During “Ferrari’s” press event at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday, Adam Driver criticized Amazon and Netflix for failing to comply with SAG-AFTRA’s demands. Driver questioned during a press conference on August 31 at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, “I’m 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.”
Driver said in continuation, “The other objective is obviously to say, why is it that a smaller distribution company like Neon and STX International can meet the dream demands of what SAG is asking for — this is pre-negotiations — the dream version of SAG’s wishlist, but a big company like Netflix and Amazon can’t? And every time people from SAG go and support a movie that has met the terms of the interim agreement, it just makes it more obvious that these people are willing to support the people that they collaborate with, and the others are not.”
Driver is one of the rare A-list celebrities present at the festival this year, which started on August 30 and runs through September 9. The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) offered the attendees an interim exemption for their independent film projects while the strike was still in effect. In order to promote his most recent movie, Ferrari, Driver made his presence known at the festival. An independent film produced by Neon and directed by Michael Mann, the story explores the journey of Italian sports car tycoon Enzo Ferrari.
He gave an explanation of his decision to join the initiative at the press conference, saying, “When this opportunity came up, it seemed like [an] understanding to the interim agreement. It’s a no-brainer for all these reasons why you want to support your union and I’m here because of that, to support and stand in solidarity with them by showing and just further proving the point that [it] is really is about the people you make [the film] with and that’s very resonant with our movie.”
Prior to the festival, SAG-AFTRA consented to provide interim agreements to specific productions so they may market their films. The producers and distributors of the picture must be independent of businesses affiliated with the AMPTP in order to achieve an interim agreement, and they must accept the terms put forward by SAG-AFTRA in those agreements. This is the situation with “Ferrari,” “Priscilla,” and other Venice premieres that weren’t created or released by a streaming service.
The director Micheal Mann said, “‘Ferrari’ got made because the people who worked on ‘Ferrari’ made it by forgoing large sectors of salaries, in the case of Adam and myself. It was not made by a big studio — no big studio wrote us a check. And that’s why we’re here, standing in solidarity.
