Adam Driver on Charlie Rose - Interview about the Organization he founded AITAF - 08.05.2016

production of kenneth larnigan's play lobby hero we're very pleased to have him here at this table for the first time welcome thank you so much for having me here um this the idea that you wanted to do this thing came from where from your experience in the marines from your experience in theater from seeing some connection that other people hadn't thought about basically being at school from being in the military was the first time that i felt i was exposed knowing nothing really about the theater community or culture plays or playwrights or the characters in them i was interested in high school but uh and then left for the military then when i got out and went to school was really the first time that i discovered like sam shepard and david mamet and found the language how important language was and since i just come from this military environment where there's an emphasis put on um you know acronyms for acronyms but there's not so much about using your words to describe your feelings and i was noticing a change in myself how i felt less aggressive and when i was able to through plays you know use my language more and uh regretted not having that when i was in the military and wanted to share that with my friends basically so that's that was kind of the the the genesis of i guess and and when you now share it with military friends do they feel the same thing has it been something that was an instant kind of you know adam you're right yeah yeah definitely yeah they i i remember uh i i met them afterwards i i got out earlier and i was in uh in school trying to explain to them i wear pajamas and you know i talk about my feelings and acting school and uh i could see that they were very apprehensive what is your um i actually did all day um but there was something about seeing something live and watching somebody live without a filter of a screen or like people get the connection right away then also because of the material that we pick it's not shakespeare or the greeks or not not that there's anything wrong with that but at the the you know mammoth or denitro vance it's very accessible material that i think that to generalize the military culture is used to being exposed to so the language itself i think breaks down the barriers right away is this akin to what's been happening in some prisons in america the use of theater there in a sense to engage and to give people introduction to theater in a different way yeah a culture i think there's like a strong stereotype which is odd since really the birth of theater was from a military environment you know the greek cesculus europeans in general all these elected generals who wrote plays right for a culture that was at war i think over the course of of time obviously been stereotyped that that that culture won't understand that they're there they want to see you know the dallas cheerleaders or prisoners want to see something violent and aggressive they won't they won't being told that that that group of people won't respond to any kind of complexity or nuance and and that you see in theater it was insane to me and so that that hopefully we're trying to break that stereotype this is what you said too to um i think vanessa agrio goradas uh who had been here to profile uh in public conversation with me she said you said for me becoming a man had a lot to do with learning communications and i learned about that by acting emphasis in the marine corps isn't on talking about your feelings but as i found myself being able to use my words i became less aggressive as you've just told us as a person less angry i mean it really is the liberation of being able to give voice to what you feel right and like doing it from playwrights who are way smarter than i am being able to you know um embody their language and suddenly uh through and also the material resonates in ways that isn't so obvious we we of course we could do streamers and and which is a great play but we we try to stream as tom stoppard who uh streamers david david right now that's david rape yeah right uh which which we do other david rabe thanks you know but we really try to focus away from a military themed and really show characters that are struggling through all the human problems that we all share that are not specifically military or civilian and pick pieces that are diverse in age and race like a military audiences to accurately reflect them back it's not civilians telling a military audience what it's like to be in the military not that people can't understand a different culture but it's um we're not going in both preconceived notions what people respond to and what they don't one of my favorite things rambling but we did laura lenny read this monologue from china by scott oregon and it was about a an employer reprimanding her employee for not wearing a bra and afterwards all the the marines we did at camp pendleton was one of our first performances all the marines afterwards were the male marines were like you know i thought the whole thing was good to go loved loved the plays understood what you guys were after there's that one monologue about uh that woman you know yelling at her employee for not wearing a bra that we thought was a little bit of an indirect attack on on the way we do things in the military that there's a point for structure and uniformity and right we thought you were kind of saying that you know um you're mocking our kind of uh the structure that we have in place for a good reason and then the female marines were leaving the audience being like i loved it i loved it all especially that one monologue or because i know what it's like to be a female in a very male dominated culture and to wear my you know hat or my hair under my cover how did you come to juilliard i was interested in acting before um i went into the military and then really after september 11th i feel like most people my age and at that time doing nothing you know it was like working as a telemarketer and we hit the 4-h fairgrounds i felt like i wanted to be involved and i wanted retribution and the marine corps to me was like the top of the pyramid as far as military service was so i'm like if i'm going to do it i'm going to do that and i'm gonna be an infantry and i want to go all the way but then when i got out of the military i had kind of a false idea that oh well civilian problems are are easy you know they're i will have to wait in line you know like if i yeah that's the wrong you know percentage of milk you know like what what are civilian problems that are easily manageable and solvable so anything i want to do i can do in the civilian world which is an illusion but at the time i had all this um uh miss kissif notions about you know do you think that most actors would benefit from the kind of experience you had yeah a lot of the actors have no idea they've never been in the military base or they their associations with the military culture is through you know film and television i'm not to keep calling out laura lenny but one of one of the first things that she said was oh i thought it was like the f troop but it's not at all it's you forget that this is that their people and these people have feelings and they just happen to have a job where uh the stakes are really high if your experiences made you see acting differently yeah i think of acting as a service i guess what i mean yeah as opposed to i mean obviously it's a very egotistical or it can be egotistical vain seemingly unnecessary profession but seeing it used as a tool especially taking it outside of new york to people who have never been to a play or never you really um i feel see firsthand watching people see a theater experience for the first time and not knowing how effective life performance can be really for me um even though it's acting as many things as a you know political act it's a um uh you know a calling or whatever acronym or not acronym but adjective is applicable but it is a service and and to use it as that makes it that takes the pressure off uh i think in doing it also because you're you're really just one part of a bigger thing the same thing um is a military unit you're you're one role uh in in a larger machine if you don't show up then you know things aren't going to happen and it's the same thing if you're not there to support your partners or the people that you're with and then what is it what are you doing you know i guess it's giving me less tolerance uh for for things like that where it's it's not a team effort towards let's talk for people who don't appreciate the team and the mission yeah that it's a shared goal yeah everybody's decide someone's paying a lot of money for a lot of people to be in one place at one time to tell some to some story that hopefully is bigger than any one person you know that hopefully it's worth it that you know better be worth it and and that's i think i took that from the military too everyone's away from their families they're they're they're whereas acting you're pretending to be in life or death circumstances and acting you are in life or um military you are in life or death circumstances it better be uh for a good reason i guess and and why take it lightly you know i guess that's but i think that's what there are those and we know the stories in terms of of suffering from some kind of depression coming out because they missed that aspect for sure of what their life has been yeah and i think also it's just speaking from my own experience looking for you have all you're aware of what you can do in a day you have so much uh in the military your day is structured and at the end of it you're always like look at all the things that i've done then when you go back to civilian we're like where can i plug in all this energy you know i'm 23 or 24 i have all this like um you know i'm strong i'm healthy i want to do something i want to you know looking for that kind of disciplined structure and there's not a lot of places you can put it especially with if you're an infantry marine or in the infantry how are you going to apply that um uh to where where a lot you know the business world is going to give you a shot and not think that you're going gonna you know flip out because you were in the military for no reason do you have any regret about leaving the military at first yeah i i i didn't complete it and i didn't complete it with medical discharge yes that i didn't complete with the people that i was with i think about that still but now i'm like used to civilian life that's great you know and and through what's great about civilian life compared to military life well just the freedom obviously do what you want to do the lack of someone deciding what you're going to do and spend every minute of your time yeah and also in as far as this uh trying to continue your service you don't have to worry about the bureaucracy of like what your rank is in comparison to trying to get something done uh for those who haven't seen girls tell us who adam sackler is adam sackler is a rhinoceros who runs a full force at something until he gets bored or distracted and then turns and i can only see what's right in front of him and he's lena lena's boyfriend hannah on the show right who kind of over the course of six seasons we just finished it a couple weeks a couple weeks ago kind of evolves into this [Music] being more committed and doubled down to being an actor and uh you know back and forth in his relationship with hannah and how about the force awakens how did that happen um jj i had done a movie lincoln that uh kathy kennedy was the producer on and she recommended me to jj and jj had only seen girls and and i flew out to l.a and met him at bad robot and we talked about the character there's no script there's nothing you know uh he kind of gave me a general sense of it and and then it was uh then it was months of thinking uh thinking about it and um yeah like a month after that they you know they said do you want to do it and i just wanted to think about it for a long time and why did you have to think about it well i mean there was no script and and uh i think the more so uh just the idea scared me a lot you know i i was a fan of those movies and you know it's like a big hollywood kind of thing and uh but you were thinking were you thinking i'm not sure i'm up to doing this or were you thinking i'm not sure i want this because it may take me a place that i really didn't want to go no i never thought of where it would take me i thought of what if i the stakes are so big what if i get there and i have no ideas and it's going to be bad that i'm going to be bad and um and and sink it mostly just because of failure on such a a big scale like that is is like a is a terrifying idea but it's also giving you a a huge profile now yeah yeah uh well um yes it yeah it definitely made things easier for ataf which is good exactly of course you know hello then you got a driver on the line right yeah then you also but then you also have to fight for the right kind of money because it's a tricky thing to donate obviously the arts is always tricky to raise money for because it's not like data driven philanthropy especially when people want to support worthy causes like you know supporting ptsd we're not saying give us a hundred dollars and that'll go towards a you know it'll go towards art yeah and the benefit will may not be immediate but it might be down there but that's that's easier um but um i lost your questions tell me about kylo do you see anything i mean how did you see him uh well this is also i guess tiding into why i decided to do it was because it was jj and because um i was expecting hollywood movies obviously i i have a strong chip on my shoulder that that's a lot about spectacle and not character and it's it is but not i would say with the first words out of jj's mouth were story and character and the uh the spectacle of it will be secondary and that will give you something nuanced to play and hopefully not something that's generic that their their relationship is what the um the idea of parents and fathers and that's true spielberg too what's that the sense of story and parent and father and seeing stories in terms of of the perspective of relationships and and for some reason studios don't see that that is what makes those movies have a long life they're interested in short lives not not something that has like a long lasting impact has all of this changed your ambition in any way you know i mean ambition the best sense of the way i mean clearly ambition what you're doing uh here is ambition yes sometimes it's ahead of me where um i think that um i mean the fact that i'm sitting here at this table talking to you is a very about a non-profit you know that we started six years ago in you know at juilliard is um way ahead of what i imagined and sometimes just knowing that the attention is on you sometimes someday i don't feel yet comfortable with uh or even being a spokesperson or cheerleader for any kind of cause sometimes i never imagined that something like that would be my life or i'd be comfortable doing it so sometimes i i'm getting more comfortable to it i don't know but my my point too though is with your fame or whatever that's the word right uh and high profile but it is popularity and fame with that can you do more for this nonprofit oh for sure yeah i know yeah and just because people even though they whereas before they're like what is it theater now it's like okay uh uh we're fans of star wars yeah we'll uh you can you can come here yeah yeah or elsewhere about fundraising they're like you can't come here you have to take the right money from the to to feel like you're you can sleep well at night because like well what's this non-profit sure sure but come down to our bank and take a picture with my daughter oh yeah no i don't know we why does anyone want to support the cause you know that's what we're going toward in the future making less about you know me and my journey this the the idea the telling a telling a group of people that they are not can't intellectually understand a play is absurd to me exactly and keeping that away from people that generally won't have exposure because you can connect it to your own life right it is about all the basic emotions you of course guys men and women in the marines feel right yeah and and and again that you know we have like tony kushner and all these great writers hearing their language it's it's hard not to make the connection to what's great about and what's terrible about and what's difficult about being a human you know and being alive and uh and there's no other community right or specifically the military where those stakes are just so high you know they're everyone's away from their families and needs a way to process thank you for coming thank you thank you so much for having me adam driver back in a moment stay with us

Channel: Virginia

Views: 15,703

Keywords: adam driver, charlie rose, interview, aitaf

Id: ZD7P10YaDOY

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 15 2021