Whiplash

Whiplash is coming to The State Theatre on Friday, August 21, as part of the Paramount Summer Classic Film Series. It's a 2014 film, 106 minutes long, shown in DCP. Damien Chazelle directed it, and it stars Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Melissa Benoist, and Paul Reiser.

The story follows Andrew Neiman, an ambitious young jazz drummer at an elite East Coast conservatory, and Terence Fletcher, an instructor whose terrifying methods push him to the brink. It's a high-tension look at the cost of obsession, and it's one of those movies that works just as well on a big screen as it does at home.

The screening is at The State Theatre, which sits right next to the Paramount on Congress Avenue. Both run under The Austin Theatre Alliance, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. The Paramount itself has stood downtown for more than a century—built in 1915, it's the city's oldest surviving theatre and a City and State Landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It started as a vaudeville and variety house and still stages comedy, drama, music, dance, spoken word, children's programming, and films, drawing more than 200,000 patrons a year. It's also one of the few remaining 'hemp houses' in America, still working with ropes and sandbags, and it hosts the Moontower Comedy Festival.

Doors open at 6:30 PM and the show starts at 7:30 PM. The State Theatre is at 713 Congress in downtown Austin.