Adam Driver & Michael Mann Break Down Fight Scene from 'Ferrari'

Hi, I'm Michael Mann.

No, you're supposed to say you're Adam Driver.

Oh. Hey, I'm Adam Driver.

I'm Michael Mann

and this is Notes on a Scene,

also known as

Michael says insightful things about the scene,

I just nod indiscriminately

every once in a while.

He makes a mockery of you.

In the years when our son was ill,

when he was dying.

[chair scoots]

How can you say that?

Laura, his wife, she has discovered

that Enzo has had another child

with another woman

and basically has a second family.

Enzo knows that she knows

and this is the coming together into a scene

of conflict and maybe resolution.

I find myself sharing my whole life

with a woman I have never met.

She's in a dim light, only partially lit.

Enzo is also in a kind of a half light.

She rises and he rises, and they're about to walk

into a very different kind of lighting setup

that's very direct,

that's gonna illuminate the explosive argument

that's about to happen.

[scoffs]

He makes a mockery of you.

We used very direct light coming

from a very defined source

rather than just kind of general illumination.

And that's why there's a highlight

on the left side of her face.

When he was dying.

[chair scoots]

How can you say that?

That boy,

is he going to inherit our factory,

our name?

'Cause I don't want him to.

We have a son.

One son, two sons,

five sons.

I miss Dino any less?

Michael is very interested in internal life

so as much as we're talking

about all these things about light and shadow,

and I feel like that's very well known

about how specific he is

with the technical aspects of film.

I find that he's still chasing a feeling

more than something really specific.

And all technical parts are really just

to enhance the feeling of it.

It all is driven by character.

It's all driven by emotion,

including what's going on in this scene.

The cost of design

and the palate is fairly monochromatic.

It's all brown.

There's this brown.

And it's warm because what I really want you

to focus on is what's happening right here.

But what we're about to find out

is the extent to which

everything that he tried to do,

he failed, he did not.

So it's a revelation all in anger.

The hospital he died in,

is funded in his name.

A school was built in his honor.

Honor?

Who gives a shit?

You were supposed to save him!

You blame me for his death?

Yes!

Yes, because you promised me he wouldn't die!

Everything!

I did everything.

Tables showing what calories he could eat,

what went in, what came out.

We all sat around and we did a table read

and we kind of talked about it loosely

about what's at stake

and what is it that we wanted to get out of it.

And then I think two days or so before we shot,

we were in the room and worked out blocking,

which is another example of, you know,

there's a lot of technical things going on

but Michael doesn't tell actors to come in

and place them where he wants them to be.

We figured it out as actors and director

of where should we start.

And he's very improvisational that way.

And then we came in the next day and we shot it.

And we didn't talk a lot about it.

That, to me, is the strength

of Michael's movies is that he trusts cinema

to also tell the story.

It's not, uh-

The character is first, which I think,

again, is obvious to you,

but that's not obvious to most people

that no one's gonna give a shit

if they crash a car if you don't care

about the people that are in the car.

I know more about nephritis

and dystrophy than cars.

Yes, I blame you.

I blame you 'cause you let him die.

You have a character,

it's gonna be inhabited by an actor or an actress,

and then that is gonna become

what the real character truly is.

I know when I was in a Zoom with Penelope,

that's it.

No one else could do Laura

better than Penelope.

And then this guy and I are having a drink

and 10 minutes into the conversation I just knew.

I sensed the integrity and just the commitment

and I had this feeling, this is Enzo Ferrari.

And that's because you build character

from inside out.

It's not about physical resemblance,

that's all mechanical.

You just do that, that's just craft work.

It's all, you know, it starts from the inside.

The father deluded himself!

The great engineer.

I will restore my son to health.

Swiss doctors, Italian doctors, bullshit.

I could not.

I did not.

'Cause you were so consoled at Castelvetro

you lost your attention.

You had another boy growing stronger

while Dino was getting weaker!

That's the accusation.

Their son Dino was dying and she now realizes

there was another son that was flourishing.

But to me, the moment we've just seen

and Adam's performance,

it's a moment and scene that never fails to rivet me.

It is so true and authentic.

There is no resolution.

And the-

If you said to me,

what's my action as a director

for how this scene's supposed to deliver to you,

at the end of the day?

That's to maximize the irresolution.

The irreconcilability.

Everything that was in suspense before is magnified

and it's amplified,

and there's even more suspense,

and I want you to wonder what's gonna happen.

As opposed to something that says exactly

what everybody is feeling all the time.

What went in, what came out.

I graphed the degrees of albuminuria,

the degrees of azotemia.

And then there's just

a characteristic of Modenese dialect

that is more rough and not as polished

that we tried to capture.

With this, if they're speaking to each other

in their native tongue,

they're not making mistakes as much.

So, that wasn't-

It wasn't watching an Italian do an American dialect.

It was, if they're speaking to each other

then it seems more conversational.

It had more of a flow, so to speak.

So when we say a Modenese accent,

it's also an attitude.

A certain gruff, uh, sarcasm.

Scaglietti, who designs the uh-

One of Ferrari's more famous designers

who designed all the race cars.

When he was interviewed for Italian television,

he spoke in a Modenese dialect that was so thick,

that they subtitled him in Italian

for the rest of them.

[laughing]

So, it's that heavy duty.

What goes on in your mind?

He got sick!

Dystrophy, kidneys.

It destroyed him.

It destroyed us.

What do you care? Huh?

You have another son!

You have another wife!

She's not my wife, but he is my son.

Move out.

There's a primitive, irrational belief

that she holds 100%.

That he's responsible for the death of Dino

because of his inattentiveness,

because some of his attention was on-

which is complete nonsense,

but some of his attention was on

the other wife, the other son.

And then the scene does end here

with that irreconcilability,

the irresolution.

Move out.

The reason I didn't give up on

trying to make Ferrari is,

I would open up that screenplay,

start to read it.

By page two, I was hearing the voices

and saying the people

and it's all due to the, again,

the emotional power of these lives.

And because they encompass

the kind of dualities that exist in our lives.

Things resolve neatly in Door A or Door B,

or conflict resolves neatly in fiction.

The kind of fiction that we do, making movies.

What's wonderful about this story

is the story resolves, the people don't.

The complexity and the duality of Enzo,

between an engineer mentality

and somebody who's very passionate for business.

You know, as much at the end as at the beginning

and that's the way our lives really work.

And so, to be able to have a drama

that's dramatically powerful and resolves,

but nevertheless, characters who are so alive.

That's, you know, that's what kept me at it.