Peter Parkers newspaper editor in the Spiderman movies.
In the words of the late, great Roger Ebert “I hated, hated, HATED this movie”.
I shoot concerts and love music and absolutely cannot understand the love this ugly, nasty and deeply stupid movie is getting. Yes, it features a pyrotechnic performance by Simmons, but the story makes no sense.
First off, any teacher who routinely verbally, and more importantly physically, abused his students would never have risen to be that highly respected. He would have been fired long ago (preferably out of a cannon…into the Sun). This is a sports movie masquerading as a music movie, and while a culture of sadism and co-commitment masochism is endemic to the sports world, it doesn’t happen in music.
In my work, I’ve met hundreds of musicians and dozens of music teachers, and I don’t know of one who has spoken of a teacher who *slapped *them into the best performance of their lives. Instead, they speak of teachers who inspired them, who introduced them to the joy of music.
Simmons is playing a sociopath bully, someone who any sane person would do whatever is possible to get as far away from as early as possible.
The writer is a hack, pure and simple. “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”, as they say, but it is also the first choice of the hack. Writing a scene of psychological tension is a lot more difficult than just having a bully slap around a sap.
The hack writer claims that he based Simmons’ character on a real music teacher, but that he “upped the intensity”. Yeah, into absurdity. And it’s telling that the writer is not earning his living as a musician, but as a sub-Esterhaus level hack.
