It's all happening for Lena Dunham. At Dunham's New Yorker Festival talk, the author-director-screenwriter-actress-comedian shared a bit about her latest project, and while I never read the book in question, it's still pretty exciting. Dunham announced her adaptation of Catherine, Called Birdy during her chat with The New Yorker's Ariel Levy.
Though the response from the audience was rather hushed — it seems that not many of Dunham's have read the book in question — there was some excitement at the notion of Dunham stepping out Brooklyn for her next screen-bound venture. The film, once funded (Dunham worries no one will fund a "PG-13 Medieval movie") will be Dunham's second full-length feature, after her cult hit Tiny Furniture (which is streaming on Netflix, so get on that if you haven't seen it).
The plot of Catherine, Called Birdy is a little unexpected, though it's less so for someone like Dunham:
...a girl in 1290 who gets her period and her father basically says, ‘Well, it’s time for you to get married,’ and she’s like ‘Uh, no.’ But it’s hyper realistic and really pretty and it’s full of incest and beatings but it’s a child’s story. I’ve been obsessed with it since I was a kid.
If anyone can tackle that, it's Dunham. But she recognizes this one might take a little more work than her show inspired by her own life:
Obviously nothing I’ve done so far has required any research of any real kind beyond, like, going to a diner ... The idea of engaging with some of these topics that are important to me, which are — surprise — women and feminism, but finding a way to kind kind of look at them through a historical lens is sort of like where feel myself going
The movie is a long way off, considering Dunham still needs funding, but hey, you can't blame me for being at least a little excited, right?
