Since its debut at the Sundance Film Festival last January, "Whiplash" has been on a bit of a tear. Winning both the audience and jury prizes in Park City, the film has gone on to screen at numerous festivals all over the world, gaining further acclaim at Cannes, winning best film at Deauville, and playing to rapturous applause at this year's Toronto International Film Festival.
The film is a bombastic tale about a drum student living up to the near-impossible expectations set by a tyrannical instructor. With its mix of fantasy and documentary-like reality, it's a film made more remarkable for its shifts in tone that build up to a stunning finale. Director Damien Chazelle spoke with Moviefone Canada about the reception the film has received since its debut, working with the film's remarkable cast, and how that ending came together in the edit.
Moviefone Canada: You first made the film as a short that played Sundance -- was this always conceived as a feature?
Damien Chazelle: No one wanted to make the feature script I'd written, and that led to the short. It was made to try and convince people that a movie about a jazz drummer could be watchable, let alone exciting. I'd been a jazz drummer myself, so I knew I was biased. I knew to me, it felt like high stakes drama, but it was hard to convince people of that on the page. So we just pulled a scene from that, did it as a short, took that to Sundance, and that helped to get us the money.
When did you know that it was going to work?
I guess as soon as we finished the short. I still don't know if [the final film] works as a piece of art, but we made a short and a feature in such a fast, agenda-driven way that we almost didn't have time to second-guess ourselves. That was the one benefit of a rushed schedule, so it was just about getting the money and then actually making the thing, [about] getting on set and then making the Sundance submission time. You don't have time to actually think about too much more until you're actually at Sundance and beyond.
You've played the film now to different audiences, from Sundance to Cannes to TIFF. How has the reaction changed?
I have a hard time dealing with screenings at all. Cannes, Sundance, the first screenings at each of these festivals, I kind of forced myself to sit through, so those are the first times I've seen it with an audience. Sundance was the first time so it was like a daze. I was probably the most nervous about Cannes because I heard they boo movies there. Cannes was great so I was [thinking] Toronto, hopefully that will be fun, but it's not going to be as good as Cannes. Then actually, we screened it yesterday and I had a blast. Some people seem to take it as a triumphant sort of thing, other people take it as a tragedy. I think I thought it was more of a feel-bad movie, more of a tragedy.
Did your view of the storyline change at all now that you've lived with the film for a little bit?
When I was making it, I really thought it was in many ways a dark, depressing kind of movie that was hopefully entertaining, but ultimately an incredibly sad story about a person becoming a shell of himself, and bullying as a systemic kind of thing. On the one hand, it surprised me, on the other hand, it's bracing that people do seem to respond to that but also that they get a visceral, fun kick out of it.
I think that's really what the music does, it's certainly what the music did to me growing up. I think people who think they don't like jazz, if you film it right, as with anything, if you put it on screen and force people to pay attention to it, the music is undeniable. When you're playing something like Caravan, it's just that you're playing one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, so that carries a lot of the weight.
Is the character J.K. Simmons based on someone you knew?
He's based in large part on a teacher I had as a drummer myself, a sort of composite of that and people who I studied with. There's certain big elements I can't really take credit for, in the sense that there's nothing in that character that I didn't steal from some part of my experience, jazz history, or other people's stories.
There's quite a bit of power in J.K. Simmons' performance.
Yeah, there's so much to say there's almost nothing to say. I can't take that much credit. He was in the short we used as the investment tool. We didn't have any time for rehearsal, so the day before the shoot of the short I said, "Just make sure when you're yelling in the script, don't just yell, just literally become not human." I said "become an animal" and he nodded. He came back the next day and he scared all of us and that was it. Where he was at in the short is where he was in the feature, so that was already a fully formed thing.
What's the relation with the composition "Whiplash" that gives the film its name?
I used to play it, and it was the bane of my existence. It's a drummer's nightmare. Both Whiplash and Caravan were pieces that I played a lot growing up and Whiplash was the first, that whole first rehearsal scene I remember was my first rehearsal scene. I showed up and the teacher pointed me out and said we've got the newbie here, everybody look at him, and then they played Whiplash and I didn't know how to read music at that point. It was just this jumble of notes.
Everyone thought I knew how to read music but I secretly didn't, so I had to teach myself how to very quickly. I saw the time signature, but didn't know what it meant. I had no idea what the drummer was doing and it totally screwed with me, and it's the kind of song that sometimes seems deceptively simple because it'll slide into a groove, and it feels like you can clock into it. It's called Whiplash, it's like the whole thing is designed to screw with you and make you scared, and that was interesting to me, that there's elements of jazz and elements of music that have hostility built into them, that I hadn't seen a movie about.
Can you still hear the song Whiplash and not feel the pain, and can you watch your film and not feel the struggle of making it?
I can listen to Whiplash and enjoy it, I can watch the movie and well, not enjoy it, but not think about the pain of making it. Whatever the songs that were on the radio, and I don't even remember what they are, or on my iPod driving to the set back and forth, now whenever I hear them, I think about that four-week period of shooting that was a four-week daze, [like a] boot camp.
"Whiplash" is now playing in theatres.
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