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DGA QUARTERLY 11 That said, there were only two moments in the final print of Lady Bird that were not in the script, Gerwig informs DGA Quarterly. "One came out of rehearsal—it is Timothée Chalamet's line, 'I haven't lied in two years.' I encourage improvisation during rehearsal, and that was something he said that was too good not to put in. The other one is Tracy Letts' reaction to Laurie Metcalf finding out about the New York college. He just shakes his head and says, 'Oh, fuck.' He did that spontaneously, on the day, and it was perfect. I had him repeat it in every take because it was too good. But he told me something that I took to heart: I was doubting myself one day and he essentially said, 'You have to trust the per- son you were when you wrote the script, because you aren't that person anymore.' Sometimes you just have to be a director and trust that the 'writer-you' knew what they were doing." Gerwig spends a lot of time in rehearsal, which she considers a "space of play and safety and investigation, so that it doesn't feel like [her actors] are in front of a firing squad once the camera goes on." She'll create reading, movie-watching and play- lists for everyone. For example, she had Chalamet, who plays a brooding, bookish player in a rock band whom Lady Bird falls for, watch Eric Rohmer's My Night at Maud's "because there's a character of a young man talking very confidently to a woman about all of his ideas." She also does a lot of takes. "I always like to see where actors go after they get bored with their own ideas," she explains. "I think the other side of boredom is where the good stuff is." Although a Sacramento native like Lady Bird, Gerwig has taken pains to dis- tinguish her iconoclastic, flame-haired invention from her own adolescent self ("I looked like a young Martha Stewart; I wasn't anywhere near that cool. I was, like, starched"). But if cinema is like a mirror to society, Gerwig 's story—tinged with pain and regret, but also with wit and the kind of humor rooted in real-life experience—is loaded with universal truths and everyday people. At the core of Lady Bird is a messy, complicated, love-hate mother-daughter relationship; a lower middle-class protagonist who fabricates her social status to be accepted by the cool, rich kids whom she envies; and characters with high ideals and an air of invincibility before life deals a series of blows that would bring them back down to earth. It's a tall order to incorporate all those elements into one story, but Gerwig man- aged to get at the core of what's important to her. "I feel like movies are limited real estate," she explains. "You don't have that much space. And you feel like every mo- ment, every character, every way you wear your hair must count… "I thought about childhood and just all the moments that make up life, and all the moments and places and all the people that you know. I think I had 74 speaking roles, which is a lot. But to me, all of them matter." ® 10201 W. Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064 | 310-FOX-INFO | foxinfo@fox.com | www.foxstudios.com 20 TH CENTURY FOX STUDIOS PRODUCTION SERVICES FILM AT FOX