about Buddy Rich -- a lot of things about him annoy me but he was a true jazz drumming great and I think pretty much any jazz drummer would agree.

i think the writer-director of this pitcher is a friend of our own max?

yeah Buddy Rich's playing never sounded un-musical to me. he had a one-in-a-million level of technical mastery and his own bands showcased it. but he was also on some early charlie parker/dizzy gillespie small group records and sounds good imo.

i really like this '70s small group Buddy Rich record, 'Live at Buddy's Place'. there are a couple tracks where he plays funk and has a refreshingly off-kilter approach:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf4HOaumSuk&index=3&list=PL7ooSLAsF45PAABbTWhnM67lqptdkUqdf

His playing in those Krupa/Rich battle records is dope.

If anything I think the thing that makes him not get mentioned as a canon jazz drummer as often as others is sort of a combination of his attitude and his marketing -- he simply chose to go the route of promoting himself as a kind of musical wonder rather than an "artist," and treated drumming as though it were an ongoing competition to be the "top." His playing itself is very swinging and musical and generally enjoyable, even though the bands he put together eventually got kind of boring.

I like what he did in the Nat King Cole - Lester Young trio (easily my favorite playing of his), and he's refreshingly unobtrusive on the Bird records. But apart from those, I can't stand him.

he's also very tasteful on the 'Ella & Louis' record, which nobody mentions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_and_Louis#Personnel

but yeah i get that it's mostly due to his image, the famous bus tapes, etc.

in terms of its lack of realism or how dissimilar it was to other people's jazz education, IMO it's totally plausible that there are people out there for whom playing big band jazz is about playing it super tight and fast and having sick chops. the insistence in that new yorker piece that jazz is all about the soul, maaan misses the point. maybe for some people it's about that, but for the people in this movie it isn't. whether simmons' character misunderstands jazz or understands it in the same way as the guy from oneida doesn't matter, the movie just depends on the fact that he believes in his own understanding of it

Buddy Rich is also good on whatever Norman Granz jam sessions he's on.

This movie would make me wanna throw cymbals at the screen. I read a synopsis that suggests that the narrative validates the abuse of the teacher, and I read a review that says as much, too. And Buddy Rich is a baffling choice for jazz drum hero in 2014. What kind of Yngwie Malmsteen asshole would choose Buddy Rich among all the jazz drummers he'd surely hear first?

Clam.

I think this movie really doesn't care about music (or liking music or liking making music) which is weird for a movie where playing music plays such a big part, but at that same time I think as a movie about obsession/sadomasochism it's works pretty well and is nicely acted/plotted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47yxLg2RyXM

I think most jazz d-bags think jazz is about technique and creativity, not "soul." Student and teacher jamming out together as equals at the end suggests that the writer thinks the teacher's "tough love" is good pedagogy, and it's not.

i'm most interested in kid millions' point about the cognitive dissonance between the plot and the playing. are we supposed to interpret the kid's playing as being as entry-level as it actually is, or suspend our disbelief?

i should really stop talking about this since i haven't seen it though, sorry.

xp

i'm actually in favor of 'tough love' pedagogy (or at least it worked for me and i respond well to it, i know others don't), but it has to be aiming towards a noble goal. like, my own college jazz education was this way, at one point half the class/band was kicked out for the rest of the semester (they still passed the class on the books, but that wasn't the point). others quit at different times. but it was all about taking it seriously, learning the history, listening & being musical, etc.

in terms of its lack of realism or how dissimilar it was to other people's jazz education, IMO it's totally plausible that there are people out there for whom playing big band jazz is about playing it super tight and fast and having sick chops. the insistence in that new yorker piece that jazz is all about the soul, maaan misses the point. maybe for some people it's about that, but for the people in this movie it isn't. whether simmons' character misunderstands jazz or understands it in the same way as the guy from oneida doesn't matter, the movie just depends on the fact that he believes in his own understanding of it

― flopson, Thursday, January 15, 2015 12:27 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's kind of hard to conceive of any even remotely high-level musical director in ANY style of music who thinks it's all just about chops and speed. Like I just can't imagine that person even getting hired in a good conservatory. That said, I'm prepared to suspend my disbelieve because I don't think jazz is what the movie is *really* about.

What kind of Yngwie Malmsteen asshole would choose Buddy Rich among all the jazz drummers he'd surely hear first?

ha this kind of makes sense to me, technical ability is a lot easier to appreciate & approximate than the more subtle (and important) aspects of music, right? and when you haven't been playing long you're a lot more concerned about it, or at least was. that's my excuse for listening to a lot of very silly prog, fusion, and metal (and Buddy Rich!) in high school.

I've never heard anyone ask "who was the fastest jazz drummer ever?" The fastest drummers are the guys who win those "fastest drummer" competitions, and no one ever hears of them.

i haven't seen this. i def knew really talented music students who were really chops-centered as a whole thing. couldn't even tell what it was about music they enjoyed, but i guess they did. they seemed to be hungering for a feeling of being impressed, if not moved in the way that i wanted from music. aside from contemporary jazz players who were technically really amazing, the dudes i'm thinking of were into dream theater and shit

Any type of music degree program that doesn't center itself on developing the technical ability of its students is doing those students a massively damaging, career-limiting disservice.

well yeah, but "developing the technical ability of its students" is a little more complicated than BPM

it's also a movie, and i believe we're led to assume that in the time jumps jk occasionally said something to them other than "not my tempo"

i respect if folks familiar with the drum world are distracted by implausibilities and technical errors, but imo the film wasn't trying to be a documentary about jazz drumming

Well yes, but saying "what type of high-level instructor focuses on chops" seems like a wholly absurd thing to say to me, given the exposure I've had by proxy to music performance programs and the people who have gone through them

I think goole's point was, what kind of high-level instructor focuses on chops to the exclusion of every other aspect of music instruction?

Isn't that kind of the point though? He's not really a very good "instructor".

exactly. he takes a crop of students already good enough to attend a conservatory, and puts them through a death march, believing this will give them the discipline to succeed (and it focuses on an easy-to-grasp aspect of their training, rather than giving a thorough portrait of life in a conservatory, as a thorough portrait of life in a conservatory isn't really the goal). if one's response to this is "woah, that's a horrible way to make great musicians" - congrats! people in the movie agree with you and he loses his job.

I am waiting for someone to make a moving like Whiplash about the Magic Band. That would probably be a great movie.

uh did you see Frank

you should, it's really good and you can completely disregard the fucking terrible article written about it and whiplash that got reposted here a while back

I did see Frank and I thought it was great.

I don't think that's a doc about Magic Band.

oh a doc, jeez, lol

hmmm Frank got pretty grouchy reviews from the crix i follow (as did Whiplash)

Really? I thought it was pretty well received.

I love Miles Teller but have been avoiding this movie bc everything I've seen/read indicates it's a work of pro-abuse meninist bullshit tell me I'm mistaken?

ur not gonna like it if that's your attitude

good to know thx

yeah i'd say it's definitely not an outright rebuke of pro-abuse meninist bullshit

and it's definitely about pro-abuse meninists

*watches "I Am Love" again*

saw the word 'meninist' somewhere else recently but this is the first ilx usage - did someone coin it recently?

srs answer to owen:

i think it's as 'complicated' as it needs to be about abuse without endorsing it. as alfred says its singlemindedness of purpose is a strength, it's really contained within their relationship and there's barely any outside perspective, aside from the dad, girlfriend, and a lawyer pushing neiman to sue, and from the perspective of the two main characters they're all seen as 'just not getting it.' the abuse-ey scenes are fucking harsh but you also get a feel for why people get sucked into that dynamic, the manipulation, the seductiveness. i guess the ending would seem to vindicate simmons' methods, but imo it was more about overcoming his fear of simmons. don't get where 'meninist' comes into it

I think there are a lot of ways to read the end. I don't think it's necessarily a vindication of Simmons' methods. It's definitely a "triumph" for Teller, but I don't necessarily it's one that makes you like or necessarily even respect him more for achieving.

For the record I liked Frank more than I liked Whiplash.

yeah i loved the ending for allowing that critical distance from his accomplishment without denying it from him to make some kind of point

i also love imagining the viral madness that would have followed that performance hitting the interne

t.

WHAT THIS DRUMMER KID DOES NEXT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND

the title tune is such a mediocre piece of music imo

title track = Metallica?

Don Ellis/Hank Levy

I assumed it was the "Star Wars" theme, with the lyrics, "Whiplaash...nothing but whiplaash...drummers get whiplaash...yeah..."

missed opportunity. also i bet it would be an illuminating character moment to see him shedding to Metallica in his parents' basement before heading off to big band school.

xp

I found this quite exhausting by the end, there should be warnings about sustained shots of profuse sweating. Whilst I appreciate this is not strictly about music, this world of technically whizzo players competing in a jazz pageant seems about as high stakes as the X Factor. All I could think at the end was Pah! the Napalm Death drummer is better than this fucker!

I don't think Miles Teller's gotten enough credit; he was impressive in The Spectacular Now too.

I enjoyed this quite a lot. From the interviews I saw, the creators clearly wanted people to not just see the whole process as a worthwhile triumph but discuss if it was really worth it and the validity of that sort of teaching.
I think the lack of women may have been deliberate, along with the homophobia, fat-shaming and perhaps showing that this hostile prejudiced environment excludes a lot of people.
But I'm not too sure. Definitely not boring though.

I kind of wanted to argue with Simmons that Charlie Parker wouldn't have necessarily agreed with people who told him that he was merely good enough or that he wouldn't have realised when he wasn't up to scratch (not that I'm saying he wouldn't have benefitted from help).

Maybe Simmons' character says things like that to justify his harshness.

this film was a big 'So What'

I am waiting for someone to make a moving like Whiplash about the Magic Band. That would probably be a great movie.
― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Thursday, 15 January 2015 18:56 (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. Casting would be fun.

zlatan imbrahimovic as zappa

I loved the sticker in the kid's room, something about if you can't cut it as a jazz drummer, you end up in a rock band.

Generally true that there are some great rock drummers with serious jazz chops.

i really enjoyed this movie. there were some real filmmaking 'chops' on display.
kid millions article is OTM though-'drumline' is better.
and as he pointed out, this is really a sports movie, it's not about art at all.

i totally believed that the teacher would torpedo that performance to fuck over the kid, just this once. he cost him a really prestigious job at fake juilliard! that's got to be up there in jobs for jazzbos in 2014.

I really liked it too. It had a certain narrative tension and energy that most other films I've seen recently are lacking.

I don't think it's a particularly deep film however - but I don't hold that against it.

It had a certain narrative tension and energy that most other films I've seen recently are lacking.

OTM. It was somewhat ludicrous but you couldn't deny the momentum of the storytelling. Well-directed too, a very nicely maintained aesthetic. JK a shoe-in for Best Supporting, no?

if chazelle was announced as the new mission impossible movie helmer or something i would be excited. the whole car crash sequence is pretty silly but has a sense of pace and momentum and camera placement that's better than most current action directors.

enjoyed this film. part of me thinks it could have just as easily been about competitive running/baseball/eating instead of jazz drumming, and I agree with the Slate article that much of it conflates 'genius' and 'greatness' with technical proficiency. But who cares? It's a film full of feeling, it's brilliantly shot and scripted, and it's an incredibly compelling story.

Technical proficiency IS important, but that doesn't mean that throwing things, name calling, yelling, and other bad behaviors motivate someone to be technically proficient. At least some reviewers have bought into the film's tough love message, too, including Brian Tallerico, and I don't believe the message is as ambiguous as others itt have said. I'm willing to go the Deci/Ryan/Kohn route and favor descriptive feedback over empty praise, but only if that descriptive feedback is offered in the context of unconditional love. I definitely don't think, as Tallerico writes, that we're in an "era of praise" (this is rank recency illusion), I don't think kids are spoiled by encouragement, and I don't think "true talents (have) been left to wither because they were over-watered." What does this even mean: "He’s not 100% wrong when he says that the most dangerous two words in the English language are 'good job.'"? So he's 10% right that the most dangerous two words in English are "good job"? It's nonsensical. I don't need tough love propaganda, no matter how well made, and this movie is the second time in 12 months I've bailed on a movie or show for trying to justify this behavior.

Are you taking the film too personally? I think it's clear we're seeing someone with sociopathic behaviour not a role model.

The concepts of passion, inspiration, creativity, ideas, innovation etc. must be so difficult to represent on film. It's these factors which tend to be jettisoned, in terms of focus, from most music-based movies I've seen, often in favour of the artists' relationships and personal conflicts in the day-to-day world.
I've been so disappointed with films like Walk the Line, Control and others because they concentrated so little on the actual creative process. All too often the music itself becomes an ulterior soundtrack to a troubled love affair or drug abuse story. I get the commercial reasoning behind this, and of course it's all relevant to the life of the artist, but as a music fan I find these elements less interesting than the music itself.

So in a way, I found it refreshing that Whiplash was so brutal when it came to Niemann's relationship; to his girlfriend, his father, his family etc. He becomes, in a way, as cold and detached as his mentor (possibly more so - there is evidence that the tutor has a much warmer side in private). With Whiplash, we were spared any huggy 'win the competition, get the girl' narratives, and the rest of his family simply worked as a backboard for his anxieties.

Still, it's a shame that such a fantastic piece of cinema should again reject any narrative about the creative process in favour of technical mastery. I realise that this is a big part of what the film is about, but I also wonder when anyone will make a music movie that aims to honestly represent the creative process in an interesting way. Is it possible?

The creative process = hours of tedious noodling about until you hit on something with faintest wisp of potential to not be shite... ime.

Yes - it is. Very much so. But if you can make a film about hours of tedious hitting skins with sticks in a formulaic and pre-ascribed way, then surely...?

Frank did a fairly good job of this, actually I thought. We Are The Best wasn't too bad for it too, in representing those first baby-steps when it comes to trying your hand at something creative you have no idea how to approach.

xps

So why is the reviewer at rogerebert.com so taken with his pedogogy? And why does the film seem to validate his pedogogy by having Simmons smiling at Teller in approval at the end of the movie? Does the film really characterize Fletcher as a sociopath (which seems like an extreme interpretation to me) or just as an abusive asshole and a highly demanding teacher? What evidence is there that the writer/director doesn't feel that the highly external forms of motivation employed in the movie are more powerful at producing greatness than a more "authentic" internal motivation or more benign external motivations relating to the pleasures of music?

And the movie is just so gratingly narrow and out of touch with contemporary attitudes about jazz, even among jazzbos. I can't understand why the writer/director chose jazz as his milieu except as a contrivance.

As a drama, the movie is either incredibly two-dimensional or it's trying to show the conflict between what it takes to achieve greatness and the person who has to suffer through it to become great. What other dramatic dynamism is there? By the movie's standards, Andrew certainly becomes a great jazz drummer. He achieved what he set out to achieve, and I imagine that Fletcher felt the same way, so is Fletcher really going to say at that point, "Gee, I was wrong"?

i figured, arsehole or not, that we're supposed to sympathise ever so slightly with Fletcher. Like, that bit where they meet up and have a drink after Fletcher got sacked from the university; there's no denying he's a sociopath but also I believed him when he said that in his eyes he was acting in the best faith possible and genuinely wanted to produce a 'great' (but never managed to).

a lot of parallels with this film and army-based drill sergeant movies like Officer & a Gentleman (and especially) Full Metal Jacket.

since FMJ was a REAL DI, do we have audio of any jazz teachin' sadists in action?

As mentioned on this thread, the young drummer's idol in the film is Buddy Rich, who was famously recorded berating his band members:

http://jazztimes.com/articles/20010-the-buddy-rich-tapes

... Don storms into a rehearsal room and tells the Magic Band, "All you guys do is eat and shit"

As for the final scene - i felt it consolidated a lot of unaddressed issues that had been prevalent throughout the film.
First of all, Niemann defies his teacher's regimented, hardline approach to music-making by rising above him and encouraging his entourage to take part in an innovative freestyle approach. This is what music-making, and especially jazz, is arguably about. It's as though, through sheer drive and determination - but most of all rule-breaking - he has finally transcended 'greatness', as opposed to remaining a mere drum student beholden to replicating the greats through rote.
Secondly, Fletcher finally achieves his dream of producing a 'great'. This develops in front of his eyes and he is finally forced to go with it and accept that there are limits to his approach.
In all, both parties wind up in the best possible situation, but it's a complicated, attritional pact.

A Best Supporting Role should have been awarded to Simmons' bulging head veins. If it had been a 3D movie, I'd have been freaked right out.

this movie + We Are the Best! are basically complete opposites on every level. (I vastly prefer the latter.)

enjoyed this film. part of me thinks it could have just as easily been about competitive running/baseball/eating instead of jazz drumming, and I agree with the Slate article that much of it conflates 'genius' and 'greatness' with technical proficiency. But who cares?

That's why I said it reminded me of Nadia -- the abusive controlling coach, the idea that you have to sacrifice everything in order to achieve greatness (as if greatness were the only worthwhile goal) and who cares? I do! I think this is the sort of attitude is really harmful. And grossly macho.

Back to Nadia -- she was great because she was graceful and technically proficient in equal measure. If you look at the gymnasts who came after her and performed with technical proficiency, they lacked her style and grace. They were not great. Style and grace can't be bullied into a person. I hate this type of teaching so much.

That said I'm sure it's a very exciting movie but I really wish it were about competitive running or something else that (pardon me for saying this) doesn't require the same degree of creativity as making music.

And why does the film seem to validate his pedogogy by having Simmons smiling at Teller in approval at the end of the movie?

To me the movie played like we're supposed to accept Niemann as sociopath-in-waiting.

on the upside i do feel very motivated to practice now

also this "year in music film" piece did a nice job tying it all up http://www.wonderingsound.com/feature/music-film-2014-whiplash-we-are-the-best-frank/

To me the movie played like we're supposed to accept Niemann as sociopath-in-waiting.

Yes. The more I think about this movie, the more I think there's a (possibly unintentional) subtext where everything being ostensibly championed by both professor and student - technical proficiency over creative nuance, competitiveness over feeling and enjoyment, work vs play, objectivity over subjectivity, tough love over positive encouragement - are all being critiqued rather than upheld here.

LL, I would say go and see it - I really think it redeems itself and transcends its accusations in the end.

The reviews calling it fun and exhilirating confuse me. It's exhausting!

I'm afraid if I see it I'll leave the theater really aggravated. I guess that could be productive? Maybe.

There's that really dreadful part where the family(?) are sitting round the table and talking about their various achievements. Niemann acts in a completely unsympathetic way, degrades his friends/cousins' (not sure who these guys were) achievements and snaps at them when they ask if music isn't subjective.

I wasn't sure if i was supposed to think he was being a dick or correct.

LL - I honestly spent the first thirty minutes thinking if I wasn't with my friends, I'd walk out. But yeah, it's only today that I think it was a redemptive movie which at least asks intelligent viewers to take it on more than face-value and question a lot of the values it appears to uphold.

I wasn't sure if i was supposed to think he was being a dick or correct.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 21, 2015 2:45 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I guess? I mean, are you supposed to be on Fletcher's side in this film? Are you supposed to think 'What a cool, no-nonsense anti-hero who puts his career and reputation on the line for the good of his students', or simply 'Wow, what an absolute fucking psychopath, I hope he dies before the end of the film'. I feel it's a mixture of both, and the same goes for Niemann.

Is there a similar film about an abusive director?

Not that comes to mind -- The Stunt Man, maybe -- but any biography of Otto Preminger or Fritz Lang might do.

the director in Irma Vep played by Jean-Piere Léaud is monstrous in his passive-aggression.

the film is about a guy who believes that it will take brutal discipline for him to become a great and the mentor he found who forced it on him. at worst i think the movie allows for the possibility that simmons is right, and while i understand if that grosses people out, i think that ambiguity makes it more powerful than if simmons more transparently earned his just desserts.

the film is about a guy who believes that it will take brutal discipline for him to become a great and the mentor he found who forced it on him

Niemann chose to go there though; he had several chances to walk away. Otherwise I think the rest is otm.

i apologize if my shorthand was confusing, but by "believes it will take brutal discipline" i'm acknowledging that he chose to go there. but even then jk took it to unexpected, abusive levels

it's not unlike the end of payne's election - despite his humiliation and exile, matthew broderick still thinks he's a good guy who's doing ok, just as everyone does in their closing narration. objectively, jk simmons has been fired from a prestigious gig and just lost an extremely high-profile dick-measuring contest with his student. but he still has the self-satisfied nod of someone who thinks it was all worth it in the end.

I like Sion Sono but I feel a bit weird about his reputation for going nuts at actors. On the documentary for Love Exposure it even shows you him making his lead actress cry.

Apologies if this has been posted already:

http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/los-angeles/drummer-peter-erskine-on-whiplash-film.html

I can't understand why the writer/director chose jazz as his milieu except as a contrivance.

Or maybe because he's a former high-school jazz drummer and Buddy Rich nut.

da croupier OTM re: the movie's attitude to Fletcher's philosophy.

I really wished at some point someone would have told JK Simmons that nobody likes this kind of music. Or I wish the movie was inspired or compelling enough to make me not think of that.

anyone seen this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Piano_%28film%29

i should see this, huh?

anyone seen this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Piano_%28film%29

― Number None

Yes. Moderately entertaining, very very silly.

Retrospectively in light of Whiplash, it's obvious that Chazelle bashed the script out as a lark.

with no J.K. Simmons to call him a pampered fairy fuck

Bill Bruford's take : http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/film/article4339715.ece

It's behind a paywall but here's his bit:

I am thrilled somebody has made a mostly realistic movie about what good drummers do. I didn’t go through an academic institution or conservatory like that — I learnt my stuff on the job — but the depiction of high-level east-coast jazz training seems about right. It’s highly competitive. The foul-mouthed instructor is, I think, caricatured to ask the question: will you get better musicians if you intentionally inflict emotional stress, or do you just get Marine cadets? The quintessential bully that I knew of was a drummer and an ex-Marine — Buddy Rich.
I don’t think that intimidation is a useful motivational technique, though. The motivation is, or should be, intrinsic, not extrinsic. That said, the work has got to be done if you want to change things — some say it’s about 10,000 hours for high-level domain change. That’s roughly the ten years from mid-teens to mid-twenties when you get so into it that nothing and no one else matters. Yes, it’s really work. Some interpret the idea of the musical “gift” as being the desire to do the work. If you don’t have that kind of gift, no amount of Fletcher’s abuse is going to help. If you do have it, no amount of abuse is necessary.
Great drummers are often obsessional, though; not great marriage prospects. After you have the skills, you have to get a life. What are you bringing to the table? Music production on almost any level is enormously collaborative and demands high levels of people skills, and therein lies much of the attraction. Drummers tend to perceive that they need other people more than other people need them. That’s why they’re reliable, have a van and usually know where the gig is.
Has there ever been blood on the cymbals? I do remember once taking a swing at Chris Squire, the bass player with Yes, but that might have been on extra-musical grounds. Musical corners were hard fought, but I like to think with honour and respect for the other point of view. There are always several ways to skin a cat. Try forming your own band: then you get to do it all your own way. Then see how you like it. Suddenly, the other guys in the band don’t seem so dumb after all. No blood, though.
I can’t remember anyone shouting “Not my tempo!” at me, like Fletcher does in the film, other than the promoter at Iridium, a venue in New York, but he was as mad as a hatter. The best musicians — the guys at the top — are generally sweethearts: confident, secure and generous. Their interest is in making the music work, as it should be yours. It’s the snake on the second rung below that you want to watch out for.
It’s generally pretty easy for a band leader to get the most out of musicians. Pick the best guys you can (afford), give them some emotional input and responsibility at the musical level, light the blue touch paper and stand back out of the way. If they’re good, they’ll intuitively know what to do. Would Miles Teller get a gig as a drummer? Beyond doubt. Nice guy, he’s committed, swings, can read — someone you’d be happy to have around.

Is there a similar film about an abusive director?

Well there's "Beware of a Holy Whore" by RW Fassbinder, based on the abusive director, er, RW Fassbinder.

There's also Major Payne.

That’s why they’re reliable, have a van and usually know where the gig is.

Can i get a lol

Didn't expect a Bruford piece. Are there many more of these floating around? I wanna hear Neil Peart now.

That said, the work has got to be done if you want to change things — some say it’s about 10,000 hours for high-level domain change. That’s roughly the ten years from mid-teens to mid-twenties when you get so into it that nothing and no one else matters. Yes, it’s really work. Some interpret the idea of the musical “gift” as being the desire to do the work. If you don’t have that kind of gift, no amount of Fletcher’s abuse is going to help. If you do have it, no amount of abuse is necessary.

interesting. two things
1) i just calculated and i have completed 855/10,000 -- where did this idea of 10K come from originally?
2) "no amount of abuse is necessary" otm

1) Malcolm Gladwell

I don't think the movie was agreeing with the approach of JK Simmons' character while it didn't really go to any length to condemn it either. But LL is otm. For every musician that might hypothetically respond like Teller to the abuse, the remainder respond by developing PTSD symptoms

From a Chazelle interview: 'Fletcher’s mindset is, “If I have 100 students, and 99 of them are, because of my teaching, ultimately discouraged and crushed from ever pushing this art form, but one of them becomes Charlie Parker, it was all worth it.” That’s not a mentality I share, but in many ways, that’s the story of the movie.'

somehow I wish the movie had ended with a freight train crashing through the auditorium and killing everybody on stage right after Fletcher flashes his bedeviled grin

xp I read the interview on the dissolve and it was clear that Chazelle believes in tough love, and that's where the dynamism of the drama comes from; the drama would be inert if the movie were simply "this guy is an abusive asshole and this other guy puts up with it." Teller needs "tough love" and pain and possibly even fear to become great, but Simmons takes it too far. Chazelle is pushing harmful pop psych notions of motivation and learning, and it's obvious that people buy it when, e.g., the reviewer from rogerebert.com is saying maybe Simmons' character has a point. If not 99 out of 100, why not 49 out of a 100? Would that be acceptable to Chazelle? I think there's some line there that is acceptable, whereas I've seen more socially acceptable forms of "tough love" at work, and I don't think they're motivating, pedagogically efficacious, and they're obviously harmful to some contingency of the group being taught.

How many jazz greats have stories of pain and fear playing a part in their development as musicians and composers? How many put forward this mentality:

Practice is about beating your head against the wall. So if you’re actually serious about getting better at something, there’s always going to be an aspect of it that’s not fun, or not enjoyable. If every single thing is enjoyable, then you’re not pushing yourself hard enough, is probably how I feel.

There's something almost intrinsically pleasing about tone and timbre and rhythm that soothes the tedium of practicing an instrument. I understand that excellence requires hard work and high standards, but is the feeling of "beating your head against the wall" really a normal narrative among those who excel? Putting aside Deci, Ryan, et al., I'd say that the fact that the "beating your head against the wall" narrative isn't the predominant one among those who excel at things suggests that Chazelle is wrong about the nature of teaching, practice, and excellence, and his ideas about those things are pervasive and harmful enough for me to object to this movie and its extremely exaggerated figure of a person who takes "tough love" too far (who is, according to Chazelle, just a bully).

the opening fifteen minutes of this were the lamest my-first-screenplay garbage i've seen in years.

harsh

kind of agree. I was ready to walk out after about 30 mins but I'm really glad I stuck with it. Best film I've seen this year, and that's saying something as there have been some good ones.

the only thing that was less believable than Fletcher sabotaging his own concert was the fact that this supposed drum prodigy couldn't manage to convincingly fake his way through a surprise song. As far as we know, he only ever learned how to play two songs and had no concept of jazz drumming or anything else beyond that. Basically, he was a pretty bad drummer and it was never clear why he was given so many opportunities at all.

Also, I know Fletcher was supposed to be cruel, but I think even the cruelest of band leaders would fetch the paramedics if a musician showed up to a session with a major head wound.

there's also the curious case of how he wasn't arrested for fleeing the scene of an accident but i had already accepted him basically managing to get up, sprint, and fake his way through a few bars of drums before collapsing so I just ~went with it~

cute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVt_1lGTUcg#t=99

aww

Weird: the incidental music (score) in this film is totally great and such a nice change from the "real music"

Even if the music was the worst, the depiction of abuse-as-pedagogy seemed pretty spot-on, comparisons to Black Swan otm. Loved Miles Teller too

preparing to have a watching party soon with a bunch of jazz drummer friends (none of us have seen it yet). :)

man this might kill the mood of the power, and this is comin' from a dude that liked it

*party

Oh man Jordan I'd love to be a fly on the wall at your screening. I still think this movie is total bs -- Black Swan was great as hag horror but silly as a movie about ballet.

Yeah the last 15 minutes are gonna be ridiculous for any drummer to watch, make sure you're all light

In my classical experience, abusive teachers like this (lots of them too) would love to talk fondly about "the Russian method" where they ruler up kids' wrists and call scars of over-practice "marks of distinction". No heroes were made just a lot of wasted time and money.

Do wish there were more groups that'd have a conductor who's just stop to pace and glower, tho, good look

Oh yeah this movie should be avoided at all costs tbh

Conducting of the volume taper in last bit was lol

the way J.K. Simmons is clapping out the tempo/counting in the tune in the one clip...I've never seen a band director, or any musician, anywhere, ever, start a piece by clapping like that.

I'd like to know if there are any elements in this film that are true to the experience of hot shit musical academy jazz bands. For example, given a numerical value, are there drummers that can hit a tempo exactly, minus any other frame of reference?

you'd probably need a definition of exactly

I mean hitting the exact numerical tempo

prbly not. otherwise j.k. simmons would be locked up at NIST

Well more to the point the "you're behind! You're ahead!" was so arbitrary and incorrect that by the time he expected a son to pull a BPM out of a hat I was like "oh right this fucking guy"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOCTkH2DdpA

bobby mcferrin line got me

but the joke hits a bit too close to home because the speed regulator on my technics table is broken

I laughed at the Bar Mitzvah DJ line

the way J.K. Simmons is clapping out the tempo/counting in the tune in the one clip...I've never seen a band director, or any musician, anywhere, ever, start a piece by clapping like that.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, March 3, 2015 7:38 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this. I mostly don't care if this film "really gets music school" or not but that awkward, stiff "five six and" thing, guhhhh.

I think Peter Erskine pointed out that even he'd have trouble getting a tempo from the way the guy counts it off.

but maybe that's the whole point of the film?

this movie made me profoundly uncomfortable at its end, and not in a good way

Another pro musician and teacher friend points out that the guys practicing habits (straining, playing til fingers bleed etc ) would actually produce bad technique.

(straining, playing til fingers bleed etc )

tbf, he's playing with those new serrated-metal drumsticks.

Andrew wk origin story

this film was utter horseshit
Simmons was pretty good tho'
Teller was amazing, that kid is gonna be great over the next five years

Conducting of the volume taper in last bit was lol

― you can buy your hair if it won't grow (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Yeah, this was way dumb. Kinda fun to watch and talk bullshit over though.

I had an internship with a guy a couple of years ago who majored in jazz drumming (not sure which school, but he dropped out) who did say that it was incredibly intense and unhealthy for him. Said he would basically practice until his hands were bleeding.

@ebaynetflix
'Whiplash' made me really happy that I never viewed music like anyone in that film.

https://twitter.com/ebaynetflix/status/579897677065900033

when the end credits for this came up i realized i'd gotten into a big fight with the writer/director on livejournal in 2005. woulda felt worse if it had been the editor.

btw

Is there a similar film about an abusive director?
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 4:33 PM (2 months ago)

I thought the visual style of Whiplash was very dated, the psychology didn't make any sense to me, the car crash seemed like awful writing, the big band concept would have made a lot more sense if it took place in the 30s, The Social Network told a similar story better and managed to say something abt contemporary society at the same time, Simmons' teaching technique and the concept of negative motivation didn't make much sense to me and had nothing to do with what I know about what motivated Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Billy Strayhorn, but I enjoyed the music.

Maybe I missed the point entirely, I sure was surprised to read Madonna's reaction in RS:

When the character said, ‘I’d rather be a 34-year-old genius who did something with his life, dead of a heroin overdose, than live to be 93 and do nothing’, I totally was like, ‘Yes’. That really resonated with me.

Reminds me of Lennon's response to "Hey Hey My My":

I hate it. Its better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison--its garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo. They're saying John Wayne conquered cancer--he whipped it like a man. You know, I'm sorry that he died and all that--I'm sorry for his family--but he didn't whip cancer. It whipped him. I don't want Sean worshipping John Wayne or Sid Vicious. What do they teach you? Nothing. Death.

Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? I mean its garbage, you know. If Neil Young admires that sentiment so much, why doesn't he do it? Because he sure as hell faded away and came back many times, like all of us. No thank you. I'll take the living and the healthy.

curious to see what Madonna considers "nothing". iirc raising a family and living to see your grandkids and great-grandkids isn't "nothing".

had my right hand inspected by a jazz drummer at a free workshop last night
other guy involved in the convo (bass player) asked if he was inspecting for callouses

um, what was he inspecting for?

honestly idk -- i know that my hands are strong (bony, but strong!) and also it was weird that he grabbed my hand and began to inspect it but i got a distinctly whiplashy feel to the interaction so i wanted to put it here. i still haven't seen the movie btw. i asked half-jokingly if he'd like to inspect my arm but he declined.

i went up to him after his set to say that i enjoyed it, told him i am also drummer (and how long i have been playing) and the inspection followed after a line of questioning intended to determine whether or not i was ready to participate in the workshop (it is an open jam workshop type thing).

sounds kinda icky

it def has never happened before
i didn't feel like gross or anything it just seemed like an excessive measure of my dedication to grab my hand and inspect it. welcome to my world!

I asked my bridge teacher if she'd seen Whiplash after ridiculing me for leading away from an ace. She laughed

I have to admit this one sort of lost me when Teller and Reiser continued talking after Rififi started. After that I was all "Simmons slapped you...fuck you, you talked during a movie...You're bleeding?...Hit by a truck?...Fuck you, you talked during a movie."

Need to work on that. Simmons was a very convincing piece of human garbage tho, and I'm very excited for the good movies Teller will do in the future between all the paycheck stuff he'll most certainly take on.

i watched "keep on, keeping on" last night and it was everything this movie wasn't and is highly recommended.
clark terry was a helluva guy

This is a pretty cool interpretation of Whiplash

definitely interesting to think of the film as a manifestation of an aspiring musician's anxieties

this is a thoroughly silly movie. lots of unintentional hilarity.

but then, i also woke up in the middle of the night after an incredibly vivid anxiety dream/nightmare about missing a gig with my band.

Basically the Karate Kid on drums.

it's so dumb how when doing press for this movie, they were all semantically evasive about saying 'almost all the drumming you see in the movie is him'. of course, people are going to take that to mean that you're also hearing him play, but that's not true 98% of the time. he just did a half-decent job at miming (although watching his stiff-armed, palm-down, pinkie-out ride cymbal technique is painful...but maybe that's in-character for a college freshman drummer? except when they switch to overhead shots all of a sudden it's someone with nice grip).

Neil Peart on Whiplash:

"There is no blood in jazz drumming, and there are no bullies in jazz drumming. My teacher Peter Erskine was saying he feels ungrateful because it's great there's a movie about drummers, but why is it so flawed humanistically and in small technical ways that didn't cost anything? It wouldn't cost anything to have a proper jazz drum set and to show the guy how to use his wrists. And the bloody ice cube jug or whatever? Absurd! There's a Band-Aid on my finger right now – yeah, I bleed. But jazz drumming, no, there is no bleeding."

flappy bird said this on the la la land thread

the depiction of a music teacher as a sadistic drill master

there are no bullies in jazz? there are no sadistic drill sergeant wannabes in music education? what fucking planet are you and Neil Peart from?

i've heard that Buddy Rich tape! bullying in the name of such boring music is unfortunate though.

The hand inspection! So much has happened since then.

One of my students asked me if I had seen this movie a couple days ago. I said yes and he asked what I thought. I replied by asking what he thought about the teacher (since I am his teacher) and I don't exactly remember what he said but we agreed that the teacher was abusive. IIRC he also said that some people with talent "need" that sort of treatment to reach their full potential. I thought about what a pervasive idea this is, that talented people should/might need to be bullied into excellence. I don't agree but is this common wisdom?

Talented people can be lazy as hell

Who's an example of an IRL talented person who required other people to bully them to accomplish anything?

If they are lazy, they need to develop willpower, which bullying isn't great at imo

I can't think of an example because it seems like "wisdom" that comes from excuse-making after someone is bullied rather than a legitimate strategy for achieving excellence. "He needed it to achieve his potential" -- that's essentially what my student said and I found it kind of surprising.

xp to NA - That's kind of a "prove a negative" problem in certain professions I can think of, music education certainly being one.

I think a lot of music educators - not one-on-one instructors much, but definitely bandleaders, conductors etc. use bullying and similar drill instructor techniques as a shortcut to get obedience out of small crowds of geniuses.

I should differentiate between the truly pathological, manipulative shit that JK Simmons does in this movie, and the shouting and belittling that are par for the course in marching bands and military training everywhere

Art Taylor published a book of interviews he conducted with (famous) jazz musicians, and none of the drummers in the book cite "tough love" as a motivator for being creative or improving their craft. The closest they come is one drummer describing how hard he studied and practiced, telling a story about being really competitive about who gets to the equipment for practice in the morning when he lived with another musician. Meanwhile, another drummer in another interview basically says jazz is about feeling and not technique, and a lot of the musicians from the period Art Taylor focuses on describe their experiences of learning to play by listening to and playing with musicians they like.

When I was reading the motivation literature as a prelude to entering a teaching credential program a few years ago, I learned that a lot of the motivation folk wisdom about, e.g., rewards and punishment is wrong, and those things are not particularly motivating and can in fact be demotivating. Even the "conservative" hardliners and dissenters in motivation literature like applied behavior analysis researchers and practitioners or Pritchard, Campbell & Campbell believe punishment is demotivating.

I think people espouse the virtues of tough love because it's easy. If someone isn't doing as well as you'd hope, or if someone seems disinterested, you can yell at them or force them to do something. It's easy to find anecdotal evidence of this having some effect on young people. You hold their feet over the coals and then they do the thing you asked, therefore your tough love made them into the intelligent and responsible adults they become, no credit due to having literature in the home, or to eating with them, or to giving access to the tools they need to think and be creative, or to the daily demonstrations we give of how to live in the world and get along with others.

Yeah, not disputing any of that. Interestingly I've come to realize the structured "tough love" I got in the service did more to bring out my work ethic and confidence than the previous nearly two decades of whatever my parents and teachers had been doing.

I am certain that almost no famous creative person would ever point to a disciplinarian as a prime motivator, though.