Buddy Rich, the legendary outspoken wunderkind jazz drummer and bandleader, once advised aspiring percussionists in an interview: “Any young drummer starting out today definitely should get himself a great teacher and learn all there is to know about the instrument that he wants to play.”
Great teachers, outspoken leaders, jazz drumming — these are all at the core of the 2014 music drama-thriller, Whiplash, written and directed by Princeton’s own Damien Chazelle.
Whiplash focuses on Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), a young drummer entering his first year of music school, whose talents — and more so his determination to improve them — eventually lead him to play in the school’s most esteemed studio jazz band, led by bandleader-cum-tyrant, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), whose pedagogical approach pushes Andrew to mental and physical extremes.
The movie, being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, is currently playing at the Princeton Garden Theatre and the Montgomery Cinema.
In writing the film, Chazelle, 29, followed the age-old advice to write what you know, and his muse dates back to high school, when he was the drummer in the Princeton High School studio band under the direction of award-winning music teacher, Dr. Anthony Biancosino, who died in 2003.
But don’t get “Dr. B” confused with Whiplash’s antagonist. “This is not a movie about [Damien’s] drum teacher,” said Damien’s father, Bernard Chazelle, a computer science professor at Princeton University. “It is inspired by him, but I don’t want people to think that this kind of behavior is what happened. Damien was never slapped by anybody, and [Dr. B] didn’t throw chairs or use bad language (behaviors exhibited by Fletcher in the movie). So this is all a creative liberty.”
Bernard describes Dr. B as “charismatic, but very friendly,” and “a charming, nice guy,” adding that at his funeral, people “were grateful for what he had done for the jazz ensemble. There was no bad feeling.”
So where did the cruel Fletcher character come from? Damien’s mother, Celia — a professor of history at The College of New Jersey — agrees with her husband.
“The character of Terence Fletcher in the film didn’t have very much to do with what Dr. B was actually like,” she said. “I think Dr. B was very demanding, very high level. He would set extremely high standards, and he would let a performer know if they were not meeting those standards… the movie comes out of Damien taking that internalization of fear that he felt of displeasing this instructor, who he very much admired, and then taking that fear and creating an imaginary nightmare scenario.”
“I think the movie is told from the brain of that teenager, where everything is amplified,” Bernard said. “So at the time, Damien probably felt that [Dr. B] was a psychopath; he probably thought, ‘This guy’s a monster.’ But then you think back on it and you realize that no, he was just using certain pedagogical methods, which probably are not to be condoned. I think they’re probably bad ways of doing things, but they were not the work of a psychopath.”
“You could tell that all the students were in awe of him — awe in both senses of the term: they admired him and they were scared of him,” Bernard said. “[Dr. B] was probably unnecessarily over the top in his toughness, but Damien never thought that the guy was irrational when he criticized him — Damien knew that he had screwed up. It’s not like the guy was a sadist, who simply, regardless of your performance, would go after you because he was some kind of monster. That’s not true. He would go after you when you screwed up.”
On the other hand, Bernard notes that ultimately, Dr. B’s leadership was constructive: “[The PHS Studio Band was] doing very well and so people appreciated him — his drive and commitment was unquestioned. I think that’s the other side of the story.”
Damien began playing drums at the age of 10. According to Bernard, “He was a very lively, rambunctious kid” but also “ a very sweet, nice kid. We figured that drums would be a good instrument for him because he was so dynamic and full of life.”
Soon after, Damien acquired a drum set and began taking lessons. Although he was exposed to jazz at a young age, it wasn’t until 9th grade, when Dr. B put him into studio band as an alternate, that his passion for jazz flourished.
“Because it was at such a high level, and it’s a very difficult kind of music to master he really studied hard,” said Celia.
Rich Scannella, a Ewing-based professional drummer (for artists as popular as Jon Bon Jovi), drum instructor for over two decades, and now a professor at Rider University, met Damien when Celia contacted him to arrange private drum lessons for her son while he was in studio band.
Scannella vividly recalls Damien’s dedication to honing his jazz drumming skills. “I remember him being a very conscientious student — if I said something, he really took it to heart; he listened intently; he really was a great student. I’ve been teaching drums for almost 30 years, and I’ve seen a lot of kids — but he was a standout.
“I always enjoyed teaching him because he was into it, he was interested, he was diligent, and he was very conscientious, so I could tell he wasn’t just walking through the lesson… it’s always a pleasure for me as a teacher to teach someone like that, because when the student’s into it, it makes my job a lot easier and more fun.”
But not even Damien’s passion for drumming could extinguish his heart’s true calling. “I do have memories of him practicing [drums] for hours on end — he was passionate about it from the start,” said Anna Chazelle, Damien’s sister, an actress and circus artist. “Film, however, was something he was drawn to since birth — no one in our family ever had any doubt that he would one day be a filmmaker, and an incredibly successful one at that.”
“As a three year old he was making movies with his fingers and drawing pictures of screens with things inside and he was pretty fascinated by that,” Bernard said.
“His first passion had always been film, so what he was always doing in any spare time was getting out the camcorder and shooting films, or writing screenplays or storyboarding films,” said Celia.
Bernard said that Princeton High School did not offer any film study classes, and until Damien attended Harvard University, his experience with film was completely self-taught.
“He basically was a film major in college and he made a movie for his senior thesis,” Bernard said. “He knew all along that’s what he wanted to do, so in this case, things were very simple because he didn’t have the usual angst of teenagers — ‘What am I going to do now?’ — it was [making films] or nothing. Independently of whether he would do well or not, he would make movies. It didn’t matter whether he would have to share an apartment with a bunch of students for years — making movies was, for my son, pretty much the only path.”
That path has finally led Damien to achieve significant critical acclaim, thanks to Whiplash, which is already receiving a lot of Oscar buzz.
So how do the Chazelles feel about his achievements? “It’s hard to put into words how incredibly exciting it is to see the national and international attention Whiplash is getting,” says Anna. “I’m filled with pride every time I overhear a stranger mention how much they loved this movie. My friends will not stop raving about it.”
Celia is a little more cautious, albeit still optimistic. “I get nervous — I’m the mom. Hollywood is a very fragile place. He’s doing well right now, and I hope things continue to go well for him and that he just keeps a level-head.”
She said that her biggest takeaway from the movie was that, although Whiplash is largely about jazz drumming, it transcends that — it’s about achieving excellence in anything and raises a lot of questions.
“How far should we push in the pursuit of excellence? Where is the line? I think those are very useful questions for anyone to reflect on, but I don’t think in the film [Damien’s] really giving any black and white answers to those questions,” she said. “I hope that people come out of the film and reflect on the questions for themselves and then answer them for themselves, but not feel that the film is trying to present one clear vision of the answer.”
These questions, Celia says, “can be applied to any area of the arts or sports, any place where you are trying to master a skill, and you’re trying to reach towards a level of excellence and greatness, whether it’s in music or painting or in athletics,” she said. “I think the question the film puts out is how far do you go? What’s the role of the teacher in pushing students or mentoring students to reach that level? And how far should one push oneself to reach towards greatness? I think those are open ended questions.”
Young Damien Chazelle at his drum kit. Chazelle was a drummer in the Princeton High School Studio Band and used some of his experiences there for his critically acclaimed movie “Whiplash.” (Photo courtesy of Celia Chazelle.),
