Yep, chuckles Simmons, such talented young people. How can you not hate them both?
Simmons turns 60 in January about the time the awards buzz about his Whiplash performance could be coming to reality.
He's never been in that league before, although his screen credit list is epic, including roles in Juno and Spider-man, as well as stints in television's The Closer, Law & Order, and HBO prison drama Oz.
But Whiplash is Simmons like you've never seen him before - not counting Chazelle's short of the same name which the director used to attract financing for his independent project.
Now, after winning prizes and a buyer at Sundance, Whiplash is heading out into the world to the tune of best-of-year reviews.
Much of that is down to Simmons' black-clad, bulging-vein, shining-pate Fletcher, a master of jazz and psychological warfare.
Somewhere, someone will soon be printing T-shirts with that face inscribed with his threatening catch-phrase: "Not My Tempo!"
Still it's quite a leap from the few scenes he usually gets in most everything else he's been in.
"It's a lot more meat than I sometimes have been given. There is just kind of more there ... those opportunities don't come along at great regularity. I've had plenty of fun parts in my career. Usually just less screen time and less meat or less flash and less attention-getting.
"Because generally as an actor I am mostly trying to serve the piece. The play is the thing.
"But in order to play this guy I had to be yelling and screaming and saying 'look at me, look at me, look at me' ... ."
Simmons says he appreciates why Fletcher is the way he is.
"I respect him and I largely admire him. I don't particularly like him ... I certainly wouldn't want my kid playing in his jazz band. I don't care how good he is."
The actor's biggest challenge in the role wasn't the volcanic rage or convincingly conducting the music's school lead jazz band, but getting down the piano pieces he plays in a scene in a jazz club.
The Broadway regular studied conducting for a classical music degree as a younger man. So he knows a thing or two about the music world the film is set in - Chazelle based the script on his own experiences.
It's just that Fletcher turns that idea of music as a discipline into something sadistic.
"He wants what he wants and he is unwilling to put up with anything that potentially interferes with that - including basic humanity."
He says he got on famously with his co-star but he never apologised to Teller for getting in his face so much. Or hitting it.
"No man, he deserved to get slapped. He's a freaking young movie star.
"Let him take a little abuse. It will toughen him up."
Yes, Simmons is chuckling again.
