Well, now it makes sense that no one knew what the fuck I was talking about. I had no idea that that was an actual party. I just assumed everyone was there for the movie. īAUMBACH: But we’d gotten enough of it, yeah.ĭRIVER: I had no idea. But then he kind of threw a fit and kicked us out at a certain point. It seemed like a good idea in the planning. It was like, “Trust me, this is legit.” I had had this sort of great idea that we’d actually get the guy who lived at the location to have an actual party that we would shoot at.
I’m like, “Oh, there they are.” And that was my first day.īAUMBACH: I had that feeling, too, when I saw you, feeling bad like we weren’t producing an actual movie for you. And then you guys just walked up the street. I’m like waiting for this group of trucks and things to pull up.
And I remember expecting, like, a crew of people to show up it was just you four. You guys were coming from a shoot in the subway, I think. We were shooting a real party.ĭRIVER: I was actually waiting across the street because I got there early. And then I remember your first day on the set. And I remember being very excited by your audition. I don’t think the first season was even out yet, because I hadn’t seen you do anything. I remember talking to Lena when she was casting Girls, and she was talking about how good she thought you were. And I started auditioning people pretty early when it was even less formed. I had no idea what it was.īAUMBACH: I was kind of figuring it out with Greta as we were doing it. It may not even have been the actual scenes that we did, was it?ĭRIVER: I don’t think so. And that was it.īAUMBACH: I can’t remember. I don’t think even you knew then exactly what it was you guys were creating. And there was an audition for Frances Ha … but it wasn’t called that at the time. Why don’t you tell me your perspective of our meeting, and I’ll tell you mine?ĭRIVER: Well, I knew your movies. NOAH BAUMBACH: It’s important that the readers understand that we also talk for real.īAUMBACH: We could talk about how we met. As he tells his pal Baumbach, he’s just trying to cover all of his options. This docket might be surprising if it were anyone else, but for Driver, who is surely one of the proud, the few, the brave former Marines to have studied at Julliard, nothing really surprises us anymore.
All that and he’s set to star in the newest version of Terry Gilliam‘s hexed Don Quixote movie. After a deft appearance in Jeff Nichols‘s sci-fi thriller Midnight Special earlier in 2016, Driver has turned in a couple of drastically different performances, working with two of the most iconoclastic American directors of all time-as a poetry-writing bus driver in Jim Jarmusch’s downbeat Paterson, and in Martin Scorsese’s long-gestating Silence, as a 17th-century Portuguese Jesuit priest who, along with a fellow priest played by Andrew Garfield, is pushed to incredible, anorexic extremes in their travels to the far side of the world, and further still once in the unforgiving empire of Japan, in search of their mentor (Liam Neeson). But what Driver has chosen to do in his new position, even with global, mega-merchandisable fame, is even more interesting. Abrams reboot of the franchise-and in Rian Johnson’s forthcoming follow-up, out in December 2017. Potato Head appearance are too perfect a fit for the Fellini-esque cast of characters as established by George Lucas in the Star Wars universe, and Driver really couldn’t not be the temperamental Kylo Ren in the J.J. Indeed, his talent and sort of Modigliani Mr. His subsequent performances, in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), in the charming This Is Where I Leave You (2014), and in a pair of Noah Baumbach‘s tales of modern New Yorkers, Frances Ha (2013) and While We’re Young (2015), could easily have priced him out of art-house and into exclusively multiplex fare. His menace and mercy and general lanky amiability in that first flush, when he appeared as Hannah’s boyfriend on the first season of Girls (which returns for its sixth and final season in winter 2017), shone with that instantly recognizable urgency of unique promise, and almost immediately made Driver an interesting, dark-horse casting choice on the indie-drama circuit. Savvy and cynical consumers of culture as we may be these days, watching Adam Driver for the first time still felt, somehow, new.