The Untold Truth Of Whiplash

Is sacrifice required to achieve greatness, and if so, to what extent? Is art inauthentic if it comes easy? At what point does a demanding coach cross the line from helpful to abusive? These are the big questions "Whiplash" asks its audience as viewers watch the story of Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), a college student with dreams of being the next great American drummer under the tutelage of his psychotic professor, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons).

The 2014 movie itself faced a production saga, not unlike its characters' journeys. To raise the money to produce "Whiplash," writer and director Damien Chazelle condensed the story into an 18-minute short film, also starring Simmons, per MovieMaker Magazine. With a proof of concept, the film earned its financial backing and went on to achieve critical acclaim and notoriety — with its fair share of twists and turns along the way. Here is the untold truth of "Whiplash."

The basis of Andrew Neiman's trajectory in "Whiplash" was inspired by writer/director Damien Chazelle's experience in his high school jazz ensemble. Neiman faces intense pressure to improve his drumming from his borderline-psychotic teacher, who demands perfection, a dynamic that mirrored Chazelle's youth. Chazelle told The Hollywood Reporter that his teacher constantly yelled the phrases, "You're rushing, "You're dragging," and "Not my tempo!" It's familiar verbiage to "Whiplash" viewers who heard these words shouted by Neiman's professor, Fletcher.

One moment in the film sees a semi-truck t-bone Neiman's rental car at an intersection on his way to a performance. Even though the car is wrecked and blood streams down Neiman's face, the concert is all he can think about. He flees the intersection to make it to the show on time, battered and worse for wear. The inspiration for this scene comes from a similar moment in Chazelle's high-school days when he got in a wreck that flipped his car twice and still performed with his jazz ensemble the next day (via The Moveable Fest). In a bizarre twist of fate, a similar incident happened again during the filming of "Whiplash." This time, Chazelle totaled his car in an accident and required a hospital visit. Regardless, he promptly returned to the director's chair the following day, emulating his own creation.

In J.K. Simmons' portrayal of Fletcher, Neiman's commanding conductor, the audience only sees how Fletcher upholds himself — aggressively — around his musicians. Most of Fletcher's personal life is left to the viewer's imagination, but that wasn't always the case. Sequences that were shot but not included in the finished movie showed Fletcher's home life in a way that would have added another layer of dimension to the duality of his character.

"We shot a half a day of scenes in Fletcher's apartment ... where we see just how Spartan his existence is," Simmons told That Shelf. "It's a nice apartment, but the one time we see him, he's drinking a glass of red wine with a frozen microwave dinner eating by himself. He's a sad guy, and the ONLY thing he has in his life is the music." Fletcher puts so much into his work that his life has little room for anything else, whether by choice or nature. While some of this is implied in the scenes that made the final cut, the deleted moments would have provided more context to understand his character.

Sometimes an actor has to undergo a strict physical training regimen to prepare for a role that requires their character to be lean, ripped, or otherwise superhuman. In contrast to the bodybuilding prep for some of his other roles, Miles Teller had to intentionally stay away from the gym to match his character's exercise habits in "Whiplash."

"I had just gotten done making the first "Divergent," and for that we had to go to a boot camp and all of the guys and girls there had to be in great shape for all of the fighting we have to do," Teller told That Shelf. For "Whiplash," though, Teller's instructions were decidedly different. "Don't go outside. Don't touch a weight outside of maybe doing some forearm stuff. Just put on some larger shirts than you would normally wear and just let that carry over into how the character carries himself."

These instructions make sense within the context of the story. For starters, Teller's character, Andrew Neiman, is a college freshman, probably prone to the infamous "freshman 15" phenomenon, in which first-year college students typically put on 15 pounds (via Healthline). Someone as focused on perfecting his drumming as Neiman doesn't have time to be concerned with his personal image. To him, any time not spent drumming is time wasted, including visits to the gym. Teller's appearance had to uphold the integrity of that.

As "Whiplash" gained prominence within the zeitgeist of mid-2010s popular culture, a number of artists tried their hand at parodying the film. A video from College Humor on YouTube took existing footage of J.K. Simmons from the film and made it seem like Fletcher was training Weird Al in the art of polka. Try as he might, Weird Al can't match Fletcher's tempo, his abused hands smearing blood on his accordion keys. "Look," Weird Al pleads, "when I said I wanted to be perfect, I didn't mean 'perfect' perfect." Fletcher throws a chair at his head.

The STATION by MAKER created a parody trailer for a fake movie titled "DJ Wh1PLA$H," in which a student endures the rigors of an intense professor who teaches deejaying, not drumming (via YouTube). During a prerecorded introduction to the 2015 Film Independent Spirit Awards, hosts Kristen Bell and Fred Armisen encounter Miles Teller in character as Andrew Neiman from "Whiplash" drumming by himself in a room (via YouTube).

With music being such an integral part of "Whiplash," sound mixer Tom Curly worked carefully to ensure everything sounded authentic in each sequence. Per URSA Straps on YouTube, Curly worked on the shoot from its inception. While the music in the film was prerecorded, he and his team wanted to avoid each composition sounding like a CD track. It was essential to maintain what the room sounded like, too. Curly was closely involved in the setup of each scene alongside director Damien Chazelle in a way atypical to the distanced role of most sound mixing projects.

Curly also revealed a bit of moviemaking magic. While they recorded the music separately from shooting, the musicians the audience sees are legitimate experts of their instrument, not actors, so as to maintain an authentic feel. "They all know those instruments specifically," Curly said. "They gave them all the charts ahead of time and they were to learn how to play them, note for note. When we got on set, they would actually do that, but we didn't record their playing for the purposes of using it in the movie."

"Whiplash" ends somewhat abruptly, immediately after Neiman gives an incredible performance in which he challenges Fletcher for control over the orchestra in real-time in front of an auditorium of people. At first, Fletcher is confused and embarrassed but then goes with it. What follows is an imbalance of a long-established scale between a pupil and a mentor as the two men battle for the power of the stage, with Neiman arguably winning. Just as the performance ends, the camera cuts to black, and the credits begin rolling. There's no epilogue, no follow-up.

Director Damien Chazelle left the movie's conclusion somewhat open but told Roger Ebert that he thought the audience would interpret it as more "tragic" than "triumphant." However, the opposite occurred more often than Chazelle expected. He thought audiences would be sad that Neiman essentially becomes a version of Fletcher, signaling a lifetime of emptiness ahead of him. Instead, Chazelle seems to experience more viewers who lean toward considering the ending a glass-half-full situation, with Neiman achieving the success he dreamed of while simultaneously besting the man who manipulated and abused him.