Lynne Ramsay

0:15Bella Freud:Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Lynne Ramsay. I hope I don't fall asleep, this is extremely relaxing. You're never going to fall asleep, you're way too lively. can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes well I'm wearing a shirt from Prada actually because I was at a Milan show last week and it's just nice and white and crisp and clean and super comfy and I'm wearing a pair of Adidas Chisers from Liberty. They do a collection together. They're just super comfy because I sprained my ankle really badly and I need to be super comfortable. So they felt like the most comfortable things to wear today.

1:08And you're wearing my eye mask that I've wrapped around your foot

1:14Bella Freud:to calm down the pain. Totally, and that's my Bella Freud ankle. and it's very Vivienne Westwood as well I quite like in this style you know but it's making it feel much better Oh I'm glad and you're a multi-award winning Glaswegian filmmaker and you're an auteur as they call it in the film world which is the greatest compliment and your short films from film score all won prizes and Rat Catcher, your first feature, won numerous awards and is one of the most moving and unsentimental films I've ever seen. How do you create so much feeling without telling people how to feel? I think it's about creating almost a memory, you know, almost.

2:12I suppose in the case of Ratcatcher it was a landscape I was very familiar with and a really basic round the canal that was always a place, a kind of it was quite seductive but it was quite dangerous, like people would fall in and drown or you'd be up there with your boyfriend or you know, it was a dark sinister but seductive kind of place and once I saw there was a paint factory next to the canal and they used to chuck the cans of paint in and so I remember seeing this amazing vision of these swans you know just moving through this paint and making it a kaleidoscope and getting covered with the paint and so it was like sometimes locations I think for me or it's like a portrait of a person.

3:12But there's just things I can see, I think, because I used to be a photographer. And so I look at details of things and details of emotions and try and show them in a way that's maybe not the most conventional way to do it. But it, I don't know, instinctively works for me.

3:30Bella Freud:Yeah. And it works for everyone else too because it's so affecting. and people often have a strong attachment to where they come from but somehow it happens more with Glasgow than anywhere else and what's so powerful about identifying as Glaswegian? It's just a pretty extraordinary place I mean my friend who's Italian was there while I was in Milan which was quite odd because she's my best friend so she's the city of my birth and I'm in Milan the city of her birth and she kept saying it looked like Gotham City it's got this kind of crazy it was the first grid system before New York and the buildings became black with the coal and it's got this kind of imposing dark kind of majesty and also a kind of humour in it like from the people you know that's dark as well but fun it's twisted and crazy and it feels like almost like you're in the wild west sometimes yeah yeah there's even a place called the grand old opry that people go dress up in cowboy you know costumes and shoot guns and stuff it's just a kind of particular city and it's it's sort of dark and gloomy but beautiful and you know in the summer it becomes this other place you know that you know this light until 12 o 'clock at night is you know you have this lightness and then you have this darkness and I always thought it was a great place for a sci-fi but Jonathan Glaser beat me to it you know with Under the Skin oh yeah damn you Joy I love him it's true because that seems to be part of the characteristics of the people I've met who are from Glasgow with this this humour and also this darkness and this originality as well well I read Bobby Glesby's biography recently and it was like not that recently but a few years back and it was funny how similar it was and we were coming from quite a similar background and his parents were really intellectual and communists and so there's a sort of intelligentsia with it as well yeah even though it's pretty blue collar working class you know you know there's a sort of fierce intelligence as well and I don't really know I can't really put my finger on what makes Glasgow Glasgow but I've ended up going back there and I didn't think I would I tried to escape there if anything when I was a kid you know and you know maybe you just escape the place you're born, you want to move on you know, but I went back there and I've sort of rediscovered it and it's quite an eye opener it's like it's become something different, it's kind of morphed into this place with great restaurants and great culture and really multicultural and I'm quite enjoying being back there really.

7:00Bella Freud:That's so nice and you're an incredibly artistic person and when you talk about ideas it's almost as though they're in 3D as you're describing them and when did that first start? I think it was when I was a really young kid. I mean I used to draw the whole time. Like my mum would just say I was the best kid ever because I didn't cry, I didn't do anything. She'd just give me paper and pencils and I'd just be happy for hours on the end. So I just, and it wasn't about the end result or anything, it was just the process of drawing. You know, I just found it so fascinating. And then I would sort of draw things that were around me and I guess yeah from very early on I remembered you know just having sketching the whole time and looking the whole time and my mum was really into the movies as well so I would watch Saturday matinees and Mildred Pierce and things like that and I was just fascinated by, became quite fascinated by film.

8:12My family started thinking I was deaf because they'd be coming and I'd be watching something and they'd be like, Lynne, Lynne, and I was so into it that I didn't hear anything because it was a big noisy family, so it was my way of just separating, you know, like just going into my own world.

8:28Bella Freud:Yeah, yeah. There's a great line in the Dizzy Rascal song that says, says a heavy bass line is my kind of silence and I have such a good description of getting yeah you know because it was the house was so I mean I'd like one brother two sisters it was quite a small house like three bedrooms I think and um it was you know always bustling and noisy and like you to fit in like you know everyone's fighting to you know when you were in the bathroom doing your hair or something then sisters coming and you know getting you out you know like just the fighting for a bit of space I guess yeah um and so my space was like within all this noise I could find a kind of silence like I could tune in to things and not hear anything else and it was it became a kind of thing that helped me as a filmmaker because it made I could focus in a different way, even in a very noisy environment.

9:36Bella Freud:And what was the garment that first changed the way you felt about yourself? Well, I had this T-shirt that my mum had given me that had Speedy Gonzales, the cartoon character on it. And I just thought it was fantastic. And my sister had a pair of flared trousers that had Rupert the Bear on them. And I sort of stole them a bit, you know, I'd have this outfit the Speedy Gonzales t-shirt and the Rupert the Bear flares and I think they just did a little bit of like just a little Rupert the Bear insignia here and then the Speedy Gonzales and I just would not take it off my mum couldn't get it off me she couldn't wash it she couldn't do anything and every time I see a photograph of me with it on I've got my hands up and total joy at wearing this t-shirt you know like arms outstretched to the heavens and I just remember I'd never taken that T-shirt off.

10:33And my mum said, we really need to wash it. So that's the first really clear memory, I suppose, a piece of clothing.

10:43Bella Freud:Because children feature quite a lot in your films and you've a way of portraying their experiences, which are often on the edge of quite disturbing, as though you're in that child's body and not as the anxious parental onlooker. do you inhabit those children? Yeah, I guess it's funny what people see is dark and light because I think kids just see this kaleidoscope and I suppose the kids in my films Rat Catcher especially was a landscape I really knew and so the horror, what people would see is horror like something like, you know, there was a refuse strike and there was rubbish all over the streets and there was black plastic bags and there was loads of rats and crazy stuff.

11:37But I remember pulling clothes out of a bag, a black bag, you know. I think someone's grandma had died or something, you know, these 1920s hats and crazy stuff. It was like you were in this medieval kind of landscape, you know. But there was fun in it and intrigue, you know. So that horror, I never really saw it. That just was how life was.

12:06Bella Freud:Yeah, because it's such a... There's suspense, but it's a completely different kind of suspense of not really knowing what's going to happen. And the way you made that film, you can't predict anything. And somehow it opens you up more and more to being on every moment of that journey in that film. And it really is one of my favorite films I've ever seen. It's so incredible. I think it was made with real you know we were all a bunch of filmmakers I'd never done anything we were just out of film school and I really fought to have like my DP who'd never shot a film before I think that's a camera really?

13:02yeah they wanted me to use people that had more experience and I fought and fought to get so every single person who'd made Rat Catcher had never made a feature film like the production designer the cameraman the DP the editor none of us had made a feature film so it was a real trial by fire but it was and then we went up and it was a Glasgow crew who were thinking who's this bunch of moronic students probably you know but there was a real purity with it because of that it was you know it was a bunch of students making a film really and you know we found these amazing locations and we built a canal because you couldn't go near the water there it was so collated yeah we had to build a canal and I think if someone asked me to do that I think the naivety of us you know because I think now if someone went we have to build a canal I'd be like oh my god you know I mean that seems like an impossible task yeah but it sets in that catch it and it's also it's built and we did it we did it in a kind of like naive punk kind of we can do this kind of spirit but it was a really, I remember I rode it to be this the hottest, a warm summer the whole thing was sun and then it rained the whole time, it just rained and rained and rained and there was no weather covered and it was a painful shoot but somehow the kids in it got me through it because they were, they just totally loved the experience and we shot it chronologically so that you know, every day was new for them, I never gave them the whole script, so they would be things would be unfolded in real time, so it was really fun, the kids, if it hadn't been for the kids I think I'd have ran a mile to be honest, because the DP and I were often like oh my god, let's never make a feature film again and this is so stressful, you know, it's such a big deal making a film, a feature film.

15:14And so it was a real insight into this new world and totally scary in so many ways as well, you know. I kept moving the camera away from the crew. I was like, there's too many people because I'd been used to making short films with maybe a crew of 15 maximum. And so seeing all these people, all these gaffers and people like you know doing lighting you know just the amount of people you need for a film shoot a long film shoot I kept just taking the tripod and the camera and moving it away kind of like running away with the camera you know so it was quite you know it was a special experience and when I see photographs of me at that time because I was only like 26 or 27 and amongst all these kids there's a beautiful photograph where it's the crew and the kids and stuff like that and it looks like a school photo you know and I look like a kid myself and amongst these kids and I just think there was a lot of authenticity in that whole process it was non-actors a lot of the kids and they'd never done anything before but it was a painful process I mean I didn't enjoy the shoot whereas some other shoots I've enjoyed more because it was almost like something so pure being ripped away into just dealing with the whole mechanisms of making a feature film can be really trying people have when you work with people that are you've never worked with you need a DP or a cameraman or a production designer that's done loads of stuff because you're not experienced yourself.

17:00And I get that, but I've made these really great shorts with this great crew of people and I wanted to keep it intact. But everything was such a fight that it became so tiring. But the kids got me through. The kids totally got me through.

17:16Bella Freud:Because how do you choose your shots? Because it's something I really notice in your films, how you'll use shots of bits of people or the incidentals, and they draw you in so much. And I was just watching this documentary about Martin Scorsese by Rebecca Miller, where it describes how he uses these shots because he's spent so much time looking out of his bedroom window and being stuck inside with asthma. and I, how did, how do you, how are you so sure about which shot you want to use? I think it's something to do with when I, because I used to be a photographer, I studied photography, I studied painting first.

18:02I thought I'd go to art school and become a painter, really. That's what I thought I'd really do and maybe I still will. But I discovered a dark room when I was a kid. I was at this place called the Glasgow Arts Centre and it was, I had a dark room and no one was using it. And so I ended up using it. I had the whole place to myself. Probably making pretty crappy pictures, you know, like sort of teenage stuff. But again to that, which brought me to film in the end. But just the way of looking at people, I like to, you know, being a photographer, like you look at details or you look at what's outside the frame or you're always observing.

18:43and I think Scorsese was a photographer as well as was Kubrick, you know so I came from that kind of visual background whereas some people maybe come from theatre or different ways but to me it's the rhythm of how you put an image with an image with an image and also what you don't show so I just can think of things in a very visual way you know and I have I suppose there was just an ability from being a kid you know and just always observing um but I definitely I mean one of my favorite things going back to Ratcatcher is there's just one tiny detail where um Jane and it shows a lot of love between the mother and son and and it's basically you know that the mother's got a stocking that's she's forever darning because she can't afford new tights.

19:41James, the main character, sees her sleeping one time and he sees a hole in her stockings and he pulls it and pulls it as if trying to mend it, you know, for her. And it's just this tiny, tiny detail of an act of love that spoke volumes but was only two shots, you know. God, so wonderful. And even one, maybe, you know. so it's nice to think about maybe quite posaic ideas sometimes in quite an economical way and also when you were never really here I didn't have a lot of time to shoot that film and there was a sequence which I thought would be a big action sequence and I ended up shooting it with surveillance cameras and it was and that was like you know you know basically a necessity because I had no time to shoot it I couldn't do a big balletic action sequence and yet it gave it something that was super original because the violence is so mechanical and a lot of it's off screen so a lot of the time people will say that's such a violent film but actually there's no violence in the film it's all off screen and I think that the way your brain reacts to it it does feel violent you know It's what you didn't see.

21:06The piece of the picture that you put together in your head becomes quite scary. So it made me laugh a lot when people said that was such a violent film. It's like, there's really, you're showing almost nothing. For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat.

21:33Bella Freud:I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first. America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far, it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump.

22:14But like for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America Actually.

22:25Bella Freud:Yeah, because I was reading about how you brought that film forward. and you seem to be able to make films in very chaotic circumstances. And on the first day when the crew was setting up, you said you just grabbed the camera and then Joaquin Phoenix said, are we filming? And you said, yes. Do you feel more in control in a way when things are out of control around you? I don't know, possibly. I mean making films is so chaotic anyhow something always happens that you don't expect so I think I do work well in the environments where I've kind of like you've literally got a gun in your head and you have to make a decision whereas when I'm in just a normal life I'd be like oh I'm in a restaurant it'll take me ages to make a decision you know but in film it's like it's just this kind of total instinct that you're going in instinct and yeah it's true you were not really here I just started shooting and everyone was running because the first day you're normally people are just getting up to speed and it's a bit slower and it's a bit I think that really broke the ice between us two, Joachim and I because he loves moving fast as well, he doesn't like hanging around too much I think he started laughing when I was, he was like you're joking right we're shooting now I was like yeah we're going literally turned up, got out of the car set the camera up and started shooting and even people were running and you know what the heck's going on we're doing we're just shooting just literally turned up and started shooting and but I think that really made our relationship quite special because he saw the way I was working and I saw the way he was working and it really was one of the most special times I've ever had being an actor because over the periods of the film, it just became a bond.

24:37It was a real bond. It was like a real, I think, mutual respect, or a way of working that we both were similar.

24:46Bella Freud:Yeah. Yeah. Because I met you first when you wore one of my suits to the bandas and you told me you'd had a T-shirt when you were a teenager, I think, saying whatever. Yes. And was fashion a thing in your household? Well, yeah, it was actually. I mean, I had two sisters. I mean, I used to like to make things, you know. We didn't have a lot of money. My mum was a cleaner, you know, but she would take us out every month, one of us, and buy us an outfit. Wow. but I used to do things like fine bandages and made a hat out of them wrapped them round my head or Whitey Miss Selfridges and bought a bikini bottom and made it into a hat you know with an elastic band and just do these kind of well thing or send away for Doc Martens or you know or I would tie dye stuff with my brother's Airfix paints you know and put them in the bath and then make you know put t-shirts on top of them and stuff like that to make patterns.

25:54Then my mum would go absolutely crazy because the bath was all covered with oil paint. But I've got quite a lot of memories. Like sending away for the first stock martins. You couldn't get them in Glasgow. Seeing there was a style for a while in Glasgow which was kind of copies of Burberry-type trench coats. and I remember begging my mum to please get me one of these then we eventually went and I went with my older sister as well who always saw me as this little kid and she's like you can't get her that and I came back with ankle socks and a pair of sandals crying my eyes out that I never got this birdberry type trench coat but my mum would do things like she would buy I remember she bought me this we went together but like a mint green mini skirt I was a mod for a while like when I was about 11 and then I was into ska and stuff and it was a mint green mini skirt with a kind of Mary Quant plastic belt with the circle yeah and then this strange shirt that went with it was multicoloured almost like a Hawaiian shirt and me being the coolest at the disco and you know and my little mod outfit yeah and then so my mum was really kind in that way that she would make sure you were treated down again even if she didn't have a lot of money you know because my dad was away a lot and he was like you know I mean she was really making ends meet as much as she could but she still made this time to treat us all but I used to look quite different at one point I changed my style at school and I used to borrow my older sister's clothes and she had like leather trousers and things like that.

27:47The 80s were baggy leather trousers and things like that. And she'd go crazy. But then I discovered alternative music and I was into the Smiths and stuff like that and the Cure and the Human League and I ended up shaving all my hair at the back and making it a perm, but it looked like a kind of 1920s bob and wearing black plimsolls and kickback skirts and, you know, just having my own style really. And people at school going, you used to look so good, look at you, you look terrible now, you know, because I had my own thing going down. Yeah. But I just feel, and it wasn't a school you wore a uniform on at, so I used to be really inventive about what I was wearing or fighting things or, you know, just making the best of what we had but making it into something different or whatever, you know.

28:44So the hat making went on for a while. Yeah.

28:48Bella Freud:God. And how was your transition from girlhood to woman? Was your mum supportive of you during that phase or who in your family looked out for you while you were going through that? Oh, God. Well, it was, I mean, it wasn't my sisters because they were always, everyone was always fighting over clothes or something, you know. and it was a set of hierarchy. So it was probably my mum, more or less, you know. And probably music played a big part. My brother used to listen to Pink Floyd and B-52s and things like that. And I just, really music made a big impression, you know. And my dad was really into music as well, which was great.

29:37But I think my mum was, I was the most close to really, yeah. she used to laugh at some of the things outfits I'd wear but she thought it was, I know she thought I was inventive because I'd come, you know I'd start some fashion at school or something you know, like people would laugh at me before you knew there was people wearing the same thing

30:01Bella Freud:how that's so satisfying

30:06Bella Freud:and your short film Gas Man won a BAFTA and it starred your brother James, who later committed suicide. What was he like? Oh, he was beautiful, super sensitive. He was never quite of this world. He was always super sensitive. I remember he had this collection of bird's eggs. So he was stealing the eggs from the nest, which is pretty terrible, but he had these desks where they were full of straw and they were all labelled in this beautiful copper plate, writing all the different eggs. and then one time he blew, you could make a hole to get the egg, and so he blew it out, he blew the yolk out. There was a tiny little chick, and he started crying, and he never did it again, because I think before he'd never encountered that.

30:55But he looked like, I mean, a young De Niro, really, but with very blue eyes. He was very charismatic on film. He's in quite a lot of my films. but just picked up on vibes from people he was a real sensitive soul and I think he just couldn't really cope with the world in the end you know when people are empaths and I think you have to be to a degree to do what we do as well you need to be empathetic you need to get the temperature of people or a room and he just had that like to an extraordinary degree you know and it certainly has helped me as a filmmaker just to read people and be sensitive and stuff but I think it brought him a lot of pain in the end you know he kind of feel people's pain yeah too much yeah too much it was just too much it was almost thought it was almost like he wasn't really meant to be here you know so I really really miss him but yeah just an extraordinary person extraordinary intelligence had these issues and things with drugs and different things but was trying always to get out of that and you know get sucked into a bit of the Glasgow heroin scene when it because it was a really crazy time where there was so many people that were dying and half the people I know from school are dead because of heroin

32:31Bella Freud:yeah it was a real epidemic yeah it was a super epidemic and AIDS as well because I shared needles, you know. So it was quite a dark time, to be honest, and he got sucked into that. You know, I often wondered if I'd have been a heroin addict if it hadn't been for him because I remember as a child I was sketching him and he looked like he'd fallen asleep but he'd actually overdosed and he started turning blue and I didn't know what to do. So my instinct was to walk him. and I'm walking down the street in this little housing scheme with my brother on my back basically and people are going hello but they're not doing anything it was so kind of like I don't want to be like that and so in a way he saved my life because everybody was doing it, everybody Yeah he was, I must say he was a brilliant actor and I mean he's such a, he's so beautiful in Gas Man it's so powerful and moving yeah I mean in a different life I think he's been a really really major actor I mean he was in Gangs of New York and he was in a few kind of watch films but he just was lost to drugs and lost to this kind of sensitivity that was almost too much for him you know yeah because when I was thinking about because you've talked about him a lot and thinking how oh I think you would have loved him yeah I think so and how you you survived and he didn't yeah that's so yeah I think about him often actually yeah but yeah there was this time in my youth that was basically you know Irving Welsh gets it pretty right there was a time that was just like it was this epidemic you know and a lot of people just young people died yeah so I suppose thinking back you know during my teenage years of was that kind of hanging over the whole city as well you know because also you've said um people have said you have a reputation for being difficult and you've actually gone through some really difficult times and do you think that accusation is something more easily leveled at women rather than men directors yeah I mean I think I said that in a flippant kind of manner and made it the headline you know like people love to do stuff like that yeah and it's actually been quite a nice interview and I'm actually probably one of the least difficult filmmakers to work with I mean I love my crew I love the actors I tend to want to make it quite a nice, tight and enjoyable place to be.

35:31But yeah, I think to the latter part of your question, it's like if you're single-minded and if you... You know, to be a director, it's in the job description really, you know. Like you have to be directing, you know. Yeah. You need to have a point of view. You need to know what you want to do. and I think sometimes I've heard stories which make your toes curl about something a guy's done and yeah it's all like oh well he's a genius you know so I think maybe there is more pressure in women it's still the remnants of being frowned upon to be a director

36:15Bella Freud:yeah it is a bit it's a bit like a guy who just can't handle you know women being in control it's like being in a relationship like that sometimes you know when you read about Francis Ford Coppola and Easy Rider's Raging Bull the making of Apocalypse Now which is one of my favourite films ever I mean it's so insane the things that yeah I can't imagine a woman getting away with some of that stuff something like having spaghetti bolognese flown over from America to the Philippines yeah that would just be seen it's super indulgent you know but I mean I think times are changing but not as much as you think you know not as quickly as they should be because actors love to work with you and you've worked with some incredible people you know apart from Joaquin Phoenix and Nick Nolten in Sissy Spacek and Tilda Swinton and then most recently Jennifer Lawrence.

37:22Bella Freud:And how do you cast your films? I think it's, again, it's through meeting people, really. I've never cast anything on Zoom. I mean, some people do that now. I just don't understand it at all. I think it's meeting people, feeling what the vibe is like between you. Jennifer got in touch with me. it was very cool speaking to her via email and we zoomed and we spoke about it for a year you know and then Joaquin I spoke to him over the telephone when I was in Greece and then he claims he understood about like 10 % of what I was saying and that's why he agreed but he I don't know that that I mean it never happens overnight it takes a while you know Tilda you know she really loved wanted to do Kevin I thought maybe Eva the main character in Kevin should be a more everyday woman whereas Tilda's quite extraordinary yeah she sure is but actually then she took me for lunch or dinner or something like that and she goes no I'll tell you why you know it's like she should be extraordinary because everyone's going to notice her you know and I thought that's a bloody good point you know and plus she's amazing and so she said she wanted to do that you know she always took me by the scruff of the neck a little bit and was like no let's do this together you know yeah she does that doesn't she yeah no she's got a willpower and a determination and I really love working with her you know would love to work with her again and I'm friends by a lot of the actors like I spoke to Samantha Morton this morning Samantha Morton Samantha Morton too you know who was in Morvind Caller and we were just talking about maybe talking about another film again next week you know she's got an idea she wants to meet up you know but we've still been in contact since I was 26 you know really so you know I've known her so long and I still speak to Wachim I still speak to Jennifer and Rob you know actually old sissy space I can email her she's expecting one from so I tell you to keep in touch with the people I work with that I enjoyed working with joined C.

39:43Reilly as well he was amazing so I'm kind of in touch with them all because you have such a close relationship when you make a film it's a bond and I think we've made some special work together Yeah