The writer and director of the coming of age film explain how birdwatching fits into the teen psyche.
Ben Kingsley, Alex Wolff, and Kodi Smit-McPhee
Screen Media Films
Rob Meyer and Luke Matheny have been trying to make bird-watching cool for a while now. The screenwriting pair started working on A Birder's Guide to Everything about six years ago, and the film, directed by Rob, finally comes out in theaters today.
I met the duo back when they were first working on the script and they needed someone to take them bird-watching for research. Meyer believes the stereotypically nerdy pastime has potential to connect with hipsterdom — the obsession with old-timey hobbies and craft — and all.
"We all met up in Central Park and had our first genuine birding experience," Matheny recalled in a recent Gchat conversation.
"We saw this small group of birders freaking out, and we found them all looking at the most amazing little owl — that is the moment I always refer to as when I got hooked on birding. It was so tiny and incredible to watch," Meyer added of our North American Saw-Whet Owl sighting.
That day, they went home and wrote a scene for what's become A Birder's Guide to Everything — the story of four teenage bird-watchers who set out on a road trip after they see what they think is an extinct duck — about that outing. "Unfortunately, it didn't make it in. But it's my favorite scene that we cut. We didn't shoot it. It's on the cutting room floor...in our minds," Matheny said.
Below, the co-writers chat more about their long road to getting their movie made (which included Matheny winning an Oscar along the way), why they care about birds, and whether Ben Kingsley, who plays a jaded bird expert in the movie, is as scary as he seems.
Director/writer Rob Meyer (left) and writer Luke Matheny (right).
Getty / Andrew H. Walker
So you guys wrote the script years ago, and it was a long road getting it made.
Rob Meyer: Yeah — really long. But actually one of the good side effects of all the wait was getting to go birding a lot, and getting experts to help us make the script more accurate. Luke, how into birding would you say you've gotten?
Luke Matheny: Well, there was that time I went with you guys in Central Park… And...
RM: Uh-oh.
LM: Yeah, pretty much that one time.
RM: Luke's too cool.
LM: Untrue. It was sort of quietly understood that Rob would be the one who was more into birding.
If you didn't know much about bird-watching, why write a movie about birding?
RM: Well, birding basically started out almost like a good plot device — we wanted these kids to be chasing something on a road trip and we wanted them to be kids who were into hobbies, activities, etc. … I knew of the ivory-billed woodpecker story, so I started with that.
Getting to go out birding a lot, I realized birding is, essentially, searching. And searching is what characters do in movies (on all sorts of levels). And, in this case, searching for a connection, for an answer to an unanswerable question, for romance, for beauty in a world that seems cruel and shitty sometimes. And birding is also discovery. Like, all the time — seeing something new, something beautiful, and it's fleeting. So it turned out to be a great theme for the film, and honestly it probably changed the way I look at the world.
