Lady Bird
Short description
Christine McPherson, who calls herself Lady Bird, is a seventeen-year-old high school senior in Sacramento with artistic interests and a longing to leave California for the East Coast. Her senior year brings the usual round of classes, romance and friendship, but the strain at home is what shapes it most. She clashes repeatedly with her mother Marion, a nurse who works hard to keep the household going after Lady Bird's father loses his job, and the two resemble each other more than either would admit. Mother and daughter move between defiance, anger and quiet resignation as Lady Bird plans for college and tries to figure out who she wants to be.
Lady Bird was released in 2017 and marks Greta Gerwig's first film as director, followed in order by Little Women, Barbie and Narnia: The Magician's Nephew. Gerwig also wrote the screenplay, produced by Scott Rudin, Eli Bush and Evelyn O'Neill. Saoirse Ronan plays the title role, with Laurie Metcalf as Marion and Tracy Letts as Larry, alongside Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet and Beanie Feldstein in supporting parts. Made for about 10 million dollars, it returned roughly 79 million worldwide.
Critics rated it 8.8 out of 10 across 401 reviews, notably higher than the 7.4 from 361,000 votes on IMDb and the 7.2 from 9,180 votes on TMDB.
What's left behind the scenes
- The song 'As We Go Along' by The Monkees can be heard in the film.
- Saoirse Ronan used her personal memories of watching the TV series "Saved by the Bell" (1989–1992) as a teenager when filming her scenes in the American high school setting.
- Although the film doesn't explicitly state which New York college Lady Bird was accepted to, the colors of the application package (white with blue) and the location (Upper Manhattan) suggest it was Barnard College. This institution was also attended by the film's director and screenwriter, Greta Gerwig.
- The working title of the film was 'Mothers and Daughters'.
- The first draft of the script was 350 pages long. That's roughly a six-hour film.
- Producer Scott Rudin, after receiving the script from Greta Gerwig, discussed it with Eli Bush for eleven hours, after which he gave Gerwig the green light to film.
- The events of the film take place in 2002-2003. During this time, the film's director, Greta Gerwig, graduated from the Catholic School of Saint Francis in her hometown of Sacramento (California, USA).
- This is the second film in which Saoirse Ronan has played a character who insists on being called a different name than the one given at birth (Lady Bird instead of Christine). Previously, this was in the film 'By the Way, Meet Vera' (2013), where she asked to be called Daisy instead of Elizabeth.
- In the film, Lady Bird applies to Columbia University and later learns she was not accepted. Timothée Chalamet, who played Kyle in the film, attended the university in real life, but left to focus on acting training.
- Saoirse Ronan and Greta Gerwig first met in 2015 at the Toronto International Film Festival. Ronan had read Gerwig's script before this meeting and decided to play the lead role. They discussed the script in a hotel room, and Ronan acted out the main character by reading the text. It was then that Gerwig realized she had found the perfect Lady Bird.
- Lady Bird is known in American pop culture as a nickname for Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson, wife of the 36th President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson. This film has no relation to Johnson himself or his wife. However, it happened that the film was released in American theaters at the same time as the biopic about Lyndon Johnson, "LBJ," directed by Rob Reiner.
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