Welcome to the latest installment of FootballScoop Cinema. Previous editions: The Longest Yard | Friday Night Lights | All the Right Moves | Remember the Titans
Film: Whiplash
Release date: Oct. 10, 2014
Box office: $49 million against a $3.3 million budget
The trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d_jQycdQGo
The plot: Before we take a hard left turn off Football Avenue, let's consider one quote you're undoubtedly quite familiar with. "Mediocre people don't like high achievers," Nick Saban says, "and high achievers don't like mediocre people." Whiplash takes this quote and teases it out over 107 tense minutes, set in the highly competitive world of jazz music.
This isn't a movie about jazz drumming. It's a movie about the obsessive pursuit of greatness and costs to achieve it.
If you're familiar with this film at all, it's likely thanks to this scene. (Warning: language.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDAsABdkWSc
There we have our protagonist, the young Andrew Neiman weeping on the kit, and his mentor, tormentor, teacher and abuser, the legendary Terence Fletcher. You may watch that scene and assume that is the crescendo -- musical term! -- between Neiman and Fletcher, but, sadly, no. This is the beginning. What you saw there was Neiman's first rep with the studio band at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory in New York.
Fletcher walks Shaffer's halls as if he his God Himself: conversations stop and eyes dart to the floor when he walks in a room, doors clapping like thunder behind him, and one imperfect note in front of him could shatter a promising musician's confidence forever.
This dynamic is what Neiman craves. At just 19 years old, he's the youngest member in one of the best studio bands in the world, and he wants more. Neiman moves his mattress into his practice studio, practices until his hands bleed, and sees himself as the heir to Buddy Rich and Charlie Parker, the greatest jazz musicians of the 20th century. Neiman wants to be great, and he's willing to do anything to get there.
We see that in two conversations. In one, at a dinner with his father and who we're led to believe are his aunt, uncle and cousins, Neiman grows resentful when the table fawns over one cousins's Division III football exploits while he is the first-chair drummer in the best college jazz orchestra in the world. "I'd rather die drunk, broke and full of heroin at 34 and have people at a dinner table talk about me," Neiman says, referencing the real death of the real Charlie Parker, "than live to be rich and sober at 90 and have nobody remember who I was."
Then there is Andrew's breakup with his girlfriend Nicole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsWlktW0kj4
Nicole, his failed writer-turned-high school English teaching father, his bandmates, all of them are mediocre people who must be shed or ignored until Andrew fulfills his ultimate destiny of true, timeless greatness.
After rising from essentially the backup drummer in Shaffer's JV band to the varsity starter, Neiman shows just how manically far he's willing to go to prove Fletcher wrong/win his approval at the same time. While rushing to an out of town competition, Neiman's car gets broadsided by an oncoming bus. He emerges, scraped and bloody, turning back only because he forgot to pull his sticks from the wreckage. Neiman reaches the stage with seconds to spare, only his hands are too damaged to play the sticks, sabotaging Shaffer's performance. Fletcher informs Neiman he's been kicked out of the band, and Neiman snaps, tackling Fletcher on stage.
Now expelled from Shaffer altogether, Neiman and his father meet with a lawyer representing the parents of a former Shaffer student named Sean Casey. Fletcher had mentioned him earlier, brought to tears at how he had coached Sean from the brink of dropping out of Shaffer into realizing his full potential as a trumpet player, and now he was a core member of the Lincoln Center's jazz band -- until dying, Fletcher told the current Shaffer band, in a car accident. Only, the lawyer informed the Neimans, Sean Casey hadn't died in a car accident. He hanged himself, and his parents believed he never recovered from the depression Fletcher brought upon him. The lawyer asks if Andrew would like to come forward, anonymously, with his experiences, and Andrew says he will.
Months later, Neiman stumbles upon Fletcher in the wild, playing piano at a jazz club. Neiman tries to leave, but Fletcher spots him and the two share a drink. There, Fletcher reveals he's been fired from Shaffer and he explains the method to his madness.
"I wasn't there to conduct," Fletcher says. "Any moron can wave his arms and keep people in tempo. I was there to push people beyond what's expected of them. I believe that is an absolute necessity. Otherwise we're depriving the world of the next Louie Armstrong, the next Charlie Parker.
"That, to me, is an absolute tragedy," he continues. "There are no two words in the English language more harmful than 'Good job.'"
When Neiman asks if Fletcher was inadvertently pushing the next Charlie Parker away by being so harsh -- clearly, implying himself there -- Fletcher says no. "The next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged." Fletcher says he never had a Charlie Parker, "but I tried. And I will never apologize for how I tried."
As the two part, Fletcher says he's leading a pick-up band at an upcoming jazz festival. As it happens, their previous drummer wasn't up to speed, and the band was playing the same songs Neiman knew from his time at Shaffer. Fletcher offers Neiman the chance to take his place. Neiman hesitates, but both men part knowing Neiman will take up Fletcher's offer.
At the festival, Fletcher explains the stakes to his new band. Play well out there and a world of opportunity will open up for them; play poorly, and their careers are as good as done. As the band takes the stage, Neiman learns he's walked into a trap. Fletcher tells the band to pull out sheets for a new song -- sheets Neiman doesn't have. Fletcher tells Neiman he knows it was him who talked to the lawyer, him who got him fired from Shaffer, and he's taking his revenge by ruining him in the biggest moment of his career.
At first Neiman tries to improvise, but when it becomes clear he's not going to play his way out of Fletcher's trap, a humiliated Neiman leaves the stage, where he's met by his father. As his father -- the personification of mediocrity -- hugs Neiman, Neiman rejects his embrace, then returns to the stage. He sits at his kit and starts playing, cueing in the the cello player to his right, then eventually the entire band. Finally pushed, poked and prodded to his full potential, Neiman unleashes a transcendent solo, winning Fletcher's respect while overcoming him at the same time. Playing in front of every critic, conductor and gatekeeper who matters on the New York jazz scene, Neiman is now so talented and so untouchable that not even the mighty Terence Fletcher can destroy him.
Neiman is on his way to becoming the next Charlie Parker, thereby proving both himself and his nemesis correct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4noaE0CdZUw
Is there any typical Hollywood jazz instability? You see, the thing about the way Nieman grips his sticks is...
No, you'll have to go over to JazzScoopfor a breakdown there.
What's the moral of the story? The line to becoming a true great -- the next Charlie Parker, the next Steven Spielberg, the next Peyton Manning -- is blurry. Where does total devotion end and destructive obsession begin? When does constructive criticism stop and verbal abuse begin?
Fletcher destroyed the careers (and lives) of hundreds of talented, young musicians in his years as a conductor, yet he would call that the cost of doing business when mining for greatness. Neiman readily accepts he'll likely die young and alone, but it's worth it if his music lives on beyond him.
It's easy to say we've chased all the Terence Fletchers out of football these days, but how sure of that can we be, especially when Fletcher is at the top of his profession? How many broken people is an equitable trade off to create one more Charlie Parker? Did Neiman succeed because of Fletcher, or in spite of him?
Should you show this to your players? Eh, maybe.
Should you show this to your staff? Absolutely.