Don’t ask Adam Driver stupid questions
Adam Driver shut down an audience member at Poland’s Camerimage Film Festival who asked a rude question about Ferrari
Aux News Adam Driver
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an audience Q&A will be terrible. You will find yourself stuck in place, unable to intervene as your fellow man stands to confidently announce that “This is actually more of a comment, but….” Whoever first said “there are no stupid questions” had never been to an audience Q&A, or else they would’ve known better. And up on stage, the artists or creators or dignitaries or whoever is fielding these inquiries must steel themselves and respond politely to the inanity, no matter how far below their dignity it may be.
Except some days, some glorious days, an artist might shed the veneer of politeness and answer the so-called question with the energy it deserves. So it was at Poland’s Camerimage Film Festival on Sunday, where Adam Driver apparently felt that enough was enough and shut one of these questions down. After a screening of his new film Ferrari, an audience member asked, “What do you think about [the] crash scenes? They looked pretty harsh, drastic and, I must say, cheesy for me. What do you think?” What is a man contractually obligated to promote the movie in question to say to such a provocation? “Fuck you, I don’t know,” is what Driver went with. “Next question.”
Driver could have responded by defending the movie in earnest, sure, but why give a troll the time of day? It’s actually a relief to see the star treat an unserious question in kind; there’s some catharsis here for everyone who has had to suffer through a bad Q&A (Rian Johnson clearly agrees. Driver’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi director, who no doubt has fielded a lot of nonsense in his time, reposted the clip of Driver’s response with the caption, “My man.”).
In fact, let this moment be a learning opportunity for us all. There are ways to ask questions about things you didn’t like or have critiques about (“What was your reaction to seeing the crash scenes for the first time?” would be a mild way of putting the question in question). Nine times out of ten, an actor is not going to join you in trashing the movie they just made. Let’s all try to inject some substance into our questions, rather than being offensive or fawning, that the artist can actually respond to—not just for the sake of the person answering the question, but for all your fellow audience members who have to suffer through the secondhand embarrassment of listening to it.
63 Comments
He’s a SERIOUS ACTOR! He was in a Star War don’tcha know?
Huh. Yeah, sure.
{This has been a Toast of Tinseltown reference. Thank you for your continued attention to this matter.}
… and Girls!
And one or two episodes of Law & Order: SVU.
Who hasn’t done one or two episodes of L & O: SVU?
He’s an actor, what the hell does he know about how the crash scenes are gonna play out? He also famously doesn’t watch his own movies so probably doesn’t have a reaction to seeing the crash scenes for the first time, since he likely hasn’t seen them at all.
Does he know that Kylo Ren killed Han Solo?
Since it’s in the script and he acted the scene, gonna say yes.Could he tell you about the veracity of the reactor pit or whatever it is that Han falls into? Or whether the starfighter scenes in The Last Jedi looked cheesy? Probably not.
And even if he did, what’s he gonna say? “Yeah, they sucked”?
I mean he could have explained that he, as an actor, really doesn’t have any say in the shot composition or special effects of the crash scene and that, most likely, he wasn’t even around when it was shot. But “Fuck You” works too
I mean, he’s part of the moviemaking process, so knows more than nothing at all. And he’s getting paid to promote–the guy asked a reasonable question about his movie with mild implied criticism.Could have said “The director wanted to accentuate the sensory chaos of motorsports wrecks, not make a documentary of what they actually look like. It’s up to the viewing audience whether the conceit worked, sounds like you had different expectations”Or maybe “it works for Michael Bay”
Yeah, he didn’t have to be eloquent or even clever. He could have said “I don’t have an opinion.” Personally I’m tired of all the rudeness.
He responded in kind to someone asking a shitty, stupid, confrontational question, the only purpose of which was to provoke.
I’ve seen your rude replies countless times, regardless of being asked any questions. Most often, being neither eloquent, nor clever. Food for thought.
“They looked cheesy for me” is explicit mild criticism.
“Could have said ‘The director wanted to accentuate the sensory chaos of motorsports wrecks, not make a documentary of what they actually look like. It’s up to the viewing audience whether the conceit worked, sounds like you had different expectations’”Nah. That’s the thing I was talking about in my above comment. Everything every person thinks doesn’t deserve to be engaged. Did he have to say “fuck you”? Probably not, but if someone walks up to you and insults your project directly to your face, you shouldn’t feel you need to give that the courtesy of engagement or the respect of consideration. People need to learn when to keep their opinions to themselves. It’s an entirely lost skill in today’s world.
Okay, I won’t!
Given the context of the movie, should the crash scenes not be harsh and drastic? I mean, what was shown in the trailer looked pretty poorly done, so I’ll allow cheesy as a complaint unless they’ve updated it, but pretty sure part of the point is that racing was brutally dangerous at the time.
I mean, I guess, but what is the actor going to have to say about it? He’s not the director, or the director of cinematography, or the editor, or the effects supervisor, or anyone else who would have a say in the look of the film’s crash scenes.
literally may not have even been on-set those days.
This was the correct response.
Sent the clip of Driver to my sister and she replied: “I mean…what do you say?”I answered: “I don’t know? ‘Fuck you’?”I laughed since it was just an invert of what he said. She wanted him to be a bit more clever in his response though. She said that he should’ve said:“Your dick’s harsh, drastic, and cheesy”
Pull my heart out through my ear, you meaty oak tree
“Sorry I dunno, I was just the Adam Driver, you want to ask the Adam Director.”
Between this and Jarmusch’s Paterson, Driver is really leveraging his name to good use!
He’s still kicking himself for botching his “Baby Driver” audition though.
What do you expect? He was only a baby.
Paterson is soooo good.
Wait, is this why Paul Walker died? Wrong last name?
Woof. 36?
As a non-actor, press tours *sound* like fun. Get to travel the world and be asked softball questions by people pre-disposed to like your stuff in order to promote a movie. But in reality, I am sure it is more like this. Inane questions. Day. After. Day. The same questions. Day. After. Day. Not being able to talk about certain stuff like spoilers. Why directors and editors made certain decisions. Things outside your control. It honestly sounds exhausting.I am not 100% sure Driver’s response was the best, but I don’t think it was the worst. And it is definitely understandable.
Fair point, but still a pretty damn easy way to make millions off the skills of…playing pretent and/or being pretty?
Oh man, I mean, I would trade my current job for that in a heartbeat. I would love to have those kind of problems, exhausting as they may be after doing them a million times because my movies are just ssssooooo successful.
Money does not make suppressing basic emotional responses easier. (See also: money does not buy happiness.) Should it? It should, according to people who feel they don’t have enough of it, but they usually change their tune upon acquiring it.
I have a friend whom was lucky enough to be attached to a project where they got put through the ‘press junket’.Their description was essentially pure hell. Warehouse soundstage with about thirty booths set up with ‘soundproof’ dropcloths as their dividing walls. No real ventilation (would make the backdrops move). They’d sit in a chair with the little poster next to them, answer ten minutes worth of Entertainment Tonight level questions from some local entertainment reporter or whatever, then the person would be replaced with someone else asking basically the exact same ten inane questions from the last ‘interview’. For about six hours.There may be glamor in the entertainment industry, but it sure ain’t there.
That’s something I would never want to be involved in, in any way- The actor or the interviewer or anything. Sure, fielding dumb questions seems like an easy job, but even if I were the world’s greatest living actor, I think I’d have a real hard time feigning interest or even amusement as every interviewer asked me what they assumed was a really clever, original question that I’ve heard a million times. And on the rare occasions I’ve had to interview even c-list celebs, I’ve never not felt like a total idiot afterwards.
There was an MTV show where fans could interview celebrities and one of the ads for said show amounted to a producer coaching the fan. I distinctly remember the producer telling the fan “How high can you kick?” is just not a good question to ask Jean Claude Van Damme. And honestly, I am sure he has gotten that question more than once by “professional” interviewers.
I’m trying to find that clip where vapour-brained ET reporter asked Idris Elba about him being an “African American” actor. Michael Gambon had the right idea: relentlessly fuck with them. “Mr. Gambon, is it true you’re a homosexual?”“I used to be. But I had to give it up.”“Why did you have to give it up?”“Because it made my eyes water.”
Probably goes triple for anyone doing a press junket for anything appealing to a nerdy audience. I’m pretty sure the “Boy I hope someone was fired for that blunder” scene in the Simpsons was pulled from actual experiences.
Having been around these in a work capacity, I can tell you they are 100% not fun at all. You’re not really touring the world, you’re spending 80% of your time on a plane for a month. Seriously, you may hit 45 markets in 30 days, and some of them are really far apart.At each location it’s the exact same thing: you get off the plane, you go straight to a soundstage or a hotel where they’ve blocked off a floor, and then you go room to room giving the exact same interview 20 times per day, answering the most banal questions in the world. When it’s done, maybe you go to another hotel to sleep, but you’re just as often straight back to the airport to get on a plane to go to the next location, in which case you sleep on the plane. Which happens a lot. You don’t take in any culture, you don’t see the sights, you go to dinner here and there, but mostly it’s just plane-hotel-plane-hotel-plane-hotel etc etc for a month because it’s really expensive to do this and they want it done as fast as possible. If you’re wondering how in the hell some random morning show in Perth gets Keanu Reeves to show up and plug John Wick 12, it’s because of this tour where they run Keanu out there for a month and say yes to basically everything.
It’s zero fun, and the reason you often see actors or directors get bratty in these interviews is because they’re exhausted and have been on the road for three weeks now, doing plane-hotel-plane forever. Add in that you’re basically with the same six people the entire time (say a studio rep, a PR person, hair, stylist, an assistant/gofer, etc.), all of whom are all doing the exact same loop on the exact same planes and are all sick to death of each other, and you can see why people get pissy.
Adam Driver, are you stupid?
That’s at least a question he has the expertise to answer.
Not if he’s stupid…
Stupid Adam Drivers need the most attention!
I volunteer!
I don’t think the guy asking the question was necessarily a troll, per se. He just fell into the trap people who are chronically online get into where they think any and everyone wants to hear their opinion, that their opinion is valid, and that their opinion is worth putting into the universe. They forget to consider their audience—hey maybe the guy in the movie doesn’t want to hear me shit on it directly to his face—and consider only their desire to “just be honest, man.”
The car crashes in the trailer honestly don’t look very good. I don’t think anyone has bothered to say that yet.
I concluded this after viewing the trailer too. Although it certainly isn’t an issue I’d raise with Driver or anyone on the production who has no real input or sway in regard to the vfx pipeline.
The Reylos are having a field day with this.
I’ve never been a Driver fan and I don’t care for his work, so I’m not surprised by this. He often comes off as rude, ‘precious’ and churlish. Questions like this are likely fairly common and he should be used to them by now. Continuing to show the world that he’s unlikeable is his choice, however. If I’d been in the disaster that was The House of Gucci I don’t know if I’d be so arrogant and dismissive.
It’s not arrogant to shut down a shitty question from a stupid asshole.
It was a dumb question who gives a shit
Nah, pandering to stupid comments like this has the same energy that means we can’t call dumb as shit boomers in retail dumb as shit.
“Being used to something” does not inherently make something more tolerable and the assertion that it does is a lousy argument.
Thanks for stopping by, sirslud. What a prodigious mansplainer you are. Your post history confirms that you know absolutely everything, lol.You are dimissed.
“You will find yourself stuck in place, unable to intervene as your fellow man stands to confidently announce that “This is actually more of a comment, but….””The worst example of this I’ve seen was at a Q&A for Indigenous Australian writers. The emcee made a point, before the questions started, of asking people to refrain from doing the “more of a comment than a question” thing. An older white women stood up, and not only ignored this, but proceeded to read out a poem she’d written (apparently while the talk was happening) all about her feelings as a white person on Indigenous land. It was possibly the most cringe-worthy thing I’ve ever heard and was mercifully shut down pretty quickly.
This was at Byron, right? It’s gotta be at Byron Writer’s fest.
Oh god that sounds painful. I’ve had to cover a few events like that for work and moments like that are just uniformly awful.
I’m gonna do it, you guys… I’m gonna ask him something really stupid.
“You see this biscooti cookie? Now you know I know krav maga!”
Jalopnik invader here:Fantastic response to a hilariously stupid question.Formula One was ridiculously dangerous from the 50s to the 80s. Drivers (and spectators!) died regularly. The story of the 1976 championship told in Rush was critically praised, and showed Niki Lauda literally stuck in a car on fire (which happened!). Oscar buzz surrounded the movie. The writers and directors told a historically accurate story. I don’t think anybody asked those questions when All Quiet On The Western Front was tearing up the awards circuit.