Life is meant to be experienced

What excited/motivated you most about Drive It Like You Stole It in the early stages of production?

A lot of automotive work prioritizes control, but I was more interested in chasing a feeling: something reckless, emotional, and human. I wanted to make a piece where the car wasn’t the point, it was the conduit. We were selling the feeling, and, therefore, the car. It felt like an opportunity to prove that we could bring narrative weight to a category that’s often rigid.

Can you provide some background about the BMW M4 that you used for the shoot? How did you choose that car specifically? Where did you source it, and the other cars in the film, from?

The M4 felt like the right balance of precision and aggression. It’s engineered without feeling overly polished. It still has attitude.

I grew up around an M5 I loved as a teenager, which is where the concept came from. My stunt driving uncles had a lot of fun with them as well. One of my dream cars to this day is a 1990s E30.

We sourced the hero car through Blue Street exotics, out of Long Island. Karl Flacko from their team was a dream to work with. Additional vehicles came together through a network of mechanics, drivers and local car communities. Community was everything on this set.

What was it like to work with a professional stunt driver and how did you conceive of the sequences that involved stunts? Was it a collaboration between you and the driver or did you have everything planned out going into the shoot?

Working with Casey and the Metro Camera Cars team (Joey Bearse, who led the Russian arm car division) completely elevated the project. We had a strong conceptual plan going in, which was brought together over a long coffee meeting with Joey and our camera team. He was our stunt coordinator, and really held my hand on a piece of the puzzle I’ve always been intrigued by but hadn’t had the chance to touch in my career yet.

The specifics of the stunts were very collaborative. My team came to the table with the tone, pacing, and how the sequences should feel. Joey and Casey brought a level of precision and instinct.

There’s a point where you have to shift from directing to trusting. When you’re collaborating, it becomes less about control and more about creating the right conditions.

I’m not used to seeing high-performance cars like the M4 being advertised to young women, especially in the context of racing. Why was it important for you to specifically appeal to that audience when making the film?

Precisely because they’re almost never centered in it. Automotive storytelling has historically been built around a very narrow idea of who gets to experience power, speed, and control. I was interested in expanding that without making it feel like a statement piece. It wasn’t about marketing to women. It was about placing a young woman in a role that’s usually denied to her and letting that feel normal, intuitive, and emotionally grounded. That shift alone changes how the story lands.

In advertising, cars are typically presented either as practical and reliable tools or as status symbols. You instead chose to focus on the idea of racing as a craft that can be passed down through generations, effectively framing the car as a catalyst of legacy and memory. Where did that idea come from? Why did you think it was important to reframe car culture in this way?

The emotional core of the film is rooted in memories of being in the car with my dad, doing donuts with my stunt driving uncles, roadtrips with my mom and blasting music with my best friend as a teenager. Those moments weren’t about the car as an object. They were about connection, trust, and gaining access to something that felt bigger than me.

A lot of car culture gets framed around ownership or status, but what’s more interesting to me is what gets passed down: skills, instincts, feelings.

What interests you most about racing as a human undertaking? Of its different forms—Nascar, F1, street racing—which do you find most inspiring/compelling?

Racing sits at this intersection of control and chaos. You’re dealing with precision, engineering, and discipline, but also risk, instinct, and the possibility of losing control at any moment. That tension is really compelling as an overall ethos for life.

I’m less interested in one format over another and more in that underlying psychology. Whether it’s F1 or street racing, there’s always this negotiation between fear and freedom.

It seems unlikely that we’ll ever see a carless USA but do you think driving will ever go extinct as a result of driverless vehicles? If it does, how do you see that affecting our relationship to transit?

I don’t think it disappear entirely, but I do think it will become less central. As automation increases, driving will probably shift from necessity to choice. Something closer to a hobby or an art form.

If that happens, it might actually make the act of driving more meaningful. It’s like driving a stick shift. When something is no longer required, the people who choose to do it are making more of a deliberate choice.

Have you ever driven really fast in a really fast, sick-ass car? How did it make you feel?

Yes, and it’s a very specific kind of clarity. Everything narrows. You’re not thinking about anything else, you’re just responding. It’s like the ultimate level of presence. That feeling was something I really wanted to capture in Drive It Like You Stole It, even for people who’ve never experience it directly. It’s also just fun. We could all use a little more of that.

Describe your dream car, including any customizations or aesthetic choices you would make.

1973 Ford Bronco. I want to rebuild my own one day. The details will come to me in the moment but I’m 99% sure it should be baby blue. Killer sound system, for sure.

I’m interested in the title of the film. To me, it feels like more than just a slogan, it’s almost like a metaphysical instruction. In what ways, if any, do you feel you’ve applied the philosophy of that phrase, “Drive it like you stole it,” to your own life? How should the readers of this interview apply it to theirs?

For me it’s about living life big. Not recklessness for the sake of it, but a kind of full commitment: acting without constantly second guessing yourself or waiting for permission.

Making this film required that mindset. There were a lot of reasons not do it, or to scale it down, or to play it safe. The only way it came together was by pushing past that. If you’re looking for red lights, you’re going to find them, but we’re on a spinning rock in the middle of space! How insane is that? Life is meant to be experienced.