More on the Lynn Ramsay Story…

Lynn Ramsay was brought in to direct Jane Got a Gun, with Natalie Portman as the star and co-producer. Strong female lead, strong female visionary director. Seems like a great match, right? Well, Ramsay walked off the set – if you want a story spun a certain way you give the scoop to Deadline. The press simply follows their lead blindly. I’ll never understand that part of it. That happened this past year with the Oscar race, the year before with the Oscar race, and now, with Jane’s got a Gun. A different take from the Guardian:

Following her dramatic withdrawal last week from her first Hollywood movie on the first day of shooting, director Lynne Ramsay will take some time to recover her reputation. Ramsay failed to turn up for the beginning of Jane Got a Gun, the feminist western she’d been preparing for months in Los Angeles. While this is unprecedented behaviour for a director, I understand that Ramsay believes she had no choice but to withdraw from the film after a series of compromises over cast and locations reached critical mass, including a falling out with the film’s star and co-producer, Natalie Portman. I understand the problem also stemmed from Ramsay having been promised final cut on the movie, but it having become clear that this was not going to happen.

Ramsay is, friends tell me, shaken but OK and working out how to redress the series of slurs against her that have proliferated on websites such as Deadline.com, the favoured organ of the film’s producer, Scott Steindorff. She will return to the UK soon but has been receiving support from friends such as Tilda Swinton and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey. “Hollywood’s a lonely place,” a source close to Ramsay told me. “She’d been in control all the way, but the last week of pre-production became a series of calamities for a film-maker as precise and visionary as Lynne. It’s a shame to think Hollywood can’t accommodate a talent like hers, but maybe she was naive to think it wouldn’t be a rough ride.”