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Trivia / Whiplash

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For the 2014 film:

  • Absurdly Short Production Time: The movie was shot in 19 days, with filming lasting 14 hours most days.
  • Acclaimed Flop: While it made back its small budget, it's also the lowest-grossing movie ever to be nominated for Best Picture. What doesn't help was that the film never left its limited release, as it only played at about 500 theaters in Americanote .
  • Award Category Fraud: A rare non-acting example. The film was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards, which classified it as such due to Damien Chazelle's short film of the same name having premiered one year prior. However, the short film was made based on scenes from the feature film's screenplay as a way of attracting investors, and as such was not the basis for the film. The announcement that the film would be treated as an adaptation came as a surprise to Chazelle, who had expected it to compete for Original Screenplay.
  • Breakthrough Hit: For Damien Chazelle as a director.
  • The Cast Show Off:
    • During the jazz bar scene, that really is J. K. Simmons playing piano — while he did have to take refresher lessons, he used to play frequently and comes from a family of musicians.
    • To a lesser extent, Miles Teller was a drummer since his mid-teens and took additional lessons, though a double was used for certain parts and shots.
  • Cast the Expert: Naturally, several of the musician roles went to actors with advanced musical backgrounds or actual musicians. For example, Carlnote  is played by Nate Lang, who is also a professional drummer who trained Miles Teller and Austin Stowell into their roles.
  • Enforced Method Acting:
    • In one scene, Fletcher repeatedly slaps Andrew while making him do a four-count and trying to get him to figure out if his tempo was too slow or too fast. The actors, after doing a few takes where Simmons only mock-slapped Teller, decided to do one take where Simmons slapped him for real. That was the take they used.
    • During the scenes where Andrew and the other drummers are exhausted, takes would often run into each other to actually make them tired. This even extended to Miles Teller ending up with real blisters and bleeding sores from overplaying, making some of the blood seen on Andrew actually his.
  • Non-Singing Voice: An instrumental variation: Miles Teller is seen playing in most of the shots, and so there is no clear Talent Double (whether or not the closeup hand shots were Teller's, they focus more on Andrew's bleeding fingers than his skill), but the drumming that we hear was recorded by studio musicians. Teller is often out of sync with the recorded track, but skillful editing makes it non-obvious.
  • The Other Marty: In the original 2012 short, Andrew Neiman was portrayed by Johnny Simmons instead of Miles Teller.
  • Producing Against Type: Blumhouse Productions, a studio best known for low budget horror films such as Paranormal Activity and Insidious, helped produce this film.
  • Reality Subtext:
    • The grueling effort the would-be musicians put in to what they do over the course of the film becomes all the more meaningful when one realizes that the film was shot in just 19 days due to the filming taking up 14 hours each day.
    • Chazelle was badly injured in a car accident while making the film but insisted on completing the shoot anyway, mirroring Andrew's commitment to playing after the accident he suffers.
  • Self-Remake: Of Chazelle's 2013 short film.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Dane DeHaan turned down the role of Andrew. Coincidentally, Miles Teller auditioned for the role of an Andrew in another film, which ultimately went to DeHaan.
    • The original short has Fletcher threatening Andrew with the famously gross line "I will fuck you like a pig!" For the feature, Chazelle actually rewrote the line to "I will gut you like a fucking pig!", but Simmons found it too ridiculous and refused to say it. For that reason, the feature uses audio of the original line ripped straight from the short, and since no new Fletcher footage was shot, a close-up of Andrew is used while the line is being said.
  • Word of God: In an interview with Screen Crush, director Damien Chazelle reveals that his movie's ending has… less than pleasant implications for Andrew. Specifically, he argues that Fletcher will always think he beat Andrew. Chazelle even states that Andrew will "wind up dead in his 30s from a drug overdose", making Andrew's previous comment of wanting to die broke and drunk at 34 incredibly disturbing in hindsight.
  • Write What You Know: Damien Chazelle wrote and directed this movie based on his own experiences jazz drumming in high school. Like Andrew Neiman, Chazelle had a jazz teacher who helped Chazelle improve his drumming skills although Chazelle is of the opinion that his teacher's methods were rather unethical. Moreover, in a piece written for the Los Angeles Times, Chazelle reveals that his experiences influenced his film's thematic questions of how far one should go for greatness and what greatness even means.


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