Gettin her done in ONE
Some debut features ROCK…how?? Building canals! We're making a game show!
In case you missed last week’s rotation
Today,
How novice wins over knowledge, with words from the Scottish image savant herself
Calling all the film obsessed for a GAME SHOW in development
Lynne Ramsay’s debut feature, Ratcatcher (1999), opens with a shot of a boy wrapped in a lace curtain. This metamorphically evocative image sets the stage for a gut punching story of a young boy burdened by a destructive environment and a grave mistake. This was her debut film, might I add. Meaning everything that came before, her life, her training, her successes, her failures, shaped what became this inscrutably poetic capsule of boyhood in Scotland. To make a film with the level of artistic gumption on your first go is a high order, but it can be done.
See. Shiva Baby, Sorry Baby, Get Out, Joyland… to name only a few.
Conventional wisdom would advise you to believe these preternatural successes are a product of intense knowledge absorption. Shoot as much as possible. Read as much as possible. Watch as much as possible. But Ramsay’s Ratcatcher “strategy” maintains the exact opposite.
What you might not know is that Ramsay didn’t train in writing and directing in film school but in cinematography! It was there that she realized it was the wrong track. She started to feel somewhat confined by a choice she made with an understanding that gaining the the hard skills of a cinematographer, which is a track somewhat standardized in approach, would be an easier way “in.” Yet, she has zero regrets. In this interview with Elliot James she says “it’s good to know every part of your skill,” which perhaps makes her next words of advice that much more attainable: “stick to your guns.”
“If you try to do something that everybody likes, it’ll never happen.”
She’s adamant about the ways “in” that exist beyond the constraints of hegemonic influence. A very “don’t bend or break” mentality I especially appreciate. It’s this mentality that gave her the confidence to assemble the team behind Ratchatcher who, notably, were “a bunch of filmmakers” who’d “never done anything” and just got out of film school. Her Director of Photography had never shot a film before. Practically no one on set had either. And for this a “real purity” was cultivated. It’s the major component in the singular magic of a debut film.
There’s a crucially charmed naivety within a crew of novices. A sensitivity that can’t be restored after the first go around. The usual hesitation toward a request like “build a canal” in the absence of a real one flies without debate, a task the Ratcatcher team accomplished!
With a high concentration of experience, sure, many-a excellent debut has been made. Of course bolstered by a combined sharpness of vision, as incisive as it was determined.
But a cluster of raw, fervid desire to go there, whatever it may take, is a force capable of just the same, maybe with an even higher concentration of spirit than the former could ever hold.
On a newsworthy note, a SCRIBBLED LOOSE GAME SHOW is on the horizon as I gather players for incoming episodes!!!
If you’re here, or at least if you’ve been here a while, you’re well aware of the ethos behind this publication. We care about the stuff behind the stuff, particularly MOVIES, the precise impetus for…
It’s a twisted version of a movie-guessing game that I’d bet BIG money you’ll love, especially if
You walk away from movies with hot takes no one else has
You think every movie is saying more than its saying
You turn every film into a theory worth defending
All the rules, regulations and submission instruction is here for the taking.