Who took the folder with the sheet music? No one is even heard or seen passing by in the background.
In the screenplay, it really is suggested to have been picked up by a janitor, and the folder's eventually recovered and returned to its owner, just too late. My first inclination on seeing the film was that Andrew did deliberately hide it as an act of sabotage, but I'm not sure any more.
It's pretty unlikely, but I like to think that Fletcher himself took it in order to find out if any of his drummers knows the piece by heart. How on Earth did he do it, I have no idea.
Funny enough, this video shows that most likely Fletcher took the folder.
Considering Fletcher is a blatant psychopath and is Stupid Evil enough to physically assault his students in front of everybody... How come nobody just reported him to the administrators or even the police? The movie would've been far shorter if the kids had just thought of that.
In a lot of situations where abuse/misconduct is taking place, it can be surprisingly hard to speak up — in the specific instance of Terence Fletcher's band, it appears that it's a fairly prestigious group and that Fletcher is an instructor with considerable cachet at the conservatory. Fletcher's personal relationship with Andrew seems to be the exception rather than the rule, but it's still possible students don't issue any formal complaints to the administration (or the police) out of fear of endangering their positions at Shaffer, or out of fear they won't be believed, or due to having internalized the belief that they should be able to take the heat, sort of Stockholm syndrome on a class-wide scale.
That's a good point, though I still consider it unrealistic that nobody would report Fletcher after he starts beating on his students For the Evulz. Then again, I don't see how a tyrant like Fletcher could even get a job. Maybe it's just me. Either way, thanks for the explanation.
You definitely have a point that somebody should have recognized Fletcher's physical violence, at least, as abnormal — it's possible the community of musicians (at least in the film) has a tendency to romanticize physical violence and temperamental behavior, but for a teacher it's especially out of line. And in the scenes before the Carnegie Hall performance at the end, he treats all those performers brusquely but professionally — it's clear that's not just how he is all the time, but something he can turn on and off, which is creepier.
As Youtuber Adam Neely pointed out in his review, some of Fletcher's behavior is clearly based on real jazz instructors, and some of the stuff he does like the homophobia, casual misogyny, and singling players out for humiliation, those do happen. Just not to the extreme levels that Fletcher does. As an actual band director he interviewed mentioned, it's likely that in real life, Fletcher's behavior would not go unnoticed because everyone in the band would be changing their majors to something that allowed them to avoid having to interact with him.
There is a long and unfortunate history of schools turning a blind eye to this sort of behavior when teachers or coaches carry a certain amount of prestige. Bob Knight, for example, was very similar (evidence of physical abuse is dubious, but there are allegations that have him going as far as choking his athletes), but held a head coach job at Indiana for thirty years because he was the best coach of his time, and one of the best in history.
And in a lot of creative fields, the people involved tend to romanticize that kind of torture - thinking of it as Necessarily Evil and something that has to be endured for the sake of art. Andrew himself clearly thinks that. He simply sees his own playing as the problem, rather than the teacher. It's only when he finds out that the supposed great student actually committed suicide from Fletcher's treatment that he puts a stop to him.
While the kind of abuse Fletcher dishes out is believable in environments that demand perfection, it's his Establishing Character Moment (throwing the chair at Andrew) that strains credulity to the breaking point. While his abuse was certainly horrific and degrading, potentially committing a violent criminal act that would have been impossible to cover up (relying only on Andrew's reflexes to avoid the chair) seems uncharacteristic for Fletcher's usual psychological torture.
That's why it was his Establishing Character Moment. The movie wouldn't be anywhere near as memorable if Fletcher wasn't that psychopathic. He's a narrative device and not a realistic device. So it's basically Rule of Cool.
With the advent of smartphones and social media, Fletcher's abusive coaching should have long ago been documented, either by at least one student daring enough to try and expose their instructor, or an outsider investigating Fletcher's behavior by hiding the device in the classroom during Fletcher's off hours. Fletcher is implied to have been teaching at Shaffer for some time, so it seems very unlikely that students under his wing would keep silent. What other reasons besides plot convenience would his activities be looked over.
How did Andrew not know the music to be played at the festival? Shouldn't he have at least one practice session with the band? It seems like to pull this off, Fletcher would have had to prevent him from being part of a full set rehearsal and made this seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to do with a big festival coming up. Even if Andrew was a last minute replacement, it doesn't make sense for the band not to have a short run-through the night before the festival.
Wouldn't seem too out of character for Fletcher to say something like "Oh you know all the stuff we'll be doing" and say he doesn't need a run through.
In the scene where Fletcher invites Andrew to join his band, he says that all the music on the setlist is old stuff - "Caravan", "Whiplash", all those pieces. Andrew knows these by heart already, so all he'd really need was a quick refresher practice to get them perfect, and it would be really easy for either Andrew to simply practice these at home, or for Fletcher to not practice the new song in rehearsals where Andrew was present (but judging by the lateness of his entry, it seems like he didn't attend any at all).
In jazz, last minute replacements often happen very late. Since jazz musicians are generally freelancers who play wherever they get paid, it is common for bandleaders to always have backups available in case musicians need to back out for any reason. All these musicians are experienced sight readers so they can play music off a page even if they have never seen it before without needing to attend rehearsal. Occasionally, musicians will even show up directly to the gig, never having rehearsed with the rest of the band before. So the situation in the film is actually very believable. Of course, in this case, Fletcher did it just to get his petty revenge.
Why is Fletcher so insane about how everything needs to be exact? Jazz is based on improvisation and flexibility, and while there obviously has to be competence, simply having everyone following an exact formula doesn't work.
Fletcher's band is a competition group. Musical competitions like those shown are not about improv, they are about technical execution of the song. Yes this includes Jazz music.
He's a control freak, plain and simple. In his mind, he might just be trying to make sure his students can walk before they try to run, so to speak — being capable of technical exactness and to-the-letter correctness before they start trying to do their own thing — but given how much jazz as an art form replies on improvisation, he's doing them a disservice.
In this case, the pop-culture perception of improvisation in jazz is highly exaggerated. Improv is essential in smaller ensembles, and always has been: from its New Orleans origins in bands like Jelly-roll Morton's, to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie's bebop combos and beyond, collective improvisation was the lifeblood of the music. However, these were groups whose members could usually be counted on one hand. The larger swing band ensembles, like Fletcher's, almost never improvise outside of tightly regimented solos. Big bands like those of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Chick Webb and Tommy Dorsey were not known for their improvisation, but for their polish; the pieces would all be rehearsed to perfection. This was especially true when they were competing against another band (as Fletcher's always were): in the famous Chick Webb/Benny Goodman battle of the bands, Webb was so determined to win that as he prepared his band, he told them "Anybody who plays a wrong note, don't bother coming back the next day." This is just as true today for modern bands like Gordon Goodwin's, which are usually every bit as regimented. Only a few composers like Charles Mingus ever expected any kind of collective improv from bands that large. Fletcher was not wrong for demanding perfection (especially from students as advanced as his; these were all college students who were presumably preparing for a career in music, and chose to attend this school because of its jazz program and to study under Fletcher), only for the lengths that he went to in order to achieve it.
It's also kind of worth pointing out that any kind of improvisation requires you to have an incredible amount of technical skill in whatever field you're working in. A musician who improvises needs to be an incredible musician otherwise it won't sound like improvisation, it will just sound like they're having to make stuff up because they don't know what the hell they're doing. To use another field as an example, the best parodies tend to be the ones that stick as close to what they're parodying as possible. Once you understand the technicalities, then you can learn and figure out how best to improvise around them.
Why Buddy Rich? Rich was an excellent and influential drummer, sure, but people as devoted to the jazz scene as Andrew and the rest wouldn't see him in such high regard. They certainly wouldn't mention him in the same breath as Charlie Parker.
Buddy Rich was also a massive asshole to his band members (see the bus tapes as proof). There seems to be parallels to Andrew idolizing Rich and wanting to be Fletcher’s pupil.
How would talent scouts go to competitions between 18-piece jazz bands? Unless you're one of the soloists, you're not really going to be featured much.
Sure, Fletcher's plan to get revenge was impressive, but wouldn't having a clueless drummer in a major performance eventually make him look bad?
Fletcher may have had an understudy or alternate arrangements once Andrew was humiliated. Or perhaps in this case with his teaching career already damaged he didn't care as long he had his revenge over Andrew.
shows that most likely Fletcher took the folder.