Original WHIPLASH Short Film, Starring Oscar Winner J.K. Simmons

Damien Chazelle's Whiplash was my favorite film of 2014, and one of my favorite movies of the past ten years. It's a peek into the kinds of crazy, brutal sacrifices that must be made to achieve greatness, and the sometimes unorthodox methods that can push us to become our best selves. There's a lot to unpack in the film, and hopefully the fact that it won three Oscars a couple of weeks ago (including a well-deserved win for Best Supporting Actor J.K. Simmons) means that more people will give it a chance and seek it out.

Some of you probably know that Whiplash is actually based on a short film that Chazelle put together that played at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. That short starred Simmons in the same role as jazz professor Terrence Fletcher, but Miles Teller didn't come on board until the short was adapted into a full length feature film. So who played the young Andrew Neiman in the short? Funny enough, it was another guy with the last name of Simmons: Johnny Simmons, who you may recognize as Young Neil from Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Screencrush has found a legal version of the original short (with Spanish subtitles) on YouTube, so you can now compare and contrast the younger Simmons' work with Teller's and get a sense for how this project got its start. Watch the full short below:

Whiplash was originally planned to be a feature film but the writer/director could not get funding for it so he made this short film and submitted it to the Sundance film festival. He later got the funding and made his original film Whiplash (2014)