SUNDANCE 2014: WHIPLASH

Andrew (Miles Teller) and Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) in Whiplash.

The beatings behind the beats

By Don Simpson

 

Inexplicably abandoned at an early age by his mother and raised by a father (Paul Reiser) who never achieved success as a writer, Andrew (Miles Teller) is riddled with an unquenchable drive to become famous. Though Whiplash does not make much of Andrew’s backstory, Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the tyrannical band conductor at his elite music conservatory, makes good use of that information to emotionally destroy him.

 

Whiplash relays how Fletcher preys upon the emotional insecurities of a friendless first-year college student who regularly goes to the local movie theater with his father. Fletcher plays with Andrew’s sense of self-worth by boosting him up only to knock him right back down again. Andrew is constantly unsure of his standing with Fletcher, leaving him in a constant state of fear. Knowing that Fletcher could be his ticket to success, Andrew is willing to do anything to impress — or even appease — Fletcher, who takes full advantage of Andrew’s naïve desperation.

 

During one of Andrew’s high points, he musters up enough courage to finally ask out the girl who works at the movie theater concession stand (Melissa Benoist). Though this fleeting relationship serves mostly as a distraction from the primary narrative, it does highlight Andrew’s somewhat futile attempts at controlling a less confident person. Their relationship also serves as an example of just how willing Andrew is to discard anything in order to achieve his goals.

 

The story of Whiplashseems vaguely familiar, as if a similar narrative arc has been used to tell a story about a boxer with an emotionally abusive trainer. It seems as though elite music schools are successful because they have faculty like Fletcher who will relentlessly push the students beyond their natural abilities to see if they can reach a higher level of greatness. Fletcher looks and screams like a drill sergeant, ruling his students with extreme levels of fear. One could argue that Fletcher’s motivations are more sincere, as Whiplash strives to form the conductor into a well-rounded individual, showing the extremes of his personality and allowing him to explain his actions.

 

An opening night selection of Sundance Film Festival 2014, and recipient of numerous awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival, writer-director Damien Chazelle's Whiplash also explores the pros and cons of Fletcher’s behavior, existing in a moral grayness that opts to not really take sides. A teacher saying that someone does a “good job” might turn out to be a curse, but where does one draw the line between motivation to do better and psychological torture?

Whiplash was purchased at Sundance Film Festival 2014.

SXSW 2011: HIT SO HARD

Patty Schemel in Hit So Hard.

Wham, Bam, Mam

By Don Simpson

Some of you might be asking the same question I asked myself when I first received the press release for Hit So Hard: The Life & Near‐Death Story of Drummer Patty Schemel. Why would I want to watch a documentary about the drummer of Hole? Nothing personal about Schemel, but she is not the first person who comes to mind when I think of Hole. Knowing absolutely nothing about Schemel, I figured that it would not hurt anything for me to give Hit So Hard a chance.

Hailing from Marysville, a farm town outside of Seattle, at age 15 Schemel formed her first band, Sybil (later known as Kill Sybil), with her brother Larry. Schemel was 20 when she joined Doll Squad, an all-female punk rock band from Seattle. Then when Chad Channing left Nirvana in 1990, Schemel was considered to be Kurt Cobain’s leading candidate for Nirvana’s new drummer...that is until Dave Grohl’s audition. Nevertheless, Schemel developed a close friendship with Cobain so when Hole's original drummer, Caroline Rue, left the band in 1992, Schemel was Courtney Love’s first choice.

Schemel played drums on Hole's sophomore album, Live Through This (1994), and while touring, performed high profile shows at the Reading Festival, Big Day Out and Lollapalooza. (In 1995, Schemel became the first woman ever to appear on the cover of Drum World magazine.) Hole entered the studio in 1997 to record their third album, Celebrity Skin, but Schemel left the band before any tracks were laid down. Schemel had worked on the writing of the album's material and contributed to the demos so her name and photo were still included on the album sleeve. (The album’s drum tracks were performed by a male session drummer; eventually Samantha Maloney became Hole’s third drummer.) Love claims that Schemel's drug habit was to blame, but Schemel insisted she left Hole due to personal and musical differences between her and Celebrity Skin producer, Michael Beinhorn.

In 2001, Schemel joined Love's short-lived band, Bastard, along with Louise Post (from Veruca Salt) and Gina Crosley (from Rockit Girl). Schemel also played drums on Juliette Lewis' Juliette and the Licks’ debut EP, ...Like a Bolt of Lightning. Schemel performed on Love's solo album, America's Sweetheart, and toured with Imperial Teen. In early 2010, Schemel formed the band, Green Eyes.

That said, music takes a back seat in P. David Ebersole’s documentary. Hit So Hard is more about drug and alcohol addiction. Schemel is a member of the “Unlucky 13th Generation," a group of people who have been mired by a plethora of pain, hardship and death. As someone who seemed predestined to fall prey to that curse, Schemel developed a heroin addiction in the early 1990s. (She notoriously refused to be part of Kurt Cobain's drug intervention in March 1994, claiming that doing so would be hypocrisy.) Eventually, she found herself unable to stay in any bands. In order to support her drug habit Schemel sold all of her possessions and began living in a parking lot near the corner of Temple Street and Alvarado Street in Los Angeles, California.

Many have hypothesised that the Grunge movement and prolific drug use in the 1990s was reverbial feedback from the very same twenty-somethings who suffered through the conservatism of the Reagan-Bush era during their teenage years. Like the various Punk movements that came before and after Grunge, the angst from feeling disenfranchised for so long came through in their music and fashion. But their rebelliousness did not dull the pain and thus turned to alcohol and drugs for their proverbial ostrich hole.

Hit So Hard features recent and archival talking head interviews with Schemel, as well as her friends, family and colleagues. But what everyone will be talking about is Ebersole’s Hi-8 footage during various tours and while she was living with Love and Cobain just prior to Cobain’s death.