20 Things You Didn’t Know About Whiplash

During his first date with Nicole (Melissa Benoist) in a pizza parlor, Andrew hears a song on the radio and immediately identifies it as being a 1938 piece from an artist known as Jackie Hill.

While the scene works for narrative purposes, what stands out about is that Jackie Hill is not a real-life artist.

A solid chunk of the jazz music heard in the background was actually created by composer Justin Hurwitz, who did an admirable job in capturing the stylings of 1930s American jazz. The reason why they chose original music for that sequence was due to budgetary constraints, but Hurwitz was able to work around this by creating an artist (and music) fitting for the film’s story.