It seems we won’t have to wait long for Lynne Ramsay’s next offering. She’s already written over 100 pages of a new screenplay, her follow-up to this year’s awards contender “You Were Never Really Here,” and the Scottish filmmaker’s first original script since 1999’s “Ratcatcher.”
“I wrote 160 pages of a script just after doing all the press for ‘You Were Never Really Here,’ because it’s hard to keep talking about the same films,” Ramsay told the British Independent Film Awards’ website. “But I was really inspired by making [that] film, so I’ve started writing this epic environmental horror thing. I don’t know what it is yet, I just kept writing and didn’t look back.” And she’s “working on a few different projects” simultaneously. “They’re all quite exciting, but they’re just in the writing process at the moment,” she explained.
The story of a war vet-turned-vigilante, Joaquin Phoenix-starrer “You Were Never Really Here” marks Ramsay’s first film since 2011’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” She’s determined to shoot her next one “sooner than later. I don’t want [to leave] a big gap,” she emphasized. “I don’t really take time off, it’s just that some things have worked out and some things haven’t. It’s just the nature of the beast, really, but you learn something from all of them, even if they don’t work out.”
As for her future goals, the writer-director said, “I want every film to be different. I’d love to make a comedy. People go, ‘Oh, your work’s so dark.’ I’m like, ‘Is it?’ Because I always put some kind of comedy elements as well. You’re always exploring as a filmmaker, y’know? But it takes a while to make films, unfortunately. Especially if you write them as well.”
Ramsay won the award for Best Screenplay at Cannes this year for “You Were Never Really Here,” an adaptation of Jonathan Ames’ novella of the same name.
“I’ve got a reputation for being difficult, and yet with my crew and my cast, I’m super-collaborative and we get on really well, and they like working with me. So to me that always feels like bullshit,” Ramsay has said. “You’re doing a tough job, where you’re the captain of the ship, and there’s always tough decisions to make, and sometimes you’ve just got to go, ‘That’s not right for this.'” She continued, “You’ve got to stick up for what you believe in. If you don’t do that, you’re doing a disservice to the audience, because you’re making something really diluted. And if you do that when you’re a guy, you’re seen as artistic — ‘difficulty’ is seen as a sign of genius. But it’s not the same for women.”
