With Greta Gerwig

PRODUCTION NOTES A24 and IAC FILMS present C AST Lady Bird McPherson Saoirse Ronan Marion McPherson Laurie Metcalf Larry McPherson Tracy Letts Danny O’Neill Lucas Hedges Kyle Scheible Timothée Chalamet Julie Steffans Beanie Feldstein Sister Sarah Joan Lois Smith Father Leviatch Stephen McKinley Henderson Jenna Walton Odeya Rush Miguel McPherson Jordan Rodrigues Shelly Yuhan Marielle Scott Mr. Bruno Jake McDorman Greg Anrue John Karna Casey Kelly Bayne Gibby Diana Greenway Laura Marano 1 F ILMMAKERS Written and Directed By Greta Gerwig Produced by Scott Rudin Eli Bush Evelyn O’Neill Executive Producer Lila Yacoub Co-Producers Alex Scott Jason Sack Director of Photography Sam Levy Production Designer Chris Jones Edited by Nick Houy Costume Designer April Napier Music by Jon Brion Music Supervisors Brian Ross Michael Hill Casting by Allison Jones Heidi Griffiths, CSA Jordan Thaler, CSA 2 Q & A WITH WRITER/DIRECTOR GRETA GERWIG WAS THIS FILM INSPIRED BY YOUR OWN LIFE? I grew up in Sacramento and I love Sacramento, so the initial impulse to make the fi lm was a desire to write a love letter to a place that only came into focus after I left. It is di cult to register the depths of your love when you are sixteen and quite sure that “life” is happening somewhere else. None of the events in the fi lm literally happened, but there is a core of truth that is connected to a feeling of home and childhood and departure. CERTAINLY THE SETTING, SACRAMENTO, HAS SPECIAL RESONANCE FOR YOU. WHAT MAKES SACRAMENTO A SPECIAL PLACE? Joan Didion is from Sacramento and when I discovered her writing as a young teenager, it was spiritually seismic. It was as shattering as if I’d grown up in Dublin and then suddenly read James Joyce. She was my personal poet laureate. It was the fi rst time I experienced an artist’s eye looking at my home. I had always thought art and writing had to be about things that were “important,” and I was certain that my life was not at all important. But her writing, so beautiful and clear and specifi c, was about my world. All the women she wrote about, I knew exactly who they were. The way they organized their closets, the things that they valued, the agrarian middle class worldview that shaped this corner of the country. When people think about California, they tend to think about San Francisco or Los Angeles, but there is the massive central agricultural valley running down the middle of the state. Sacramento is located at the northern edge of it, and although it is the state capital, there is farmland in its bones. It is not a show-o -y city. It does not brand itself or try to sell itself. There is a modesty and an integrity to the place and the people. 3 Q & A WITH GRETA GERWIG WHAT WAS THE EXPERIENCE OF LEAVING SACRAMENTO LIKE FOR YOU AND WHY WAS THAT AN IMPORTANT COMPONENT IN THIS STORY? One of the very fi rst things I wrote for the fi lm was the scene in college where someone asks Lady Bird where she is from and she lies and says,“San Francisco.” That feeling of deep shame that comes from denying who you are was a moment I wanted to work backwards from, to build a movie around it so that when she rejects her home, the audience feels personally betrayed and hurt. As if they, too, were from Sacramento and knew the places and people intimately. Lady Bird sells out her home to look 10% cooler to a stranger she just met. It is inevitable, perhaps, to deny your roots. I am not a practicing Catholic, but I have always been moved by the story of the Denial of Peter. At the Last Supper, Peter fervently tells Jesus that he will die before he disowns him, but Jesus replies that Peter will deny him three times “before the rooster crows.” Peter still insists that he will not. Of course, Peter ends up denying that he knows Jesus on three separate occasions. The rooster crows just as he is saying for the third time that he is not a disciple of Jesus. Peter is then fi lled with despair at his own weakness. However, after the resurrection, Jesus appears to Peter, and asks Peter three times if he loves him. Peter replies that he does each time. He is given the opportunity to repent through love. These stories have always informed my writing and my ideas, fi nding a larger universal truth behind what are so-called “small” lives. Lady Bird denies where she is from, yes, but she also declares her love. We are granted the opportunity for grace, and we need love to accept it. SO CHRISTINE HAS ALSO DENIED HER GIVEN NAME. Yes. 4 Q & A WITH GRETA GERWIG WHY DOES SHE DO THAT? WHAT DOES THE NAME “LADY BIRD” SIGNIFY? Re-naming is both a creative act and a religious act, it is one of authorship and a way of fi nding your true identity through creating a new one. It is a lie in service of the truth. In the Catholic tradition, you are given a confi rmation name, to name yourself after a saint that you hope to emulate. In rock and roll, you give yourself a new name (David Bowie, Madonna, etc.) in order to occupy this bigger mythical space. Early in the writing process, I kept coming up against something that I couldn’t break through. I put everything aside and wrote at the top of a blank page: “Why won’t you call me Lady Bird? You promised you would.” I wanted to get to know this girl who makes everybody call her by this odd name. The name came out of something mysterious. I had not thought of it before I wrote it. I love the way it sounds. It’s jaunty. It’s old fashioned. Writing the script was getting to the heart of that girl. Later, I remembered the Mother Goose rhyme “Ladybird, ladybird, fl y away home.” It is about a mother returning home to make sure her children are safe. I do not know how these things lodge themselves in our brains, or why they come out when they do, but it seems to be an essential part of the creative process for me, the unconscious unfolding of something you know without knowing. SO THE STORY’S STRUCTURED AROUND LADY BIRD’S SENIOR YEAR IN HIGH SCHOOL. WHY WAS THAT AN IMPORTANT MOMENT TO SET THE FILM AROUND? When you are a teenager in America, you organize your life around academic years: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior. It always made sense to me to tell the story of the whole year. The rituals of the year, the circularity. The way we end where we began. It is a spiraling upwards. Senior year burns brightly and is also disappearing as quickly as it emerges. There is a certain vividness in worlds that are coming to an end. There is a pre-sentiment of loss, of “lasts.” This is true for both parents and children. It is something beautiful that you never appreciated and ends just as you come to understand it. The way time rushes forward is a theme of the fi lm, one scene tumbling into the next. We can never hold onto it. 5 Q & A WITH GRETA GERWIG SO YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU’VE CO-WRITTEN SCREENPLAYS BEFORE, BUT THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT YOU’VE DIRECTED? Yes. AS YOU WROTE THE SCRIPT, DID YOU ALWAYS INTEND TO DIRECT IT? Writing for me takes a very long time. I don’t even really know how long. Maybe years, because it isn’t linear. It’s a character or a scene here and there. I tend to overwrite, hundreds of pages worth of dross. Eventually I’ll pare it down and fi nd the essence. While I’m writing, though, it seems impossible that it will ever be a movie. So the idea of directing wasn’t consciously something I was considering. However, once I had the script fi nished, I knew I would direct it. And I knew that it was what I had been intending all along. I just couldn’t let myself know it because it would have frightened me. I’ve wanted to direct for as long as I can remember, but courage is not something that grows overnight. AND WHAT WAS THE PROCESS OF DIRECTING IT LIKE? WHAT DID YOU LEARN THROUGH THAT PROCESS? I am still learning about directing, and hopefully I will never stop, even when I am in my eighties and just repeating myself. To catalogue everything I’ve learned would be both boring and impossible. One thing I can say for certain is “always hire people who are smarter than you are.” That quote came from the late, great cinematographer Harris Savides, by way of my director of photography, Sam Levy. This is true for everyone from actors to set decorators to poster designers. I had the great luck of being surrounded by people who were, indeed, smarter than me. The other thing is that the title “director” isn’t quite right. It implies that everything is there in front of you, only needing to be “directed.” I think the French have it expressed more accurately, as the “réalisateur.” The director is the person who “realizes” the fi lm. As in they cause it to happen, give it actualized form, make it exist.

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