Still riding high after her Best Actress Oscar nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon, and the acquisition of her recent film Fancy Dance, Lily Gladstone is also looking ahead to her next project. The Memory Police will reunite her with Martin Scorsese, who is an exec-producer on the adaptation of Yoko Ogawa’s sci-fi novel set on an island controlled by a mysterious force that causes people to collectively forget. Some refuse and risk it all to maintain their memories.
Deadline caught up with Gladstone after a special Killers of the Flower Moon event, and she spoke about the film which has a script by Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and will be directed by Reed Morano (I Think We’re Alone Now).
“It’s on an unnamed island at an unnamed place, unnamed time,” Gladstone said. “So it takes place nowhere and therefore everywhere.”
“The adaptation is done by Charlie Kaufman, so it’s labeled as a sci-fi, but in the way that [Kaufman’s previous films] Eternal Sunshine [of the Spotless Mind] or Synecdoche [New York] was a sci-fi. It happens very much in the subconscious mind and deals with, of course, themes of memory, authoritarianism.”
Gladstone continued by stating her interest in the film is “it’s the kind of story that could take place everywhere. I think anybody who comes from a world culture or a history where there’s been a systemic effort to erase your sense of who you are, your memories, your language, your culture- in this film, birds are disappeared because they’re deemed unnecessary.”
The timing on this couldn’t be better, with a few states making great efforts to erase from history the culture and contributions of Blacks, Native Americans, the LGBTQ community, and others.
Also coming up for Gladstone is Jazzy, a companion piece to last year’s drama The Unknown Country (review here) and a reunion with director Marissa Maltz.