'Ferrari' director Michael Mann is joined by Adam Driver as he discusses everything about the emotional scene between Enzo Ferrari and his wife in the film. Hear them break down how they built the characters from the "inside out," the monochromatic colors on set to keep focus on the emotion, Penelope Cruz playing the role of Laura Ferrari and so much more.
FERRARI is in theaters Christmas 2023, https://www.ferrari-film.com/
Director: Jameer Pond
Director of Photography: Jack Belisle
Talent: Adam Driver, Michael Mann
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: James Pipitone
Production Coordinator: Tania Jones
Talent Booker: Meredith Judkins
Camera Operator: Will Boone
Gaffer: David Djaco
Sound Mixer: Michael Guggino
Production Assistant: Tim Lopez, Lyla Neely
FERRARI is in theaters Christmas 2023, https://www.ferrari-film.com/
Director: Jameer Pond
Director of Photography: Jack Belisle
Talent: Adam Driver, Michael Mann
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: James Pipitone
Production Coordinator: Tania Jones
Talent Booker: Meredith Judkins
Camera Operator: Will Boone
Gaffer: David Djaco
Sound Mixer: Michael Guggino
Production Assistant: Tim Lopez, Lyla Neely
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Hi, I'm Michael Mann.
00:01 No, you're supposed to say you're Adam Driver.
00:03 Hi, I'm Adam Driver.
00:04 I'm Michael Mann, and this is "Notes on a Scene,"
00:06 also known as "Michael Says Insightful Things About This Scene."
00:09 I just nod indiscriminately every once in a while.
00:12 He makes a mockery of you
00:15 in the years when our son was ill,
00:20 when he was dying.
00:21 How can you say that?
00:23 Lara, his wife,
00:24 she has discovered that Enzo has had another child
00:28 with another woman and basically has a second family.
00:31 Enzo knows that she knows,
00:33 and this is the coming together
00:35 into a scene of conflict and maybe resolution.
00:40 I find myself sharing my whole life
00:44 with a woman I have never met.
00:46 She's in a dim light, only partially lit.
00:49 Enzo is also in kind of a half light.
00:51 She rises and he rises,
00:53 and they're about to walk into
00:54 a very different kind of lighting setup
00:57 that's very direct, that's going to illuminate
01:00 the explosive argument that's about to happen.
01:02 He makes a mockery of you.
01:09 We use very direct light coming from a very defined source
01:13 rather than just kind of general illumination,
01:16 and that's why there's a highlight
01:17 on the left side of her face.
01:19 When he was dying.
01:21 How can you say that?
01:24 That boy, is he going to inherit our factory, our name?
01:28 'Cause I don't want him to.
01:30 We have a son.
01:31 One son, two sons, five sons.
01:35 I miss Dino any less.
01:36 Michael is very interested in internal life.
01:39 So as much as we're talking about all these things
01:41 about light and shadow, and I feel like that's very well
01:45 known about how specific he is
01:47 with the technical aspects of film,
01:49 I find that he's still chasing a feeling
01:51 more than something really specific.
01:53 And all technical parts are really just
01:56 to enhance the feeling of it.
01:57 It's all driven by character, it's all driven by emotion,
02:00 including what's going on in this scene.
02:03 The costume design and the palette is fairly monochromatic.
02:06 It's all brown, there's this brown, and it's warm
02:10 because what I really want you to focus on
02:12 is what's happening right here.
02:14 But what we're about to find out is the extent to which
02:17 everything that he tried to do, he failed, he did not.
02:20 So it's a revelation all in anger.
02:24 The hospital he died in is funded in his name.
02:27 A school was built in his honor.
02:29 Honor?
02:30 Who gives a shit?
02:31 You were supposed to save him!
02:33 You blame me for his death?
02:35 Yes!
02:36 Yes, because you promised me he wouldn't die!
02:38 Everything!
02:40 I did everything!
02:42 Table showing what calories he could eat,
02:44 what went in, what came out.
02:46 We all sat around and we did a table read
02:48 and we kind of talked about it loosely,
02:51 about what's at stake and what is it
02:54 that we wanted to get out of it.
02:55 And then I think two days or so before we shot,
02:57 we were in the room and we worked out blocking,
02:59 which is another example of, you know,
03:02 there's a lot of technical things going on,
03:04 but Michael doesn't tell actors to come in
03:06 and place them where he wants them to be.
03:08 We figured it out as actors and director
03:11 of where should we start,
03:13 and he's very improvisational that way.
03:16 And then we came in the next day
03:17 and we shot it and we didn't talk a lot about it.
03:20 That to me is the strength of Michael's movies,
03:23 is that he trusts cinema to also tell the story.
03:27 It's not, that character is first,
03:29 which I think again is obvious to you,
03:31 but that's not obvious to most people,
03:33 that no one's gonna give a shit if they crash a car
03:36 if you don't care about the people that are in the car.
03:38 I know more about nephritis and dystrophy than cars!
03:41 If I blame you, I blame you!
03:43 Could you let him die?
03:44 You have a character, it's gonna be inhabited
03:46 by an actor or an actress,
03:48 and then that is gonna become
03:50 what the real character truly is.
03:53 I know when I was in a Zoom with Penelope,
03:55 that's that she's, no one else could do Laura
03:58 better than Penelope.
04:00 And then this guy and I were having a drink,
04:02 in 10 minutes of the conversation,
04:04 I just knew, I sensed the integrity and artistic commitment,
04:08 and I had this feeling, this is Enzo Ferrari.
04:12 And that's because you build character from inside out.
04:14 It's not about physical resemblance,
04:16 that's all mechanical, you just do that.
04:17 That's just craft work.
04:19 It's all, you know, it starts from the inside.
04:22 The father deluded himself!
04:24 The great engineer!
04:27 I will restore my son to health!
04:30 Swiss doctors, Italian doctors, bullshit.
04:33 I could not!
04:34 I did not!
04:36 'Cause you were so consoled at Castelvetro,
04:38 you lost your attention.
04:39 You had another boy growing stronger
04:41 while Dino was getting weaker!
04:43 That's the accusation.
04:44 Their son Dino was dying, and she now realizes
04:48 there was another son that was flourishing.
04:52 But to me, the moment we've just seen in Adam's performance,
04:55 it's a moment in a scene, it never fails to rivet me.
04:59 It is so true and authentic.
05:02 There is no resolution.
05:04 And if you said to me, what's my action as a director
05:09 for how the, what's the scene supposed to deliver to you
05:12 at the end of the day, it's to maximize the irresolution,
05:17 the irreconcilability.
05:18 Everything that was in suspense before is magnified
05:22 and is amplified, and there's even more suspense.
05:25 And I want you to wonder what's gonna happen.
05:28 As opposed to something that says exactly
05:31 what everybody is feeling all the time.
05:33 What went in, what came out?
05:35 I graphed the degrees of albuminoria,
05:37 the degrees of esotemia.
05:38 And then there's just a characteristic of Modinese dialect
05:42 that is more rough and not as polished
05:45 that we tried to capture.
05:47 With this, if they're speaking to each other
05:48 in their native tongue,
05:49 that they're not making mistakes as much.
05:50 So that it wasn't watching an Italian
05:55 doing an American or a dialect.
05:57 It was, if they're speaking to each other,
05:59 then it seems more conversational.
06:01 I had more of a flow, so to speak.
06:03 - So when we say that a Modinese accident,
06:05 it's also an attitude, a certain gruff sarcasm.
06:10 - Scoglietti, who designed the,
06:13 who went for more famous designers
06:16 who designed all the race cars.
06:18 When he was interviewed for Italian television,
06:20 he spoke in a Modinese dialect that was so thick
06:22 that they subtitled him in Italian for the rest of it.
06:25 So it's that heavy duty.
06:27 - What goes on in your mind?
06:29 He got sick, dystrophy, kidneys.
06:33 They destroyed him.
06:35 It destroyed us.
06:37 - What do you care?
06:38 You have another son, you have another wife.
06:40 - She's not my wife, but he is my son.
06:43 - Move out.
06:46 - There's a primitive, irrational belief
06:50 that she holds 100% that he's responsible
06:53 for the death of Dino because of his inattentiveness,
06:58 because some of his attention was on,
07:00 which is complete nonsense,
07:01 but some of his attention is on the other wife,
07:03 the other son.
07:04 And then the scene does end here
07:06 with that irreconcilability, the irresolution.
07:10 - Move out.
07:11 - The reason I didn't give up on trying to make "Ferrari"
07:16 is I would open up that screenplay,
07:18 start to read it.
07:19 By page two, I was hearing the voices
07:22 and seeing the people,
07:23 and it's all due to the, again,
07:25 the emotional power of these lives,
07:28 and because they encompass the kind of dualities
07:33 that exist in our lives.
07:35 Things resolve in the middle of the night.
07:38 Things resolve neatly in "Door A" or "Door B,"
07:42 or conflicts resolve neatly in fiction,
07:46 the kind of fiction that we do making movies.
07:48 What's wonderful about this story
07:50 is the story resolves, the people don't.
07:52 The complexity and the duality of Enzo
07:55 between an engineer mentality
07:57 and somebody who's very passionate,
07:58 the libidinous, as much at the end
08:01 as it is at the beginning,
08:02 and that's the way our lives really work.
08:04 And so to be able to have a drama
08:06 that's dramatically powerful and resolves,
08:08 but nevertheless, characters who are so alive,
08:12 that's what kept me at it.
08:15 (silence)
08:17 [BLANK_AUDIO]