THE DRIVE Offers an Intimate Perspective on One of America’s Most Defining Days
Special to the Hollywood Times
By Lee Roderick
(The Hollywood Times) 10/1/26 – It is November 1963 as Liz drives a station wagon with two small girls to a sleepover. On the radio she hears the words “shot in the head” and quickly turns it off.
She sees a woman sitting in a car at the side of the road, weeping. From the radio of a man driving beside her, Liz learns that someone has been shot. She rolls up the window.
So begins The Drive, a short feature film that has touched a nerve in thousands of viewers at more than 40 film festivals and is qualified for consideration for the 99th Academy Awards® next year. It was written and directed by husband-and-wife team David Arrow and Amber Paul.
I caught up with David and Amber at the Catalina Film Festival. Over Zoom, they explained why they were moved to bring this true story to the screen. Americans living at that time have poignant memories of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. This film reignites those memories.
As events in Dallas unfold, The Drive stays focused on the deeply personal experience of those caught in a moment when an ordinary day suddenly became part of history.
“Americans lost their president,” notes Amber, describing the profound personal impact of a tragedy that was felt far beyond Washington and Dallas.
Whenever they show the film, she said, “people come up to me and share their experience of that day. Often, they are crying.”
JFK’s assassination was a momentous tragedy felt by people across the world. This writer was a Christian missionary in New Zealand at the time. When my American companion and I knocked on a door, a woman answered it with tears streaming down her face. That is how we learned our president had been killed.
Kennedy was the first president born in this century. To many people he represented youth, progress, and hope. But today many younger citizens know nothing about him. “When young people come up to me and ask who JFK was, I use it as a teaching opportunity,” said Amber.
Creators of The Drive succeeded in offering a human-interest side note to the JFK saga. “We wanted to honor the story,” said David. “The interest of our whole team was to tell the story with great integrity. It was not a Democratic or Republican story. It transcended politics.”
Amber, who portrays Liz in the film, is an award-winning actress in numerous stage and screen productions. David is an actor as well as a screenwriter.
The Drive is executive produced by Emily Watson. Watson made her acclaimed screen debut in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, earning her first Academy Award® nomination. She received a second nomination for Hilary and Jackie. Her extensive film credits include Angela’s Ashes, Gosford Park, Red Dragon, Equilibrium, and Punch-Drunk Love, among many others.
Produced through 4 A Films, The Drive marks the latest collaboration between David and Amber, whose creative partnership began with Five Questions, a short film David wrote as a wedding present for Amber. David also wrote the screenplay for the award-winning short Rules of Love, which he starred in opposite Judy Greer. His screen credits include Igby Goes Down, Hostage, Joseph’s Gift, Days of Our Lives, Growing Pains, Passions, Broad City, NBC’s The Hunting Party, and AMC’s TURN, in which he portrayed Captain Andrew Sutherland.
