Gre­ta Ger­wig: ​‘I like the process of how a film becomes owned by dif­fer­ent people’

It maybe wasn’t until we saw her as the lead in mod­ern rite-of-pas­sage clas­sic, Frances Ha, that we tru­ly accept­ed Gre­ta Ger­wig as the indomitable screen tal­ent that she is. She rose though the ranks of the ​‘mum­blecore’ rev­o­lu­tion in films such as Han­nah Takes the Stairs and Nights and Week­ends, has dipped her to into the clam­my pools of main­stream Hol­ly­wood, and has also fall­en in with hyper-lit­er­ate New York com­e­dy direc­tor Noah Baum­bach. Now, she’s moved behind the cam­era for her deli­cious fea­ture debut, Lady Bird, the sto­ry of an out­spo­ken teen (Saoirse Ronan) awk­ward­ly (and often amus­ing­ly) tran­si­tion­ing into adulthood.

LWLies: Lady Bird received its world pre­mière at the Tel­luride Film Fes­ti­val. Has it been non-stop for you since then?

Ger­wig: It has been non-stop since Tel­luride. Every time I show it, I have nerves, but it’s been very mean­ing­ful to give it to an audi­ence. The film real­ly stops being yours at that point, because they start own­ing it. Then peo­ple start com­ing up to me and telling me their sto­ries about drop­ping their son or daugh­ter off at col­lege, or telling me about fights they had with their moth­er. It feels like it lit­er­al­ly starts belong­ing to oth­er people.

That sounds very bittersweet.

It is, but that’s why you do it. You want to let peo­ple own it them­selves and you don’t want to keep it as your own secret. I love Emi­ly Dick­in­son, but I’m not Emi­ly Dick­in­son. I’m far too social. I can’t imag­ine mak­ing a bunch of art and nev­er real­ly show­ing it to any­one. I like the process of how a film, at each step, becomes owned by dif­fer­ent peo­ple. You find a pro­duc­er, you bring that per­son on. You find your crew, you bring those peo­ple on. You find your cast, your edi­tor, your com­pos­er. By the time you give it to the pub­lic, you’ve shared your dream world with all these dif­fer­ent people.

How do you trans­late that dream world to oth­er people?

It’s a lot of work. But I was very lucky, my cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Sam Levy is some­one I’ve worked with as an actor and he’s pho­tographed things that I’ve co-writ­ten with Noah Baum­bach. I knew that he had a way of shoot­ing cin­e­ma that was dri­ven by words, yet he could make it cin­e­mat­ic. I’m a word-dri­ven writer. I love dia­logue and have a very pre­cise script that I don’t change when we’re shoot­ing. He is a per­son who can col­lab­o­rate with me to make it some­thing that feels like it exists in the world of film. So we spent a very long time cre­at­ing shot lists and sto­ry­boards, but also just hang­ing out and talk­ing about movies and pho­tographs and paint­ings and look­ing at ref­er­ences. You find these kin­dred spir­its, but then you lay all this ground­work which is both direct­ly talk­ing about the project, but also just spend­ing a lot of time with each other.

Did you reach a point where you thought, ​‘Every­one gets it, we can go now?’

Yeah, pret­ty ear­ly on. We did a tonne of tests, with cam­eras and lens­es – because we were using old lens­es – and did all this work with the post-pro­duc­tion colourist who was mess­ing with the footage in New York and try­ing to estab­lish what we want­ed the film to look like. Sam looked at some of the lens­es, and I went through a ton of them too, but then he said, ​‘Okay, here are my top five, and I’m not going to say any­thing. Tell me which one you like’.

Top five lenses?

Yeah. So I looked through the lens­es and looked at the sam­ple footage from each and picked num­ber three. And he said that was the exact one he liked. When things like that hap­pen you feel like every­one is on the same page. Then every­one looks at the screen test togeth­er to see it, and when every depart­ment says, ​‘Yes that’s the right kind of light­ing,’ or, ​‘that’s the right loca­tion’, you feel like every­one is togeth­er. Also, when my cos­tumer brought me a par­tic­u­lar sweater that she used for Lady Bird, the sweater was almost a Prous­t­ian mem­o­ry for me. I said, ​‘I’d com­plete­ly for­got­ten about this sweater, but it’s com­plete­ly right’.

How much of Lady Bird is, for you, a Prous­t­ian memory?

Well, none of it lit­er­al­ly hap­pened. It’s not a doc­u­men­tary, it’s com­plete­ly fic­tion­alised. But at the same time, there’s a core of emo­tion­al truth at the cen­tre which res­onates very deeply with what I know to be true. I’m inter­est­ed in mem­o­ry. I’m inter­est­ed in the cin­e­ma of mem­o­ry. I think about Fellini’s Amar­cord a lot, and the way you get this sense when you watch it of, ​‘No, that’s not what hap­pened, but that is what that moment felt like’. The way he saw every­thing is height­ened, but it also feels some­how cor­rect. I think I’m inter­est­ed in per­son­al cin­e­ma. Not auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal cin­e­ma but per­son­al cinema.

Is it dif­fi­cult to build truth into fic­tion that isn’t autobiographical?

It’s inter­est­ing. I’m always inter­est­ed in the way fic­tion – and, in a way, lies – can serve a greater truth in art. I guess one way to see it is fic­tion, and anoth­er way to see it is lies. But, to go back to Felli­ni, he says, ​“All art is auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal. The pearl is the oyster’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy.” I thought that was a great way to explain it. In a way, and maybe it’s because I make films, I don’t have too much of a fas­ci­na­tion with whether or not some­thing is quote-unquote true. When I watch movies I don’t think of it that way, I don’t want to go to Wikipedia and see what match­es up.

As a fan of the TV sit­com Roseanne, it was love­ly to see Lau­rie Met­calf on screen. And there’s this kind of Roseanne-esque res­o­nance in the film in the way it deals with its cen­tral relationship.

That’s inter­est­ing. You know, I have nev­er seen Roseanne. I grew up with­out tele­vi­sion so I knew Lau­rie from stage work in New York. But I also knew about her work with Step­pen­wolf The­atre Com­pa­ny in Chica­go. I guess I saw her in that episode of Horace and Pete where she did that incred­i­ble episode on a horse with Pete. She deliv­ers this mono­logue and it nev­er cuts away from her. It’s great. Do your­self a favour, go watch it online. It’s astound­ing. I guess I’m aware of Roseanne and the extra­or­di­nary tal­ent of all the peo­ple involved, because it’s her, John Good­man, all these great peo­ple. But I’ve nev­er actu­al­ly seen it.

I guess it’s this rare dynam­ic of hav­ing the strong matri­arch and the pas­sive patri­arch. John Good­man is this hulk, but he’s the ratio­nal, soft­ly-spo­ken one, where­as Roseanne is this fire­brand. Lau­rie Met­calf plays her sister.

They’re remak­ing it I think, or doing more episodes of it.

It ends in this real­ly weird way; it turns out the whole thing was made up.

What?!

It com­plete­ly flips. It’s crazy.

I did not know that. Maybe one day if I have a bro­ken leg I’ll watch all of Roseanne. I have watched TV now, but I actu­al­ly avoid long­form script­ed series. I love them and I think there’s extra­or­di­nary things being done in that area, but I think it’s just a dif­fer­ent form. The events have dif­fer­ent weight because you’re deal­ing with a much larg­er can­vas. I was writ­ing a lot – writ­ing with Noah, writ­ing alone – and I was work­ing on scripts for hire, and I felt like I was quite inside the form of a movie.

One sit­ting, 90 min­utes to two-and-a-half hours of what the emo­tion­al arc of it needs to be and the events that need to hap­pen. I almost didn’t want to break what I felt like I had and intu­itive­ly under­stood and could now do myself. So I’ve been avoid­ing series, even great ones. I have this kind of super­sti­tion around it. Also, the val­ue of images is dif­fer­ent because there are so many of them. Shots are dif­fer­ent, the music is dif­fer­ent because the music is nev­er real­ly sup­posed to resolve, it’s sup­posed to keep you going. It doesn’t cul­mi­nate. I didn’t want to derail what was click­ing for me.

Do you have aspi­ra­tions to adapt a novel?

I do! I have adapt­ed a nov­el before and I would like to adapt anoth­er nov­el, but it’s tricky. You have to find some­thing that feels cin­e­mat­ic, or that you have a hook into. I think it has to feel like it’s sep­a­rate from the nov­el. I think about great adap­ta­tions of nov­els like ​‘The Shin­ing’, which I guess Stephen King doesn’t like because he saw some­thing dif­fer­ent in it.

You think of all those French New Wave films by Truf­faut and Godard, they were all dime-store nov­el adap­ta­tions that felt noth­ing like the source.

Right, and also inter­est­ing­ly Eric Rohmer wrote all of his movies as short sto­ries or novel­las and then he turned those into screen­plays, which is a fas­ci­nat­ing way to do it. It’s cer­tain­ly use­ful to have some­thing to hang your hat on, that inspires you, but is not made whole-cloth by you. I haven’t found quite the thing I want to do, and if I had, I wouldn’t tell you.

Good.

You’d run away with it! But I think it’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion. It’s some­thing where, if it’s a nov­el or if it’s a short sto­ry, you need to know what it is you’re try­ing to dis­till about it. Are you try­ing to inject some­one with the sto­ry? That’s not it, there’s got to be some­thing else that’s inter­est­ing about it. I think it’s an inter­est­ing thing when peo­ple come to adap­ta­tions, how they choose to work with it, what they’re tak­ing from it. Because I do think that you have to have anoth­er idea that’s under­neath it.

Paul Thomas Ander­son was talk­ing about how he had adapt­ed Inher­ent Vice. He just went through the book and wrote all the dia­logue out, com­pressed it down and that was it.

The Coens have the best answer to that when they were asked about how they wrote No Coun­try for Old Men. Joel said, ​‘I hold the book open and Ethan types’, which is a great Coen response.

Lady Bird is released 16 February.