May 31st: BIRDY (Alan Parker, 1984)
British filmmaker Alan Parker has made a career of bouncing from genre to genre, including political thrillers (Mississippi Burning, Midnight Express), and a wide variety of musicals (Fame, Bugsy Malone, Evita). The least-discussed are his more modest dramas, and after completing the ambitious spectacle of Pink Floyd: The Wall he shifted gears for an adaptation of a National Book Award-winner by William Wharton.
The initial adaptation was written by Sandy Kroopf and Jack Behr, who had to transpose the book's alternating POVs between the main characters to something more objective, including most of the film's dialogue. One major change was moving the action from the World War II setting up to the Vietnam War, which allowed the writers to use some of their own youthful experiences. Parker, who had originally felt the book unadaptable, signed on and polished the script with Kroopf and Behr.
Cast in the title role was Matthew Modine (Full Metal Jacket), who only had a few films under his belt but most notably starred in Robert Altman's Streamers, also about soldiers and the Vietnam War. Opposite him is Nicholas Cage, coming off his first lead role in future cult classic Valley Girl. Both actors were challenged, Modine forced to rely only on body language in the story's present action where he has no dialogue and believes he is a bird, and Cage with his face half-covered with bandages in the same sections.
The film was shot partially on location in its setting of Philadelphia, with additional work done in New Jersey, San Francisco, Santa Clara, and Modesto, California. Behind the camera was Parker's usual cinematographer Michael Seresin (Fame, Angel Heart). To portray the POV of a flying bird, they made use of brand new camera technology with the Skycam, computer-controled and able to shoot hanging from cables 100 ft. in the air. Over 80 trained pigeons were used throughout the shoot.
During the editing process with his trusted editor Gerry Hambling, Parker was using recordings from Peter Gabriel's work as temporary music. He decided to contact the musician, who had never composed for film before. Gabriel was currently working on his studio album So with producer Daniel Lanois and the two took time out to make new music for Birdy, as well as sampling and recycling pieces from previous Gabriel albums, much of the work done on the cutting-edge Fairlight CMI digital sampling synthesizer.
Birdy opened in late September with hopes of awards attention, but despite good reviews it failed to gain traction there or at the box office, and a planned expansion to more theaters was canceled by the studios. Vindication for Parker came when the film was entered in the following year's Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix, the second-highest honor.
Running time is 2 hours.
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