Michael Mann’s epic historical drama Ferrari will drive onto the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival this evening, one of the major titles in competition here on the Lido. It’s also one of the key films to secure a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement, allowing stars of the movie to do promotion.
This afternoon, Adam Driver, who plays Enzo Ferrari, told the Venice press corps he was “very happy to be here to support this movie,” but also, “very proud to be here to be a visual representation of a movie that’s not part of the AMPTP and to promote the SAG leadership directive which is an effective tactic which is the interim agreement.” The agreement, he noted helps “stop the bleeding a little bit so people in IATSE and SAG can go to work.”
Another objective, he continued, “is to say why is it that a smaller distribution company like Neon or STX International can meet… the dream version of SAG’s wishlist, but a big company like Netflix and Amazon can’t?”
Mann agreed that he is in “total solidarity with SAG and the writers guild,” noting, they made the movie by forgoing a large percentage of salaries. “No big studio wrote us a check, that’s why we’re here in solidarity with both unions.”
But it wasn’t all strike talk today as Driver, co-star Patrick Dempsey and Mann discussed the making of the film which is set in 1957 when ex-racer Enzo Ferrari is in crisis. Bankruptcy threatens the factory he and his wife, Laura (Penélope Cruz), built from nothing 10 years earlier. Their volatile marriage has been battered by the loss of their son a year earlier, and Ferrari struggles to acknowledge his son with Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley). Meanwhile, his drivers’ passion to win pushes them to the edge as they launch into the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia.
Dempsey, who plays F1 driver Piero Taruffi and is an accomplished racer himself, said he went after the role aggressively calling the script “the best I’ve read in and around the motorsport world.”
Driver said it was easy to make the decision to join the project, saying of Ferrari, “His internal engine was very much driven by grief” and the different relationships with the women in his life. “That time in his life was a subject I didn’t know much about and seemed daunting and exciting and with Michael being the person who you’re doing it for it seemed like a no-brainer to me.”
Mann called Ferrari’s story “so profoundly human” and noted, “When you encounter a character as dynamic as he is, as operatic as he is, the deeper the dive the more universal it becomes and I found that the way so many parts of him are in opposition to each other in his life resonated with me, with the way life is.”
Mann also commented that he’s done a bit of amateur racing and called the experience of it twofold. On the one hand, “The focus is so intensely on one single objective and everything else in life disappears,” and on the other, there’s “a sense of agitation. I wanted to bring that experience to an audience as opposed to very elegant graphics.”
While Dempsey did some of his own driving, Driver did not. “They wouldn’t let me drive the car for insurance reasons. Making a movie is a miracle, they don’t want me touching the thing that is the most expensive” on set he quipped to laughter.
Still, said Driver, “It’s hard not to get philosophical about an engine. The number of pieces that have to come together is similar to films… And this missing element of human intuition and reflex, it’s a fifty-fifty marriage… It makes you aware of how many things can go wrong.” He compared the cars to “a moving piece of art” or a “drivable clock.”
Of recently playing two iconic Italians, Driver said, “understanding of a different culture is the thing I love the most about being an actor. You are forced to empathize with someone who’s different than you and without judgement look at their life honestly. It’s a weird job, but its what I’m interested in.”
Sarah Gordon, Gabriel Leone and Jack O’Connell also star in Mann’s vehicle, which was scripted by Troy Kennedy Martin. The pic has its world premiere Thursday at the Venice Film Festival, followed by a Christmas Day stateside release via Neon.
