Director Michael Mann compares the star actor Adam Driver to the late “Ferrari” legend CEO Enzo Ferrari and talks about what it means to be a great actor. Adam Driver talks about how he relates to his character Enzo Ferrari. Check it out.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [ENGINE REVVING]
00:02 So what do you think?
00:08 There is no ashtray.
00:11 Are you a prima donna?
00:14 The core of this character is always forward looking.
00:19 Asked many times, what's your favorite car
00:21 of all the cars you've built?
00:23 He always had the same answer, the next one.
00:25 It was the next piece of technology,
00:26 the next innovation, the next race.
00:28 When we win, I can't see my cars for shots of starlet's asses.
00:34 When we lose, you're a lynch mob.
00:36 Everybody has an opinion about their version of Enzo Ferrari.
00:39 It's enough to make the pope weep.
00:40 He was different with everybody.
00:42 He was different with the women in his life.
00:43 He was different with customers.
00:45 Your highness.
00:46 Which highness?
00:47 Then he was with racers.
00:48 That highness.
00:49 You, get out to the track.
00:51 Enzo's relentlessness and ambition and myopic focus,
00:56 I completely understand.
00:57 There is a similarity between Adam Driver and Enzo
01:04 Ferrari in Adam's origins.
01:07 He met Agnelli at Fiat about a job.
01:11 I was 19.
01:12 I needed a job.
01:13 The secretary came back with a card, one word written on it.
01:16 He didn't get it.
01:17 No.
01:18 That was a long time ago.
01:20 Adam applies to Juilliard, rejected,
01:22 joins the Marine Corps at 19.
01:24 That moment of defeat and humiliation
01:26 was a big catalyst for the rest of his life moving forward.
01:29 After the Marine Corps, he goes back to Juilliard and studies.
01:32 He's determined.
01:34 Asking himself, who do I want to be in this world?
01:37 And he discovers his passion for acting,
01:40 and nothing will stand in his way.
01:41 He wasn't from an elite family that
01:47 had a lot of opportunity.
01:48 He had to make it.
01:49 And same with me.
01:50 I have nobody that's in the entertainment industry,
01:53 but it's something that I loved and felt confident.
01:56 Or it's like, well, no one can stop me from doing it.
01:59 We all know it's a deadly passion.
02:02 And I thought, he's Enzo Ferrari in here.
02:06 A terrible joy.
02:08 And there was such an integrity to the pure artistic ambition.
02:12 I mean, very healthy, ego-driven artistic ambition
02:16 that will drive an actor, as it drives Adam,
02:20 to I have to get there.
02:21 I have to be in this moment.
02:23 I have to be in this state of mind.
02:25 I have to feel within these certain emotions.
02:28 Surrounded by all kinds of sensory input.
02:30 You blame me for his death?
02:31 And then a stimuli comes in, a line from Lara.
02:34 Yes, I blame you.
02:35 I blame you.
02:36 Could you let him die?
02:37 The father deluded himself!
02:39 And then the reaction is spontaneous.
02:42 And it's Enzo's reaction.
02:43 It's not Adam's reaction.
02:44 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:48 Ferrari was a man who had been a race car driver to begin with.
02:59 His sole purpose in life is racing.
03:01 [ENGINE REVVING]
03:03 It's a race car company that on the side
03:05 builds passenger cars.
03:06 Jaguar races only to sell cars.
03:09 I sell cars only to be racing.
03:11 We are completely different organisms.
03:13 You have that unity that occurs when you're
03:15 doing everything right and you're
03:17 just in a state of flow.
03:19 [ENGINE REVVING]
03:22 Vera pulls up next to you.
03:25 Challenging.
03:27 You're even.
03:28 But two objects cannot occupy the same point in space
03:31 at the same moment in time.
03:33 You lift.
03:34 He passes.
03:36 He won.
03:37 You lose.
03:39 So I wanted Adam to have that experience.
03:44 We raced Ferraris when we were at Modena.
03:47 [ENGINE REVVING]
03:50 When you're going that fast and you're
03:54 trying to find the apex of the curve
03:57 and every second lost is a second off your time,
04:00 the focus that's required in racing
04:03 was helpful in playing who he was now, running a business,
04:07 understanding the mentality of a racer.
04:10 That you can't be off focus for a second or that means death.
04:14 [ENGINE REVVING]
04:18 And then building a wall because he experienced so much death.
04:23 And that's your fifth warning.
04:25 Hold right.
04:27 No one talk.
04:27 I think it's always good to surprise yourself
04:29 as you're shooting just to make sure that you're on point,
04:32 even if it's totally way off.
04:34 Cut.
04:34 Correct.
04:35 Good deal.
04:35 I have the luxury of not being the one responsible for what
04:39 is inevitably used.
04:40 That's Michael's decision.
04:41 And I don't want to leave the set with regret that we
04:44 didn't exhaust every opportunity.