Драйвер в Midnight Specal
The studio’s other pivotal note urged Nichols to look to rising star Driver when casting an intelligent FBI agent tasked with tracking down Alton. “Midnight Special” shot in the period between when Driver was cast in “The Force Awakens” and when the “Star Wars” sequel began production. But Nichols landed the future Kylo Ren months before, thanks to executives in the know.
“I have to give credit where credit is due,” the director said. “Greg Silverman, the head of [Warner Bros.] studio, recommended him. They’d worked on another film together [‘This is Where I Leave You’]. I wasn’t familiar with his work. I hadn’t watched ‘Girls,’ and I hate to say this, but sometimes you get studio executive notes and you’re like, ‘Ugh. OK, I guess I’ll go check this guy out.’ But in this particular instance, it was an amazing note. It was an amazing idea.
“I remember my casting director Francine Maisler - who’s no joke; she’s the real deal - she talked to me before I talked to Adam Driver on the phone for the first time. And she was like, ‘Don’t mess it up!’ I didn’t understand all the chess pieces that were getting moved around the universal board in the background. I talked to him and he’d seen ‘Shotgun Stories,’ which makes him one of 17 people, and we just had this great conversation about this character. This character that out of the list of them could be the most clichéd, could be the most stock, and he had ideas about that and they were good ideas. And I was really honest with him, like, ‘Hey, look this is the most dangerous character in this film because he could be the most one-dimensional. Help me with this.’
“In one of the first scenes we did together, he has to sit down at this desk, and he bumped into the desk and dropped his bookbag and hit his foot on the chair. I almost called cut because I thought, ‘Well, this is obviously a mistake.’ But it wasn’t. He was beginning to build the behavior of this character. And that’s acting. That is somebody who is really thinking about what they’re doing. And from that moment on I was tremendously impressed with him.”
“I have to give credit where credit is due,” the director said. “Greg Silverman, the head of [Warner Bros.] studio, recommended him. They’d worked on another film together [‘This is Where I Leave You’]. I wasn’t familiar with his work. I hadn’t watched ‘Girls,’ and I hate to say this, but sometimes you get studio executive notes and you’re like, ‘Ugh. OK, I guess I’ll go check this guy out.’ But in this particular instance, it was an amazing note. It was an amazing idea.
“I remember my casting director Francine Maisler - who’s no joke; she’s the real deal - she talked to me before I talked to Adam Driver on the phone for the first time. And she was like, ‘Don’t mess it up!’ I didn’t understand all the chess pieces that were getting moved around the universal board in the background. I talked to him and he’d seen ‘Shotgun Stories,’ which makes him one of 17 people, and we just had this great conversation about this character. This character that out of the list of them could be the most clichéd, could be the most stock, and he had ideas about that and they were good ideas. And I was really honest with him, like, ‘Hey, look this is the most dangerous character in this film because he could be the most one-dimensional. Help me with this.’
“In one of the first scenes we did together, he has to sit down at this desk, and he bumped into the desk and dropped his bookbag and hit his foot on the chair. I almost called cut because I thought, ‘Well, this is obviously a mistake.’ But it wasn’t. He was beginning to build the behavior of this character. And that’s acting. That is somebody who is really thinking about what they’re doing. And from that moment on I was tremendously impressed with him.”