Greta Gerwig Wants to Make Three More Sacramento Films After ‘Lady Bird’
Following the success of Lady Bird, it’s easy to imagine that Greta Gerwig has received her fair share of offers to direct other projects, but like the title character in her solo directorial debut, Gerwig has her own plan in mind. That plan involves making three more films set in Sacramento — the city where Gerwig grew up, and which serves as the inspiration and setting for Saoirse Ronan’s own coming of age in Lady Bird.
A24 debuted the first episode of its new podcast this morning (via Vulture), which features a conversation between Gerwig, who is nominated for a Best Director Oscar this year, and director Barry Jenkins, whose Moonlight took home Best Picture last year. During the chat, Gerwig explained her future directing plans, which include a “quartet of Sacramento films.” The filmmaker says she was “inspired by the Elena Ferrante Neapolitan quartet — she wrote these four books that took place mainly in Naples.” She explains:
Because [Lady Bird] was one part of Sacramento. There’s a lot of different parts of Sacramento that I’d like to explore, too. I feel like I have the privilege of being from a place. I’m really from that place — my family didn’t move, my family’s still there, my friends are still there — I feel like I can actually speak to it with some feeling.
Lady Bird is definitely evidence of that with its smart, emotional and fantastically honest coming-of-age story, which centers on Christine (Ronan), a teenager with dreams of leaving Sacramento behind to go to college in New York — despite middling grades and her critical mother’s insistence to the contrary. If Gerwig can imbue other Sacramento-based stories with similar feeling and honesty, then I don’t care if her next film is about one of those guys that wearily dances in front of the mattress store with a giant sign. I’m sure it’ll still be great.
Whatever happens, we’re getting more movies directed by Greta Gerwig, and that’s a wonderful thing.