The monster mentor

“I mostly just wanted to do the best possible job of reddening Miles’s cheeks while slapping him,” the actor quipped.

Among his many roles, Simmons, 60, has previously played a neo-Nazi in HBO’s prison drama Oz, a psychiatrist in police procedural Law & Order, a newspaper editor in the Spider-Man film franchise and a blind lawyer in Growing Up Fisher.

But it’s a manipulative, abusive, but also at times charming, jazz teacher that may be his shot at an Oscar.

Whiplash, the feature-length directorial debut from Damien Chazelle, pits young jazz drummer Andrew (Teller), striving to be the best in his craft, against Simmons’s Fletcher, an acerbic, calculating, foul-mouthed instructor.

Simmons won the Golden Globe for best supporting actor for the role — his first nomination and win. And has now been nominated for an Oscar in the category, where he will be up against Robert Duvall (The Judge), Edward Norton (Birdman), Mark Ruffalo (Foxcatcher) and Ethan Hawke (Boyhood).

The indie film also nabbed Chazelle his first-ever Oscar nomination, for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture — a total of five nominations.

As Andrew is pushed to his very limits of existence by Fletcher, the film explores both the physical and mental anguish of the pursuit of perfection — from Andrew practising until his fingers are dripping with blood to Fletcher continuously slapping him as he mocks his skills.

“I wanted to portray a character who is single-minded in his objective and his focus, and is unconcerned with what the collateral damage might be,” Simmons said.

“Without even seeing my character, you see him through all these terrified kids’ eyes, and it just makes my job so much easier as an actor when it’s been established that you have a room full of kids that are scared.”

Simmons said finding Chazelle and the role of Fletcher was “kismet”, or fate, as he had studied both classical and rock ‘n’ roll music in college.

For 29-year-old Chazelle, the inspiration for Whiplash came directly from his own recollections as a young jazz drummer in high school. “I certainly remember the sheer anxiety and terror of being in rehearsals, my hands bleeding through practice,” he said.

The first-hand experience came as an advantage to the rookie director, who initially took the film as a short to the Sundance Film Festival in 2013.

After winning the jury award for fiction in the short film category, Chazelle returned to Sundance with the feature length version in 2014 and won both the audience and grand jury prizes. Sony Pictures Classics bought the film for $3 million.

And while a film about the niche world of jazz drumming was not Chazelle’s easiest pitch to make to film buyers, he said he hoped it was the emotional journey that would connect with audiences.

“You can actually end up telling a more universal story the more you really burrow into a specific world,” he said.