whiplash

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