Adam Driver's "Keep Driving" Line

Added Jan 30, 2024 at 09:01AM EST by Philipp.

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About

Adam Driver's "Keep Driving" Line refers to a series of memes that imagine a racist line said by the character Flip Zimmerman, portrayed by Adam Driver, in the 2018 film BlacKkKlansman having been improvised by Driver. The joke started in early 2021, with the clip spawning memes and being posted in online discussions about the actor.

Origin

On August 10th, 2018, the biographical crime comedy-drama film BlacKkKlansman premiered in the United States.^[1] In the film, Detective Philip "Flip" Zimmerman, portrayed by Adam Driver, infiltrates a division of the Ku Klux Klan. In one scene, Flip protects his partner Detective Ron Stallworth by grabbing a gun from another Klan member and shooting in the direction of his fleeing car, angrily screaming racial slurs to maintain his cover (scene shown below).

You keep driving, you black spearchucker piece of shit ni**er!

On January 12th, 2021, Redditor DankAxolotl made a post in the /r/shittymoviedetails^[2] subreddit in which they jokingly claimed that Adam Driver improvised the line and that director Spike Lee liked it so much he decided to keep it in the film. The post (shown below) garnered nearly 300 upvotes in three years.

Did You Know? In BlacKkKlansman (2018) Adam Driver's infamous "n-word" scene was filmed while he thought the camera was off. The director liked it so much he kept it in the movie.

Spread

On January 19th, 2021, an anonymous 4chan^[3] user posted a similar joke in a /tv/ thread, writing, "Adam, the line was "Yeah, keep driving, buddy" (shown below).

528KiB, 1920x1080, so brave.jpg View Same Google iqdb SauceNAO Trace Anonymous Tue 19 Jan 2021 [96/9/67] 09:44:59 No.145329176 View Reply Original Report Quoted By: >>145329473 >>145331072 >>145331682 >>145332134 >>145332326 >>145332686 >>145332842 >>145333013 >>145333179 >>145334002 >>145336247 >>145343746 >YEAH KEEP DRIVING YOU BLACK SPEAR- CHUCKING P------------ N----- Anonymous Tue 19 Jan 2021 09:54:53 No.145329473 Report Quoted By: >>145331993 >>145332203 >>145333220 >>145333738 >>145336109 >> 145337561 >>145329176 >Adam, the line was "Yeah, keep driving, buddy".

On January 21st, YouTube^[4] user Basement Beast Memes posted an I Wonder What He Will Say Next meme based on the scene that received over 5.9 million views in four years (shown below).

The meme gained more prominence in January 2022 as several memes imagining the director's reaction to Adam Driver improvising the line were posted on TikTok. For example, a January 17th, 2022, video by user @dejiwastaken garnered over 141,000 likes on TikTok^[5] in two years (shown below, left).