The scalar ref method doesn't work that way, you can't assign a bareword. It should look like this:

open my $filehandle, '>', $filename or die "$!";
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If you want to open a generic handle, I think you might want to look into IO::Tee. When you invoke it, you can specify an input handle and an output handle, thusly:

use IO:Tee;

open my $input_handle, $in_filename or die "$!";
open my $output_handle, '>', $out_filename or die "$!";

$generic_handle = IO::Tee->new($input_handle, $output_handle);
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That will let you read or write to $generic_handle

Update: Added code to clarify you have to open $input_handle and $output_handle before teeing them.