'The only thing I know that makes me feel comfortable is to know as much as I can. And more specifically, my lines. I have to know my lines.'
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, 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 .
All that and he’s set to star in the newest version ofThis 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. As he tells his pal Baumbach, he’s just trying to cover all of his options.ADAM DRIVER: Yes, right, as people. BAUMBACH: We could talk about how we met. Why don’t you tell me your perspective of our meeting, and I’ll tell you mine?… but it wasn’t called that at the time. I don’t think even you knew then exactly what it was you guys were creating. I came in and read for you. And that was it.DRIVER: I don’t think so. I had no idea what it was. BAUMBACH: I was kind of figuring it out with Greta [Gerwig] as we were doing it. And I started auditioning people pretty early when it was even less formed. But I had heard good things about you. I remember talking to Lena when she was casting, and she was talking about how good she thought you were. I don’t think the first season was even out yet, because I hadn’t seen you do anything. And I remember being very excited by your audition. And then I remember your first day on the set. We were shooting a real party. DRIVER: I was actually waiting across the street because I got there early. You guys were coming from a shoot in the subway, I think. And I remember expecting, like, a crew of people to show up; it was just you four. [] There was nobody else. I’m like waiting for this group of trucks and things to pull up. And then you guys just walked up the street. I’m like, “Oh, there they are.” And that was my first day. BAUMBACH: I had that feeling, too, when I saw you, feeling bad like we weren’t producing an actual movie for you. 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. It seemed like a good idea in the planning. But then he kind of threw a fit and kicked us out at a certain point. [DRIVER: I had no idea. I just assumed everyone was there for the movie. I had no idea that that was an actual party. [] Well, now it makes sense that no one knew what the fuck I was talking about. I just showed up and started demanding things. BAUMBACH: “Can I get a Perrier?” No, you were a very good sport. So we met in the audition room, but I feel like we really met the day of that party. DRIVER: I had another favorite moment in shooting that night—Sam [Levy, cinematographer] was trying to light something. And now that I know you were under pressure of getting kicked out, someone throwing a shit fit … But I remember there was a PA standing nearby who was wearing a white T-shirt. So you told him to stretch out his T-shirt to bounce light off. And I’m like, “Yeah, this is it. This is great.” [DRIVER: I was doing a play at the time and then shooting with you guys all night.. BAUMBACH: I remember you came one day, when we were shooting you guys at breakfast, and you were feeling really bad because you felt like you had a bad rehearsal. DRIVER: That was just a window into every day. [Baumbach laughs] I feel bad about it every day. But, yeah, I was tired. BAUMBACH: I think that’s true of you, that you invest yourself very emotionally. And I’m not talking about process or inhabiting the character or anything. I mean, just the work of it—acting and rehearsing or whatever. I feel like it stays with you after. If you don’t feel good about something, you don’t shake it off easily. Would you say that’s true? DRIVER: I definitely let it get to me if it doesn’t go well. But what I like about your sets is that we get so many chances to do it again and again. I love the idea of doing a lot of takes because there’s so many different ways that you can play scenes. And we have clear boundaries, where the script is the script, you know? Since I came from a theater background, that made so much sense to me; that you thought a lot about these words and they’re very important. I mean, you don’t say this, but these are the words. These are the boundaries that you can play in. And the meaning of them is infinite. So I feel less anxious I guess when I leave your sets. But oftentimes I leave a set and there are so many different ways to have played a scene that I think of later, when I’m more relaxed and not distracted. I go through a mourning period, like, “Oh, God, we’ll never get to go back and do it again.”] Yeah, what the fuck?DRIVER: Yeah, I’m glad you’ve picked this time to … [BAUMBACH: I waited until we’re being recorded to talk about it … But I know what you mean, and I think we’ve connected about the ways we like to work, that there’s a kind of loose but focused way of going at it. If we do a bunch of takes and you don’t want another one, I feel confident that I have it. [DRIVER: Right. I mean, maybe as I get older, I’m getting tired, or my anxiety and the kind of self-imposed torture in working on it is getting less and less. Do you normally associate torture with creating things? Or do you just treat it like, “I’m going to go punch in and do my job, and if I don’t figure it out, there’s always tomorrow”? Maybelaughs ] Certainly shooting something. Shoots are so fraught with built-in limitations: from this time to this time in this place to get this scene. And I do think there are plenty of actual things to be anxious or concerned about under those circumstances on any shoot. But the other anxieties, neurotic anxieties … It’s not that I avoid them, but I don’t find them useful to a creative environment. I like to try to keep things as relaxed and easy as possible. I mean, movies generally attract a lot of people who like to cause fires, so they can later try to put them out. But I don’t like that kind of thing. DRIVER: Yeah. You are very, like, economical. That sounds like a bad word, but economical with the time you’ve spent, which is always helpful.model was invented to try to keep things even less pressureful in terms of having to get the day done. It was set up so that if the guy pitches a fit and throws us out of his house, we could go re-create another party.] Which was in response to just doing it the other way and being like, “I don’t like this”? BAUMBACH: It’s kind of a crazy art form, movies, in that you have to get it right the day you do it, generally.] I just worked on this set where the atmosphere was playful the entire time, and I’m not used to that—where you have to talk to the other actors in between takes or go hangout socially, which I thought would throw me off—but it turned out I liked that. So I don’t really come in with a set way of working, I guess. I always feel out the vibe. Like, “I’m going to adapt to what this is.” There’s not, like, a mood that I prefer—other than people showing up and on time, probably. [BAUMBACH: But now that you’ve done this enough, are there things that you really do feel like you need? I don’t necessarily mean, like, amenities brought to your trailer. I mean, like, needing this amount of sleep or this amount of exercise …? DRIVER: The only thing I know that makes me feel comfortable is to know as much as I can. Not like what the shots are going to be, but knowing enough about my character that I can forget those things. And more specifically, my lines. I have to know my lines. I have to know something really well, so I can forget it when we’re doing it. And there is comfort in knowing, “Okay, there’s not another stone that I could have overturned.” BAUMBACH: I also realize how much I rely on the actors to really know the lines because I tend to forget what they are exactly, even though I’ve written them. I don’t have them memorized. But when it’s going well, there is that point where the actor starts to know more about the character than I do. I definitely felt that was true with us. DRIVER: That’s interesting to hear you say that because I feel like you know them very well but maybe … like, I would get texts from you the night before or maybe the morning of shooting, where you have a line change, but it’s something very specific. Like, “It shouldn’t be McDonald’s, it should be Burger King,” or something. And I remember watching you in between takes, just checking out the script before you’re about to do the scene, to kind of refresh your memory about everything that was going on. BAUMBACH: That’s all true. It’s like you were saying, I need to be as prepared as possible from my end, so that I can be reacting to all the other things—the actor, the dog. There were a couple of days onwhere we talked about this, when you’re in a good groove and the actor really understands the part and comes as prepared every day as you are and is so inside it. And then there’s the day where, for whatever reason, it’s just a harder slog. And I feel like those are the days where all the preparation and everything becomes more necessary because you have to find a third route there. DRIVER: Yeah. At the end of whatever we’re doing, I always feel like I want to go back and start over again because now I have a better sense of what it is. I feel that with everything. Like, if you’re doing like a long run of a play and you’re doing it seven shows a week, at the end of it, I want to go back and start from the beginning. On, you gave me a physical thing to hold on to from the beginning and that was helpful. When I wasn’t making sense of it, I would go back to this physical thing, this idea of water, where he moves into a room and then he moves out of the room and it’s all very fluid. I found that helpful as a checkpoint., God, I was like, “Don’t ask me any questions about process.” And then here all I’m doing is talking about process. [BAUMBACH: But while we’re here, do you remember when we did press together in Paris and you talked about acting being a benign rebellion? Or is this something you’ve talked about a lot? DRIVER: No, it’s not. I mean, that day with you, and then in every interview since. But other than that … BAUMBACH: Well, I’ve attributed it to you, but have now just outright stolen it. Because I do think it’s a very good way to describe what a great actor does. You’re both acknowledging the authority of the director and the necessity of the actor to push back and find their own voice. DRIVER: I always found something strangely paternal about the director-actor relationship. Actors want so much approval. And I’m looking to you to tell me it’s good. I want you to be happy and like it all. But at some point, I distrust you, like, “Well, they don’t know me as well as I know myself. I know my potential. If it’s not good, then I have to fight to make it better.” And I start distrusting everybody because you’re insecure. So I start to rebel against what’s happening, to kind of shock my system a bit. Not rebel like I don’t show up on time or I show up drunk or something … Now we’re never going to work together again. [DRIVER: I’m looking out my window … They’re always doing stuff for the holidays—Halloween’s a big one. Do they trick-or-treat in your building? One year, Joanne [Tucker, Driver’s wife] and I bought $100 worth of mini candies, thinking that all the kids in the neighborhood were going to come by—not thinking, obviously, that no one’s going to let fucking strangers up into our building. For some reason, we didn’t put that together. We had, like, four kids come by. [] This one princess took all the candies we had hand over fist. I actually fucking hate Halloween.DRIVER: Yeah. I was dropping my wife off outside our building and I saw this mom holding a lightsaber—like, my lightsaber—and scarily accurate. Like, life-size. And she was handling it like she’s handled it a million times. She was juggling four kids who were all running in different directions, and she had three different bags and this lightsaber. Suddenly, the things that are great about this job came into full focus. BAUMBACH: When you were growing up, were there performances in movies or the theater that you really connected with? DRIVER: It depends what age. When I was growing up, it was all film. In the town over, in Nappanee, Indiana there was the Round Barn Theatre at Amish Acres where they did, like,seven years in a row. But apart from that, I didn’t have much exposure to theater. I remember watching[1987]—a lot of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. But top five performances, I’d say maybe Bill Irwin in[1980]; and pretty much everybody inis pretty great. Also, Paul Giamatti in my friend’s apartment. We did this reading ofby Sophocles. He was reading Philoctetes. It was just Paul Giamatti, my friend, and myself in this apartment. And it was one of the most amazing things. He has a foot that’s wounded and he’s begging Neoptolemus, my character, to cut it off. And I forgot to come in because in watching him, I actually believed that he was suffering and had been on this island for a long time. It was really incredible. But as far as movies that influenced me growing up, it was mostly, like,
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