Adam Driver to ‘Ferrari’ Audience Question: “F— You”

As someone who has attended several film festival Q&As, I could count on one hand the number of times an audience member has asked a great question after a festival screening. Inevitably you’ll get the one person who asks how much the film will cost, followed by an endless parade of filmgoers who announce “I’ve got more of an idea than a question” and then walk away on about what they thought of the movie. And that’s about as good as it gets! To be honest, I hardly ever stay for Q&A anymore, because it’s a waste of time 90 percent of the time time

Clearly, Adam Driver feels my pain. He attended the Camerimage Film Festival in Poland over the weekend with his new film Ferrari, about the life of the famous Italian race car driver, designer, and businessman. Without getting into spoiler-y details, the film includes several very important car crash sequences. (One in particular is central to the story.) At the festival, Driver was asked about these scenes in a post-film Q&A.

“What do you think about it [those] crash scenes?” the audience member asks. “They looked very harsh, drastic, and, I must say, cheesy to me. What do you think?”

“F-you. Don’t know? Next question,” Driver replied.

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Before I get to Driver’s answer, I have two thoughts about this particular question. First: How hard can your look be? and cheesy? That would seem impossible. Second: I saw Ferrari. I don’t take issue with anyone who doesn’t like the movie, or any part of it. That’s your opinion, and you’re more than entitled to it. And I don’t take issue with someone who doesn’t particularly like the car scenes. But the view that this person is talking about is many things… it is definitive No cheesy Cheese just isn’t even in the same universe as this Ferrari an accident

Now to the wider issues at hand here. Could Driver have handled this more easily? Of course he could. Is he happy that this rude moment is being shared around the world? Maybe not. But really the impossibility begins with the question. Why would you ask a filmmaker, who flew around the world to show you their work, why is their film bad?

If you didn’t like the scene or the movie, that’s fine. But what is your answer expectation Bring Adam Driver to that question? “Oh you’re right, that scene sucks, we should have cut it, it’s so hard and so cheesy at the same time, I’m ashamed to be involved in this movie, and I’d like to to take my name off, Alan Smithee. – style”?

Adam Driver isn’t going to win host of the year awards at a film festival, for sure, but I think it’s well past time for us festival goers to step up our games. If we don’t have a good, interesting, smart question to ask… maybe we shouldn’t ask anything at all. Ferrari opens in theaters on Christmas Day.