Oscar’s biggest surprise this year was the nomination of Whiplash as one of the eight films up for Best Picture. J.K. Simmons is nominated for Best Supporting Actor. And the writer who turned 30 TODAY is up for best screenplay from a previous work for his own Short Film.
Whiplash (Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons) – It is the role and the performance of a lifetime. J.K. Simmons is one of Hollywood’s most prolific performers, a character actor in the fine tradition of J.T. Walsh, James Rebhorn and Richard Jenkins. These actors wait a lifetime for a starring role that puts them front and center in a major motion picture. Jenkins struck gold when he starred in The Visitor, gaining an Oscar nomination and several top awards in 2007.
Simmons has had an incredible film and TV career and still stars in those annoying Farmer’s Insurance commercials. He was the dad in Juno, a Secret Service agent in The Jackal, J. Jonah Jameson in all of the Spiderman films, Jason Bateman’s plant manager in Extract, and a second banana in every Jason Reitman film. He is that rarest of breeds – a working actor who seemingly doesn’t care about fame.
And then came Whiplash, a film that started as an award-winning short and is now an Oscar-nominated full-length feature. Simmons plays Terrance Fletcher, a music teacher at an exclusive music academy. Feared and revered, Fletcher is a terror. He is every student’s nightmare; the perfectionist who everyone hates but who turns out prodigy after prodigy. We have seen this character before. He humiliates, berates and insults. Because Simmons often plays tough guys, he is perfectly cast. But this performance is way beyond (what could have been) a stereotype. He loves these kids but just believes that pushing them ultimately brings out their best. Incidentally, Simmons studied to be a composer, has a degree in music, and looks perfectly natural here leading his elite studio jazz band.
His most recent foil is Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller of Divergent and Footloose), a first-year drummer with enormous passion, potential and promise. Neyman wants to be among the best ever; Buddy Rich is his idol. Fletcher sees the promise in the kid and pushes him hard … maybe too hard. These two face off.
It is hard to believe that a low-budget flick about a student drummer and a tough teacher could make it to Oscar night. It is a great credit to Simmons, to Teller, and particularly to 30-year-old writer-director Damien Chazelle (who is also Oscar nominated for his script). Chazelle, a Harvard graduate, had one previous credit, a cheap little film about a jazz trumpeter called Guy and Madeline on a Pack Bench.
He wrote Whiplash, basing the Fletcher character on a teacher of his, but he couldn’t convince a studio to make it into a feature. So he made it into a “short” film that won the Short Film Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013. Suddenly, he had a studio willing to make it into a full-length feature. The rest is history.
With its $3 million budget, Whiplash is going to make a lot of money now. It has already grossed more than twice that much. Simmons has won every Supporting Actor award so far, and Teller doesn’t just fake it as a drummer. The movie is music to the ears of independent filmgoers.
If you get a chance to see Whiplash, do it because it doesn’t miss a beat.