The bald gentleman with the glasses. No, not you. The one with the fat Armagh head next to the lady in the magnolia cardigan.
“Thank you. This is not so much a question as a comment. As Gramsci may might have said, your film is a pile of ... ”
Adam Driver did a bit of promotion for Ferrari during the actors’ strike. Michael Mann’s nippy biopic of the eponymous automobile magnate secured an interim agreement from the Sag-Aftra union, allowing Driver to stride the red carpet at Venice International Film Festival. But he has had a break from those sometimes wearisome post-screening Q&A sessions. The holiday ended with just such a session at a festival in Poland. There is always someone. “More of a comment than a question” is a phrase branded on the brain of those of us who host such things. I greatly admire the guest who, after a lecture on the questioner’s long-gestated screenplay about the Battle of Alalia, answers another, entirely sensible question that he hasn’t actually been asked. Good strategy.
Driver ran up against a rarer individual. The fellow who wants the team to know he doesn’t like their work. “What do you think about [the] crash scenes?” our questioner asked. “They looked pretty harsh, drastic and, I must say, cheesy for me.” The actor was having no truck with that. “F**k you. I don’t know. Next question,” he said, shrugging. Given how sensitive the US media still is about what it calls (excruciatingly) F-bombs, it was hardly surprising the news went quickly around the trade papers. A few interesting questions were kicked up. Was Driver within his rights to dismiss the question? Under what circumstances is it cool to be rude about a person’s work?
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I can’t speak for the individual in question. But such remarks often reflect a questioner’s proud determination not to be “silenced”. You know the sort of thing. I alone will speak the truth. I will not be cowed by the acquiescent consensus. These are commendable attitudes when, say, bravely resisting rebarbative political views. Good luck to the fellow who challenges a speaker on his racist or sexist outbursts.
But a degree of civility is allowed someone standing before a crowd to speak about their creative work. “Your film is rubbish. Also you have a fat arse,” is not something anyone wants to hear. Of course you don’t have to agree that the film, book, play or record under discussion is good. But there is no need for you to say anything to the person on stage.
Imagine you are having dinner at a recent acquaintance’s house. If the potatoes are too firm, swallow them quickly and keep quiet. If the wine tastes like battery acid, pour it discreetly into the nearest pot plant. Nobody will applaud you for telling the host they cook as well as the average orang-utan plays chess. If a work is up for review, that’s a different business.
Fielding a criticism about his colleague’s work, Driver can be forgiven for brushing off the question with a twist of profanity
Even if you don’t often encounter someone explicitly telling the Q&A guest their film is rubbish, more often than not some eccentric will put forward a perfectly lunatic theory. In 2009 I hosted an event with Duncan Jones for his debut film, Moon. After the credits rolled, a lady shuffled to her feet with suspicious enthusiasm. When the microphone got to her, she asked Jones what he thought about Nasa faking the moon landings. You could sense a collective eyeroll sweeping the auditorium, but the director kept his nerve and calmly explained that he had met Buzz Aldrin and that the veteran astronaut did not seem like a liar. There was no follow-up.
Driver was in a different position. Fielding a criticism about his colleague’s work, he can be forgiven for brushing off the question with a twist of profanity. There are limits. Nobody wants an out-and-out slanging match. But there is something refreshing about watching an actor nudge away the PR training and respond as he might down the pub.
The Q&A remains a peculiar medium. For the most part, audience members are good sports. Just two weeks ago an attendee at Belfast Film Festival managed, during my session with the director John Sayles and the producer Maggi Renzi, to draw out an amusing anecdote about Sayles fooling a journalist into believing Piranha, his early creature-feature screenplay, used the killer fish as an allegory for the Gang of Four in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I didn’t have that nugget. When William Friedkin was in Dublin a few years back I merely had to set the motor-mouth director before the intelligent audience and let them spar away. People are generally there to appreciate the work and celebrate the creator. Why must someone then spoil it for everyone else? That was more of a comment than a question.
