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Learning To Drive Humor Wise Chicken Soup for the Soul

Academy Award® nominee Patricia Clarkson and Academy Award® winner Ben Kingsley star in this feel-good, coming of (middle) age comedy about a mismatched pair who help each other overcome life’s road blocks—festival circuit favorite Learning to Drive, which was chosen the Audience Award runner-up at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

Soul-searching Essay From New Yorker

Good stories are catching…and if anyone in the entertainment industry is ever exposed to a really good story, it can take hold and become as contagious as a cold on a crowded subway car. Such was the case with author Katha Pollitt’s lightly humorous, soul-searching essay that originally ran in the New Yorker, relating her experiences taking driving lessons in New York while in her 40s. Of course, it being a Pollitt piece, its subject was about a lot more than merely learning how to successfully pilot an automobile. (The essay later became the titular work in a collection of her personal essays, published by Random House in 2007.)

About the time the essay came out, producer Dana Friedman had been scouting for a property with cinematic promise—one that held personal meaning for the filmmaker and that might also entertain and resonate with moviegoers. Dana—who had recently gone through a divorce—recognized parts of herself in the woman who was seeking a broader horizon at a time in her life when many would prefer to remain within their safely established perimeters.

During Friedman’s search for a writer with a kindred spirit who could take the promising set-up in the essay and expand it to fill a feature-length movie, she crossed paths with screenwriter Sara Kernochan. Dana remembers, “It was extremely clear in the interview process that Sara was the perfect person to write this script. She’s a New York native and her take was just perfect—she completely understood the character.”

Kernochan wanted to remove that commonality and purposely widened the gulf and diversified the cultures. Sarah’s “older woman at the wheel” is an Upper West Side creature, fighting to keep her beloved, book-filled apartment and way of life: novel launches, fundraisers, talk radio appearances, and well-meaning, literary friends. The “Sikh in the colorful turban” is a political refugee and naturalized citizen, who shares a Queens basement apartment with several other men (all undocumented) as he works multiple jobs to put food into his fragrant, spice-filled kitchen (and to save up for marriage, should he ever find a wife). Wendy believes in intellect; Darwan is a devout follower of Sikhism. Wendy’s is a world of words—Darwan’s is a domain of faith.

Jump Into the Community

Through professional contacts, Kernochan was put in touch with Harpreet Singh Toor, a spokesman for the Sikh community in Queens. There she began her research, filling in the back story for her driving instructor. Harpreet escorted her into the temples, introduced her to illegal workers in cramped apartments, helped her find taxi drivers to interview. He invited her to his house; upon meeting his wife, the two women kicked him out and spent the rest of the day together. Later Kernochan met his wife’s circle of friends—some recently emigrated to join their husbands in arranged marriages, others who had done so years earlier. She says, “I discovered a very family-orientated culture, and the joy in that seemed mutual on both sides. Even in the marriages that were somewhat dicey, there was still that idea that, in the Sikh religion, to live and love—which is the way to be in life—first begins with the family. In their culture, if you show love and support, and treat each other as equals—as the women I met with believed themselves to be!—then you are on your first step to God.”

Even with the vast differences in culture, the writer still encountered the same challenges in both Western and Sikh marriages, ones that would affect both the romantic relationships of her two characters…namely, how well do you know your spouse? And how do you find closeness with the person next to you in bed, whether it’s a veritable stranger in an arranged marriage, or a too-familiar partner in a decades-long marriage where the bond is taken for granted and the decline of intimacy is ignored? Kernochan summarizes, “It’s very simple what Learning to Drive is about, and it’s true for every character—they’re walking outside for the first time, and every instinct in their being is screaming to go back inside and hide where it’s safe.”

Hollywood Spring Independent Production

Friedman also drew Patricia Clarkson to the project. Clarkson confesses, “I’ve loved the story of Wendy and Darwan for a long time, about seven-and-a-half years. It touched me. It tickled me. It infected me. I couldn’t shake it; it wouldn’t let go. I wanted to do this film.

“Wendy is a tough book critic, a woman who has lived in a deep intellectual space,” she continues. “Suddenly, everything shifts—her life falls apart when her husband walks out on her. Through a series of events, she starts to take driving lessons, more a fluke, a lark, a means to an end—she’s looking for allies in the divorce, and so she’s suddenly trying to please her daughter. But in the process of these days with this kind and gentle soul of a man, she comes to realize how foolish she has been in a lot of ways, and her life becomes an emotional life for the first time in a very, very long time.”

Not very long after her introduction to Kernochan’s script, Clarkson found herself near to wrapping production on the film Elegy. One of the last nights of production— ”after a couple of bottles of champagne”—she off-handedly mentioned her hopes of working together again to her director, Isabel Coixet, and co-star, Ben Kingsley. Months later in Barcelona (filming Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona), Patricia gave a copy of Learning to Drive to Coixet over dinner. The director says, “I thought it was wonderful. It was touching, but also really funny. But when people give me scripts…well, it’s very difficult for me to direct a script from someone else. This is only the second time—the other was Elegy. But it touched me in a personal way.”

As it turns out, Coixet also didn’t learn to drive until, as she puts it, “I was really old. See, it was something other people do. And then suddenly you’re a mother. And then suddenly you see yourself with four hours with a guy from Ecuador trying to teach you to drive in L.A.”

Isabel was excited by the prospect of working again with her former stars, but acknowledges that in independent film, it is a game of timing. “We started this process of talking to people, and everybody loved the script. But we live in a world where films have to have a very specific audience. And I think, at the time, we weren’t quite sure what kind of audience was waiting for this film. The fact that we are doing the film now—with Daniel and Gabriel Hammond having come to the project—it was some kind of fate. I think it is the right time that this film can be shaped in a very specific way for the type of audience who are interested in films. It’s one of those films when you take your partner to the movies…and they thank you after, I hope!”

Ben Kingsley was gifted with a script, as promised by Clarkson. And while the draw of reteaming with a fellow performer he held in esteem was tangible, his acceptance of the role of Darwan was also based on his own special process. Kingsley explains, “My choices are often intuitive within the framework of the three key elements, which are cast, director and script. Those came together well, so my choice was entirely intuitive. And I’ve found if you make an intuitive choice, it’s very often explained to you why during the process of filmmaking. But my intuition was verified, endorsed, vindicated by people that I’ve met and things that I’ve heard on the way.

Synopsis

Wendy (Clarkson) is a fiery Manhattan book critic whose husband has just left her for another woman; Darwan (Kingsley) is a soft-spoken taxi driver from India on the verge of an arranged marriage. As Wendy sets out to reclaim her independence, she runs into a barrier common to many lifelong New Yorkers: she’s never learned to drive. When Wendy hires Darwan to teach her, her unraveling life and his calm restraint seem like an awkward fit. But as he shows her how to take control of the wheel, and she coaches him on how to impress a woman, their unlikely friendship awakens them to the joy, humor and love in starting life anew.