Lena Dunham on Helming ‘Catherine Known as Birdy’, Publish-‘Women’ Success

Standing on the roof of The Grove’s parking construction, writer-director Lena Dunham took within the lavish particulars of Friday’s influencer-packed VIP screening of her new Prime Video movie “Catherine Known as Birdy,” clearly delighted by the Ren-Faire-meets-rave vibe that Amazon created to seize the movie’s mix of thirteenth Century setting and modern tone.

“I’m not above doing all of the actions,” enthused Dunham, clad in a billowy blue hoop skirt that basically precluded sitting down but matched the occasion’s old-new ethos by additionally prominently displaying her tattoos. “I simply went and received some jewellery engraved.”

Dunham’s immersion in “Birdy’s” world goes again to studying the supply materials – Karen Cushman’s beloved 1994 YA novel – for the primary time when she was 10 years outdated.

“There’re sure books while you’re a little bit child that make you’re feeling such as you’re able to taking up the world and that’s what this e book was for me,” she advised Selection. “From the minute I learn it, I discovered the character lovable and maddening. I like that she didn’t have any kind of superpowers or sword expertise. Her superpower’s simply being herself.”

“I used to be such a e book freak and the style I all the time cherished most was historic fiction,” she explains. “I wasn’t a fantasy and sci-fi nerd. I wished to vanish into life, however into different individuals’s lives. And so ‘Catherine Known as Birdy’ is certainly one of in all probability 5 – 6 books I can keep in mind that have been actually legendary in my formation and pushed my fantasy life.”

Certainly, the e book had caught together with her and he or she discovered her manner again to it as she closed out her 20’s, a turbulent interval in the course of the run of her high-profile, usually polarizing HBO sequence “Women” and the rise of her public profile.

“I got here to a spot the place I wanted to really feel consolation,” Dunham says. “Life had gotten actually huge hastily and I used to be making an attempt to return to issues that gave me that sense of security. And I actually discovered the e book once more on the shelf once I was nonetheless residing with my dad and mom at age 24. And I used to be reminded like, ‘Wow, this was actually formative for me.’”

It took Dunham practically a decade after optioning the e book to lastly understand it on the display. “I used to be making an attempt to make the film at a second when YA movies have been way more about kissing vampires or having a sword,” she says. “So the truth that we’re now right here and there’s this type of hubbub for the e book that meant a lot to me as a toddler is fairly wild.”

After self-generating her personal tales all through her profession, Dunham discovered recent benefits in adapting another person’s work.

“You possibly can specific plenty of your personal inside life clearly, however you do it with this type of protect,” she mentioned. “And it undoubtedly made me understand the fantastic thing about adapting that it’s one thing that may be deeply, deeply private even because the work was born from another person’s head. Fortunately, Karen, the creator, gave me form of carte blanche to embrace these characters and fill them with features of myself.”

Now, Dunham says she’s began to come across younger individuals who have taken as a lot inspiration from her work on “Women” as she had from her favourite creators. “I undoubtedly have had experiences, particularly post-pandemic as a result of children have been left on their very own to look at plenty of TV, of going, ‘Oh my God, I’m so outdated. This one that’s telling me [this] is just too younger and I’m outdated!’” she laughed. “If the factor that ‘Women’ was able to doing was simply telling plenty of totally different folks that they didn’t must essentially wait to have their story advised and that their very own the reality of their life mattered, then that’s sufficient for me.”