Listen: Damien Chazelle and J.K. Simmons Talk Teachers, Jazz, and Bloody Hands in 'Whiplash'

Listen to the Whiplash Q&A at the Walter Reade Theater with director Damien Chazelle and actor J.K. Simmons.

What began as a short film, aiming for feature funding, turned into this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize award-winner. Whiplash, the sophomore feature from Damien Chazelle. The NYFF52 Main Slate selection tells the story of a college student’s relationship with an abusive music instructor as he aims big at the top music conservatory in the nation, hoping to make it as one of the greats as a jazz drummer. The film, which stars J.K. Simmons and Miles Teller, has been referred to by the production team as Full Metal Jacket at Juilliard.

The film had a pre-screening Friday prior to its NYFF dates on September 28 and 29, where Simmons and Chazelle discussed the background of the feature’s production and their approach to telling a brutal tale set against the backdrop of art, ambition, authority, and ruthlessness.

Chazelle, who first directed 2009’s Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, wrote Whiplash as a semi-autobiographical story. His personal past included studies in jazz drumming with a professor who later became the inspiration for Simmons’s unrelenting Terence Fletcher.

“It started more with my personal experiences, having had a conductor who made a point of terrifying his students and players. As a drummer, my motivation for being a good drummer was born out of fear, which in a way seems so antithetical to what art should be,” said Chazelle. “It started from me trying to grapple with my personal experiences and wonder if they said anything broader, into other art forms.”

Regarding his intense portrayal of a teacher who pushes his students to their psychological limits in order to achieve their maximum potential, Simmons explored the merits of his character’s motivation and the aspirations of young artists. “I think that, in people of that ilk, it comes from a passion. It comes from a commitment to greatness and to create great art. And then, it comes from a frustration at the fact that we’re human beings and we don’t achieve perfection. Some people handle that better than others.”

In an audio recording from the Film Society’s Walter Reade Theater (above), listen to the two discuss their philosophy on their own work, the film’s complete background (which consisted of a mere 19-day production), and humanizing Simmons’s character. Regardless of viewers' passions and interests, the questions posed by Whiplash transcend the world of jazz into all art forms.