With director Lynne Ramsay yesterday pulling a no show on Jane Got a Gun, her follow up to We Need to Talk About Kevin starring Jude Law, Joel Edgerton, and Natalie Portman, producers today hired Warrior director Gavin O’Connor to replace her. No one knows exactly what happened, but since the producers have been doing all the talking and Lynne Ramsay hasn’t said anything, most of the stories have been painting Ramsay as some irresponsible crazy person who selfishly ruins productions and no one knows why. Take that with a grain of salt, obviously.
Considering how fragile independently financed productions can be, this is fairly remarkable that Scott Steindorff and his fellow producers including Natalie Portman and Aleen Keshishian have managed to keep this picture from falling apart, and prevent the cast and crew from leaving the Sante Fe set and scattering to the winds. [Deadline]
Heroes! The story was first broken by Deadline, who got the tip from Steindorff, by the way. “Scott Steindorff is a hero, says guy who Scott Steindorff emailed!”
As Deadline revealed exclusively yesterday, the production endured what has to go down as the worst first day of shooting in movie history, when Steindorff was forced to gather the crew and castmembers Portman, Joel Edgerton, Jude Law and Rodrigo Santoro to tell them that after nine months of developing the project, the director wasn’t showing up after a series of negotiating twists and turns took place over the weekend. [Deadline]
Aw, don’t fret, you guys, it could be worse. You could be doing literally any other job in the world. Those poor lambs probably just had to stand around eating free food and bullshitting with each other. Can you imagine? Someone should call OSHA.
Her exit was the talk of the town yesterday and no one I spoke to could recall an example of a helmer dropping out in similar circumstances, as this was akin to being stood up at the altar. [Deadline]
“Other folks I talked to told me they’d just discovered analogies! One producer said his heart, which is like a pump, was broken, like a dish, over Ramsay making like a tree and leaving the production.”
Anyway, Lynne Ramsay should probably say something soon, because otherwise the only story out there is from the jilted producers and Deadline’s Chicken Little keyboard monkeys. Incidentally, there’s actually an interesting story behind why we may not have heard from her yet:
HuffPost Entertainment reached out to Ramsay’s manager for comment on the situation. In a twist, the director’s representative was Jessica Steindorff, Scott’s daughter.
“My father Scott Steindorff prevails under extreme amounts of stress and the show will go on,” Jessica Steindorff said to HuffPost Entertainment via email. “Sorry, but in this town it’s family first.” The younger Steindorff wrote that she no longer manages Ramsay. [HuffPo]
Ouch. But I understand, in Hollywood it’s family first. It’s a real family values kind of place, Hollywood. As everyone knows, it goes God, country, family, and then everyone else out there.