whiplash

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.