Summary
Andrew rushes into the competition, where Fletcher tells him that Ryan’s going to sub for him. Andrew fights back at this news, but Fletcher yells at him and tells Andrew that he, Fletcher, gets to decide who plays. When Fletcher points out that Andrew doesn’t have sticks, Andrew offers to go out to his car and get them, but Fletcher insists that he “lost the fucking part.”
Fletcher goes off on Andrew when he fights his decision, calling him a “self-righteous prick” and referring to the fact that the only reason Andrew is a core drummer is because he misplaced Tanner’s folder. Andrew fights back, insisting that the reason he’s in Studio Band is because he’s the best, and when Ryan tries to calm him down, Andrew screams at him. Agitated, Fletcher gives him one last chance, yelling, “At 5:30, that's in exactly 11 minutes, my band is on stage. If your ass is not on that stool with your own fucking sticks in hand or you make ONE FUCKING MISTAKE, ONE! I will drum your ass back to Nassau where you can turn pages until you graduate or fucking drop out! By the time you're done at Shaffer, you're gonna make Daddy look like a fucking success story. Got it? Or, we can let Johnny Utah play the part. You choose.”
Andrew goes to retrieve his drumsticks, which he lied and said were in his car. In fact, they are still at the car rental place, and he picks them up and speeds back to the competition, calling someone on the phone to let them know he’s coming. After yelling into the phone and throwing it onto the seat, Andrew looks over just in time to see that a truck is coming straight towards him. The truck hits him and the car flips over.
Bloodied and bruised, Andrew looks at the clock in his car and manages to climb out. The truck driver asks him if he’s okay, but he still wants to grab his drumsticks and make it to the competition. Confused, the truck driver tries to pull him away from the car, but Andrew runs the few blocks to the competition, staggering into the building covered in his own blood.
He walks onto the stage and takes his place at the drum set. Everyone is shocked to see his condition, but Fletcher lets him play. He is playing well, when suddenly he drops one of his drumsticks on the ground. Fletcher comes over and yells at him, “What the fuck?” but he keeps playing for a few moments longer before completely faltering and stopping.
Fletcher silences the band as Andrew moans in pain. “You’re done,” Fletcher whispers, when suddenly Andrew kicks the drum set aside and jumps on Fletcher, tackling him to the floor. Some of his bandmates pull Andrew off their bandleader as he yells “Fuck you!” over and over again.
The scene shifts to Andrew and his father at a meeting with a lawyer whom Andrew’s father has contacted. She asks Andrew, “Does the name Sean Casey mean anything to you?” When Andrew nods, she tells him that Sean Casey didn’t die in a car crash, but hanged himself in his apartment. The lawyer elaborates, saying that Sean suffered from anxiety and depression as one of Fletcher’s students, and suggesting that they have grounds to take legal action to get Fletcher fired.
We see a flashback of Andrew in his room looking at his letter of expulsion, then watching a video of himself as a child playing the drums. Back at the meeting with the lawyer, Andrew says he doesn’t want to take action, but the lawyer and his father both encourage him to speak up. “This would not be a public hearing, you know. Fletcher would never know it was you who spoke up.” Andrew gets angry with his father for speaking up, but his father insists that he’s looking out for Andrew’s best interests; “There is nothing to me in the world more important to me than you, don’t you know that?” he says.
We see Andrew in his room. He disassembles and packs up his drum kit and takes his poster off the wall. We then see him in the meeting with the lawyer as she asks him what he thinks, to which he responds, “Just tell me what to say.”
After getting expelled, Andrew works in a sandwich shop for the summer. After work, he walks down the street past a sticker for a jazz festival. At Andrew’s new apartment, he and his dad watch television, passing popcorn back and forth. When Andrew’s dad leaves, he tells his son that there are Gushers in the pantry, and Andrew thanks him. Left alone, he considers texting Nicole, but puts his phone away and goes for a walk.
Outside, he passes a street drummer, and eats a slice of pizza while he walks. He approaches a jazz club and reads the sign. That night, Fletcher is playing as a guest with a jazz band. Andrew decides to go in and listen. He stands near the door and watches as Fletcher plays the piano with a small jazz combo. As the song ends, Fletcher looks over and notices Andrew watching him. Hastily, Andrew walks towards the door, but Fletcher approaches him and says hello.
They sit and have a drink in the club. “I don’t know if you heard: I’m not at Shaffer anymore,” he tells Andrew, who asks if he quit. “Some parents got a kid from Sean Casey’s year, I think, to say something about me. Although why anyone would have anything other than peaches and cream to say about me is a mystery,” Fletcher says. Andrew laughs, which makes Fletcher admit that he was a tough teacher. Fletcher then tells Andrew that he saw his purpose at Shaffer as pushing people “beyond what’s expected of them…otherwise we’re depriving the world of the next Louis Armstrong, next Charlie Parker.”
Fletcher tells the story of Charlie Parker’s rise to success, how he came back to jazz after being humiliated, and played the best solo in the world. He bemoans the fact that no one can handle that level of pathos and pain in the world anymore, saying, “…and you wonder why jazz is dying. I'll tell you, man—and every Starbucks 'jazz' album just proves my point, really—there are no two words in the English language more harmful than "good job.””
Andrew looks at him sadly, before asking whether Fletcher thinks there is a line not to cross, whether his actions could ever discourage someone from becoming a great musician. “No, because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.” Fletcher then tells Andrew that he takes no responsibility for his abusive actions, that he just wanted to find a Charlie Parker, and that he really tried, and that is his greatest virtue as a bandleader and teacher. Andrew stares at him.
Outside on the street, Fletcher asks Andrew if he wants to play with his band for the JVC festival concert. Andrew first suggests Ryan and Tanner, and Fletcher tells him to think about it over the weekend.
Andrew calls Nicole that evening. He apologizes for his behavior and invites her to the JVC show and to get pizza afterwards. She tells him that she has a new boyfriend, but that she might try to come to the performance. “I guess, maybe I’ll see you guys there,” he says, hanging up.
Analysis
At the start of this section of the film, Andrew’s aggression seems to pay off for a moment. In a world where reckless disregard for others is rewarded, Andrew’s impatience with Fletcher’s insistence that he not play in the competition pays off when Fletcher tells him to retrieve his drumsticks and play. Indeed, all Fletcher seems ever to be looking for in a student is someone who will fight back and get better. Andrew takes Fletcher’s reverse psychology exceedingly seriously, and fights back with an adolescent fury, yelling indignantly.
The mania of Andrew’s desire to be the greatest is pushed to the limit when his car gets hit by a truck on the way back from retrieving his drumsticks. In a fit of distraction, Andrew fails to see the truck coming towards him and ends up flipping his car and climbing out, his face badly bloodied. The film can sometimes seem like a series of scenarios that test Andrew’s commitment to the drums. Even after a nearly fatal car accident, Andrew wants to grab his drums and go to the competition. A bloody head and disoriented bearing do not deter him from pursuing his only goal: to become the next great jazz drummer.
After getting kicked out of Studio Band and attacking Fletcher in the middle of the concert, Andrew still hesitates to speak out against his abusive teacher. When given the chance to speak out against Fletcher in the presence of a lawyer who says that Fletcher’s actions have driven others to suicide, Andrew doesn’t want to at first. Thus, in some ways, while Andrew holds Fletcher in deep contempt, he has at the same time become Fletcher’s greatest prodigy, the ideal product of his abusive goading. After all that Fletcher has put him through, Andrew feels some kind of perverse loyalty to his teachings, and must be prodded to speak out against him.
Throughout the film, we see moments of Fletcher’s humanity that contrast with his more diabolical presence as a bandleader. In the beginning, Andrew spots Fletcher talking kindly to a little girl, and suggesting that someday she might grow up to join his band. This tender interaction, of course, contrasts rather starkly with Fletcher’s behavior with the band, in which he refers to them as weak little girls and throws around hateful language at the students in whom he most believes. Fletcher’s humanity is again revealed when Andrew goes and watches him play in the jazz club. We see Fletcher playing the piano gently, with great care, and we can hardly parse this image with his image as a screaming, violent maestro. Thus, Chazelle seems concerned with showing the contrasts and contradictions within people, revealing the ways that the despicable and the pure-intentioned can coexist within the same person.
For all its concern with composing a complicated portrait of an overly passionate teacher, the film also seeks to set a moral standard. When Fletcher tells the story of Charlie Parker’s rise to fame, suggesting that he is cruel to his students in hopes of bringing the world another Charlie Parker, Andrew pushes back. “Is there a line?” he asks, finally asking the brutal jazz cat whether he maintains any standards for decency and kindness. This question of whether or not a line exists seems to be at the center of the film, a question plaguing all of them. At what point does one stop trying to be the greatest? Is it after getting hit by a truck? Is it after getting expelled? Fired?
