Genre: Drama
Premise: A young drummer at a prestigious music school is challenged by the department’s ruthless headmaster to be the best he can possibly be, no matter what the consequences.
About: Writer-director Damien Chazelle is quickly making a name for himself as an up-and-coming talent in Hollywood. He recently wrote the Elijah Wood starrer, Grand Piano (whose script I reviewed here) and now he’s written AND directed his first “major” film, with Whiplash. Whiplash was the darling at the Sundance Film Festival, winning both the audience award and the dramatic award. It stars Miles Teller, an up-and-coming talent of his own, who just starred in this past weekend’s “That Awkward Moment” as well as last year’s The Spectacular Now. Chazelle graduated from Harvard and got his start by writing and directing a small musical called “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench.” He also was hired to pen The Last Exorcism 2 (which is kind of an oxymoron, right?). Me guesses that put enough money in Chazelle’s pocket to write the films he wanted.
Writer: Damien Chazelle
Details: 111 pages (March 2012 draft)
I’ve been skeptical of this one from the beginning. A movie about… drumming? About drummers competing?? Okay okay, yeah I know. You can write a good script about anything. In the end it’s about the characters anyway, so what should the subject matter matter? But a movie about… drumming??
On top of that, it’s starring Miles Teller, Hollywood’s new can’t miss star. No, I don’t dislike Miles. I think he’s really talented. The Spectacular Now was in my Top 10 of last year, and a big part of that was because of him. But the thing is, once Hollywood picks someone to be their It Boy (or It Girl) the critic and independent community become a little blinded by that star’s shine. They start anointing every film he’s in as amazing because the shine has blinded them from seeing the film’s faults. I’ve seen it happen many a time before. Shia LaBeouf’s career comes to mind (Eagle Eye and Distubia? Come on, they were O-KAY. But I wouldn’t call them “good”).
With that said, it’s not easy to snag BOTH the dramatic and audience awards at Sundance. The dramatic award usually goes to some really artsy esoteric film about a Romanian man who makes candles. The audience award goes to the feel good movie of the festival. Well, this one apparently made everyone feel good, judges and audiences alike. Let’s see if the screenplay made me feel the same.
Whiplash’s plot is kinda simplistic. Actually that’s an understatement. Andrew Neyman, 19 years old, a sort-of outcast, goes to a special music school in New York. He plays the drums, and he’s good at them. Not great, but good.
So one day, while playing, this guy named Fletcher, who’s the Da Vinci of this school’s orchestra and one of the scariest men alive, comes in to a practice session to listen to Andrew play. He’s not overly impressed, but there’s something in Andrew’s eyes that tells Fletcher to give him a shot.
So Fletcher makes him an alternate on the school’s band, a band many consider to be the best in the country. After a screw-up by one of the other drum chairs, Andrew’s able to grab one of the main spots, and he does good enough to make him a full-time member.
Which seems like a good thing. The problem is, Fletcher is a fucking psychopath and obsessed with pushing his players beyond any and all reasonable thresholds. He curses at them, throws things at them, calls them derogatory names like “faggot” (GLAAD is going to have a field day with this one). He does it under the guise of pushing his students to be great, but the truth is, he’s just a deranged lunatic.
So he pushes Andrew and pushes Andrew and pushes Andrew until finally Andrew cracks and beats the shit out of him. This leads to him getting kicked out of school, and Andrew giving up on his dream of drumming. He’s eventually approached by a law firm who’s been trying to take down Fletcher for awhile (this is around page 80). They want him to anonymously testify against Fletcher to get him kicked out of the school.
Andrew does, then starts a new life as a paralegal. That is until he runs into the now-fired Fletcher, who wants Andrew to play in a new band of his. Andrew decides that he still loves drumming and so agrees, only to find out when he gets to the final big concert that he’s been set up to fail, to be humiliated by Fletcher.
I’ve never read anything like Whiplash. It’s a really strange script. Truthfully, it’s probably not meant to be enjoyed in screenplay form. This movie is all about the music, and music doesn’t translate well on the page. So you have to take that into consideration when judging it.
But it took me awhile (almost 80 pages) to figure out what this script was REALLY about. It wasn’t about a story (which is what I kept waiting for). It was about two characters battling. And when I say that, I MEAN it. There is virtually nothing else going on in this script. No love interest. No backstory. No character dimension. Just a battle.
And that’s the strange thing about Whiplash. The characters are drawn one-dimensionally almost as a way to accentuate that battle. Andrew is “I want be great drummer.” Fletcher is “I am evil teacher.” There is no other shade to them. What’s surprising is that even with these pancake-flat characters, Chazelle almost makes it work. Because the battle between them is SO. DAMN. INTENSE.
But man, I could only take 5 scenes of Andrew violently banging on the drums as Fletcher yelled at him before I was like, “Okay, I get it!”
There was something about it all that rubbed me the wrong way and I’m trying to figure out what that was. Part of it was that Fletcher was SOOOOOO over the top in his insanity (faggots and calling Andrew’s dad a failure and throwing things at Andrew) that I was always aware (during those times) that the character was being written.
And I didn’t like Andrew’s take on life either. His philosophy is basically “I don’t have friends and family and I don’t care. I just want to be great at drumming and have a bunch of people look up to me and then die.” Talk about a depressing way to live your life. And that’s our hero!
So there was a little bit of Real Housewives of Pick Your City going on here, where you don’t really like anyone you’re watching. But all the crazy conflict keeps you from turning the channel.
Are there some lessons to learn from the script? Well, Chazelle does well by bringing a time-tested always-works movie device into play: the unorthodox teacher. From Dead Poet’s Society to The Karate Kid to The King’s Speech, these types of characters typically delight readers and audiences. And he does do something different with the character by making him really really really mean.
And Chazelle mined a thoughtful theme here. Friends and Family vs. Greatness. One of the ways writers like to explore their themes is by posing it in a question, then using the script to debate that question. And I felt that here. The theme question was probably something like, “Is it better to be great at something and friendless or be average and surrounded by friends?”
A few screenplay teachers will say that you want at least one scene in your script that directly addresses that question, and we get that here. Andrew gets in a fight with his uncle at a family dinner, arguing just that: that he’d rather die friendless and be great at something than be like him (his uncle) who’s surrounded by love but is a nobody.
And actually, I think that’s why this script ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth. Not because it was badly written. Cause it wasn’t. (spoiler) But because in the end, Andrew chooses to be great, to live a friendless lonely existence at that expense. And that just made me really really sad. In a script that basically shuffled back and forth between lots of drumming to lots of practicing to lots of music terminology to lots of yelling, to go off on that note felt lonely and sad. And it’s hard for me to endorse something that makes me feel that way.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Love the subject matter you’re writing about. – This is Chezelle’s third music-inspired screenplay and you can tell he loves the subject matter. He knows EVERYTHING about it and he CARES about everything to do with it and that comes out on the page. Find a subject matter you’re an expert in and you love, then bleed it onto the page. I can’t guarantee your story will be great. But I CAN guarantee that your script will have passion. And your script NEEDS passion to be successful.
