The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub moderates an exclusive Q&A at the world premiere for
Little Wing
.
Director Dean Israelite, screenwriter John Gatins, and producers Susan Orlean and Naomi Despres share anecdotes, challenging sequences, and more from the production of the eight-week shoot.

Little Wing
is a coming-of-age drama inspired by a 2006 article from
The New Yorker
, and stars Brian Cox, Brooklynn Prince, Kelly Reilly, and more.

Ahead of its Paramount+ release, Collider was honored to host the world premiere of Little Wing, a coming-of-age drama inspired by a peculiar 2006 story in The New Yorker. Starring Succession’s Brian Cox, this film spent 17 years in production limbo and took only eight weeks to shoot with a cast and crew who shared a passion for surprisingly heavy material.

During the post-screening Q&A, moderated by our own Steve Weintraub, director Dean Israelite and screenwriter John Gatins were joined by producer and author of the original New Yorker article, Susan Orlean, and executive producer Naomi Despres. They discuss the long road to getting this drama on screen, prompted by Steven Spielberg’s initial interest in Orlean’s story, the critical role Cox played in that, and casting the rest of the movie. They talk about challenging scenes, the importance of Portland and music to the film, making movies that speak to all audiences, tough kissing scenes, and tons more. You can check out the full conversation in the video above or in the transcript below.

Little Wing also stars Brookynn Prince (The Florida Project), Kelly Reilly (Yellowstone), Che Tafari (Rel), and Simon Khan in his debut role.

Little Wing Follows a 13-year-old girl who is dragged into the world of pigeon racing as she deals with her parents’ divorce and the impending loss of her home.Release Date March 13, 2024 Main Genre Drama Writers John Gatins , Susan Orlean

COLLIDER: So this is the world premiere, but have you tested the movie?

DEAN ISRAELITE: Yeah, we did test the movie that was close to this but not the fully finished film. I didn’t know if I was gonna stay, but I had a good experience, which is rare because you’re sort of in a fugue state when you make the movie. Then it’s really hard to keep watching it over and over, and I watched this movie more than I think I’ve watched any movie I’ve made just because the editor, Martin Bernfeld, who’s here, and I really tried to watch it and not get bogged down in any single scene, and then watch it again and keep having kind of a bird’s eye view — no pun intended — of the film. So I’ve watched this movie so many times, and what’s really difficult is you just start to remember every iteration, and you start to wonder if the iteration before, in any way — the take, the sound, the picture — was better. So you end up, at least for me, watching the movie and all you can see is the previous version and not the version you’re watching. But I think I watched this version and I was in it. So, it was great to answer your question. I enjoyed it.

The Inspiration Behind ‘Little Wing’

So a lot of people in this theater know how the sausage is made, and they know the behind-the-scenes of making movies, so what do you think would surprise people to learn about the making of Little Wing?

SUSAN ORLEAN: How long it took. Although, maybe nobody would find that surprising. I have to say that, as the person who wrote the story that kind of gave birth to the whole project, it’s quite amazing to see it here come to life. I’ll tell you what’s really amazing is the young girl who I first profiled when I did the story recently got her PhD from Stanford in Zoology and is now teaching at the medical school at Yale. Pretty amazing. I mean, she was a very special girl. I met her in a completely chance encounter. I was walking my dog, she was walking her dog, and we started chatting and she mentioned in passing that she raised homing pigeons, which was a sport I associated with 75-year-old men in undershirts. And I thought, “This is really interesting that this young girl is involved in this sport. She’s got to be the only young girl doing this.” I could tell she was special, so bright, so interesting and completely an iconoclast. You know, it doesn’t make you cool when you’re in eighth grade to be raising pigeons, as you can imagine, but she just went her own way, and I think the movie really captures that, which I really like because she was a special kid and she’s turned into a really impressive young woman.

NAOMI DESPRES: My one anecdote about what might surprise people to know about the making of the film is that Brooklynn, our wonderful lead actress, arrived on set and we arranged for her to have her first meeting with the bird trainers so she could meet the pigeons and start to work with the pigeons and learn how to hold the pigeons. What was revealed in that moment was that she was afraid of birds. [Laughs] It was really hard for her. Like, she was really afraid of birds. Obviously, you can see in the film, she worked through her fear. She spent a lot of time with the birds and developed a real relationship with them. I think it’s really indicative of who she is, also, because I remember, for me, I was like, “Who auditions for a movie when you’re totally afraid of your co-star?” Brooklynn Prince does because she’s this fearless, amazing adventurous young woman, who I think loves to face her fears and dive right in. So that was kind of a fun behind-the-scenes anecdote.

Image via Paramount+

JOHN GATINS: Steven Spielberg read this. So, Susan, who is a very accomplished, famous brilliant writer who famously wrote the book The Orchid Thief, which Charlie Kaufman wrote a brilliant movie about how hard it was to adapt Susan Orlean’s book into a movie, and I think he won the Oscar for it — Steven Spielberg reads her beautiful piece in the New Yorker and wants to make a movie. Then I have to go meet with Steven Spielberg in his office, we talk about all these things, and he’s like, “I want you to do this…” We didn’t really talk about anything, and then suddenly it was like my agent calling and saying, “So they wanna make a deal for you to write this movie.” I’m like, “What movie? It’s this beautiful little piece, she met a girl and she’s got racing pigeons.” And so I just had to kind of take what was there and try to find… Like Jaan was my high school health teacher who was a Vietnam vet who I worked for over the summer as a lifeguard. So it was crazy. I was in such fear and panic of having to try to deliver a script, and made up this heist and the value of a bird, and it was like a long story that just kind of became more and more bananas.

I got to meet Susan Orlean back then, and I got to visit and chat with her and everything. I was like, “Oh, this is amazing, Steven Spielberg and Susan Orlean.” I was like, “What am I gonna do?” And so it was just the fact that that was 2006…

ORLEAN: By the way, I am seeing myself creating a little specialty here, which is writing things that people are really scared to adapt.

GATINS: It’s working for you. I would stick with it.

ISRAELITE: I don’t know if this is surprising or not — the movie’s music, the sort of sonic signature of the film, originally was hip hop.

GATINS: It was Tupac Shakur.

ISRAELITE: Right, and when we ended up going to Portland to shoot it, and this was Naomi’s suggestion, saying, “Well, we should embrace what’s authentic to Portland, and that is the whole punk rock scene.” And with Kaitlyn being this fearless young character played by Brooklynn, who also embodies all of that, we should look at Bikini Kill and riot grrrl, and everything that comes with that. It was really an inspired idea because it’s so a part of the DNA of the movie. That was never really intended, and it sort of came at the last minute.

Also, not to work in budget, but it probably saved you a lot of money too.

ISRAELITE: We weren’t thinking about that, we were thinking about the art.

Sure, but I can’t imagine the budget of using all of his songs in a soundtrack.

ISRAELITE: Well, it was never going to be all of his songs, but yes, the budget probably came down, but it’s better for it. [Laughs]

No, it is. By the way, it’s a smart choice that also saves you a lot of money.

GATINS: But the way the movie gets made is Brian Robbins, who runs all of Paramount, was somebody that I worked for when he was a director, and I said, “Oh, I have this script that Paramount owns.” He was like, “Oh, we love that little script.” And I was like, “Dean, what about Dean?” He said, “Oh, I love Dean.” And then he was like, “If you guys get Brian Cox to be in the movie, we’ll make this movie.” So we had to go try to get Brian Cox. Now, going back to Susan Orlean, he was in…

ISRAELITE: Adaptation.

GATINS: Adaptation. He played the screenwriting teacher. So I think there was something that gave it a little bit of something. He was like, “Oh, it’s based on Susan’s piece. It must be good.” So it made him at least look at it, right? You never know how the weird connective things that go into making something come together.

Related The 10 Best Movies About Writing, From ‘Adaptation’ to ‘The Shining’ “No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”

ISRAELITE: This is maybe a cool story that is maybe surprising based on how long it took the movie to get made, which is that John has been with the script for so long, John and Susan, and there were many fits and starts along the way that I wasn’t a part of. When I did become a part of it, that was five or six years ago, we were trying to push it up the hill for all of that time. It had its own sort of fits and starts and lives and deaths. Then Brian read it and liked it, and then we started to sort of make a deal with Brian, and it was kind of like, “Well, maybe this movie…” I’d sort of been like, “This movie is never happening,” but it’s fun every once in a while to get a call from the studio like, “Maybe we’re making this movie!”

After all of this time, I got a phone call and it was Shauna Phelan, who runs Awesomeness, who we are all very indebted to, who supports this movie like no other executive, and Brian Banks is also here, who’s a huge supporter of the film, and said, “Well, Brian has a window. Can you leave in five days and shoot the movie in seven weeks’ time?” And I just said yes. I knew the answer had to be yes, but I had no idea if we could prep the movie in seven weeks. I had no idea, and I said yes. And then John called me and said Brian Robbins had called him and had the same discussion with him. He said, “Dean, I just got off the phone with Brian and he kept saying to me, ‘Do you think you can make this window? Can you prep this movie in seven weeks?’ And I just said yes, but Dean, I have no idea. Can we do it in seven weeks?” And I just said yes to John, too, but I didn’t know. [Laughs] So after 17 years, it got greenlit in three days.

How Brian Cox Finally Got the Ball Moving on ‘Little Wing’
Image via Paramount+

That’s effing crazy, but I will give you so much credit because this movie does not look like you were rushing to film it. It looks like you had this thought out. It looks fantastic for such a short window.

ISRAELITE: Thank you. We ultimately got eight weeks of prep. I did have this thing in my mind where I was like, “We’re definitely gonna push a week.” So, we did get eight weeks of prep. But we did shoot it in seven weeks. Geoff Wallace, the production designer, is here and he and his team, the design of the movie is so, I think, specific and thought through. I never felt rushed when we were making the movie because I think we were working off a great script. So, when you’re in prep and you’re working off a good script, every day you weren’t scrambling in prep to figure out how to fix something. All you’re doing is figuring out how to dramatize the scenes in the best way possible, and so we were really free in prep to be just dealing with the material and not dealing with problems in the material. Once we started shooting, we were, I felt, ready to shoot and I never felt rushed making the movie.

GATINS: Another funny thing that happened was we got Brian Cox, and I’m like, “Great! It’s all good.” And then Brian Robbins is like, “Can you get Kelly Reilly?” We had done Flight together 10 years before, and so I was like, “Why me? Why do I have to?” So I emailed her. She was in London, and I was like, “Hey, remember me?” I was like, “Would you read this script?” And she was like, “Okay.” So she read the script and sent me a lovely email back, and said, “Talk to Dean.” So then Dean and Kelly had a Zoom, and next thing you know, Kelly was signing on to the movie. Now the movie is coming together wicked fast, and I said, “Um, Naomi…” I remember talking to Shauna, and I was like, “Look, Naomi has to make this movie with us. She has to go there. She has to do it.” It was like there was all kinds of stuff going on, there was COVID, there was a strike, there was all this stuff, and I literally was like, “Can you guys meet and see if this works, and just leave two days later and go make the movie?”

DESPRES: I got a call and you said, “Go meet Dean. I think you guys will hit it off.” I went to Dean’s house and we probably spent like an hour together, and I was like, “I love the script.” I was like, “I think I really like Dean.” And then the next time I saw Dean was maybe like three days later at the airport getting on a plane to Portland. It was a shotgun marriage. I think it worked out pretty well, though.

ISRAELITE: It did. It was kismet.

Image via Paramount+

One of the things that I really enjoy about this script is that it treats the kids with respect. It deals with serious subject matter but not in a heavy-handed way. It’s just well written. Can you talk about that aspect of the script?

GATINS: I love writing teenage characters because they’re just interesting. They make a lot of crazy decisions. I always say that teenagers have been sneaking out their windows since the dawn of time to make lots of bad decisions. I just think we kind of love them for that and we kind of forgive them, and they’re unpredictable, so they’re great characters. But there was tough subject matter, and I appreciate Shauna being here, and Brian. We had lots of conversations about the tone of the movie, how far we could push given the parameters and everything else to still keep you in the movie and have an audience that can be big, and we worked hard at that, I would say. That was kind of some of the biggest conversations we had before shooting and during shooting was really hitting the tone correctly.

ISRAELITE: Totally. And I appreciate you saying that because it is, I think, the single hardest thing to try and do in a movie like this. I’ve made a lot of material for younger viewers and sort of co-viewing, and it’s so difficult, I think, to sort of thread that needle and figure out how you make a movie that a 12-year-old, 13-year-old can watch but you’re not losing everybody else. I’m still trying to figure it out. There’s no easy answer to it. I just think we don’t give kids, young people, enough credit for what they’re able to watch and digest and think about. I’ve been in focus groups, not for this movie, for other stuff, where the kids just blow you away with what they’re getting from the material. I think as we get older, and I know now as a parent, we get more scared sometimes for our kids than they are for themselves. I think we sort of inherently, as we’re making these stories, can have this reaction of trying to protect them, and it does a disservice to the material and it ultimately does a disservice to them as viewers.

I definitely have to ask, there is a kissing scene between kids in this movie. What is that like as a director when the kids are possibly kissing in real life for the first time? What is that conversation like? How awkward is it?

ISRAELITE: Yeah, it was definitely an interesting day. We had an intimacy coach that came, and we rehearsed with the kids — not the kiss, we just rehearsed the blocking the weekend before we were shooting it. It was on their minds from the moment they showed up in rehearsal. I do a lot of rehearsal and this was just kind of this thing that was hanging over them. There was one point where it was gonna be in week one or week two, and I just said, “I just think that’s a bad idea. Let them legitimately become friends, hopefully, over the course of the movie,” and let’s shoot it in the last week, which ultimately we did. So we had an intimacy coach. At this point, they were best friends, and what’s interesting is you would watch them and they’d be all over each other as best friends, and then the minute we would rehearse it was like they didn’t know each other. Their parents were with us in the room rehearsing, and their parents were like, “Guys, you had a sleepover last night and you’re such close friends. What’s going on?” But it’s obviously a very different thing when you’re having to perform.

So we worked through the blocking of that, so they were comfortable with that. We didn’t have to do that on the day. And then we went there on the day with three hours to shoot that scene because we had to do it at magic hour and play it for sunrise. So the whole time we’re just losing light the whole time we’re shooting that scene. I think it’s going pretty well and they’re very sweet together and we’re shooting with two cameras so anything that one is doing, we’re capturing the other one, and Naomi comes up to me. We’re on this hill in the middle of nowhere, and the whole crew has hiked up this hill, and I’m all the way down over there, and Naomi is all the way back over there, like, I don’t know, 200 yards away, and she’s with the parents. We’re shooting and we’re shooting and she sort of comes up, and I go to her and I’m like, “I think it’s going well. I actually think we’re getting it. I think we’re getting the scene.” And she’s like, “Well, yes. I just wanna tell you the parents are both crying. They’re having this whole thing. They were both crying.” And I remember saying, “Well, I don’t care that the parents are crying. Obviously, they were crying. That doesn’t mean it’s good. Their emotion doesn’t count.” I thought she was saying, “It’s so good people are crying.” And Naomi was like, “You’re not hearing me. I’m dealing with a whole other thing going on there,” where these parents are seeing their children have their first kiss. And so Naomi was dealing with this whole other thing. That was kind of a moment where you go, “Right. You need a great producer on set,” because there’s all this other stuff going on that you’re totally unaware of.

Image via Paramount+

DESPRES: Well, I will just say that we had the most fantastic parents on this set, which is such a gift when you’re making a film with kids, to have parents who are so supportive of the process and are just really great to hang out with. Che and Brooklynn both have wonderful, wonderful parents who I adore, but they were basically having an out-of-body experience watching their kids have their first kiss. So I think in that moment I was just saying, like, “Maybe we should just take a break, let everybody collect themselves,” because it was very emotional for them. I think they were very happy with what they were seeing, but obviously they were experiencing it on two levels, one as the parents of professional actors and then also just as parents. But yeah, the scene, it was a very big day. It was a very big day for everyone, but it turned out really well. We’re really pleased with how it came out.

Why this title?

ORLEAN: This was interesting because it was the title of the story. It came to me immediately because of the Jimi Hendrix song. Somehow music connected in my head right away. The idea of referring to the birds, but in a somewhat oblique way, plus the word “little,” I was thinking about Sedona, which was the name of the real girl, and just her youth. It’s rare that I write the headline for my own piece, actually. A lot of times I just can’t think of a good headline and editors tend to be better at that than writers, but I came up with that title and I was really adamant about it. I was delighted that we kept it for the film. Certainly I’ve seen many of my film projects end up with different titles, but I just think it’s so evocative. And any of us who are familiar with the Jimi Hendrix song, too, it’s very resonant when you hear that title. I’m sure Jimi Hendrix music, first of all, is the wrong era, but I assume it costs a fortune to use Jimi Hendrix music in a movie, but it still felt so right.

When you saw the shooting schedule, what was the day you had circled in terms of, “I can’t wait to film this,” and what was the day you had circled in terms of, “How are we gonna film this?” And maybe the second part is the kids kissing. I’m just guessing.

ISRAELITE: No, the thing that we stressed out the most about was the sequence outside the warehouse where the brother gets hoisted up, because that was day two, three, and four of the shoot. There was no way around scheduling that differently. That’s tough where you’re all getting to know each other as the crew and you’re thrown into night, exterior, kids’ hours where Brooklynn is wrapping. You only have nine hours to shoot, and so she’s wrapping early and then you’re bringing in photo doubles, and at a certain point, Brian is wrapping, so you’re bringing in photo doubles, and you have stunts. So credit to Jeff Cutter, the cinematographer, who did an amazing job, who just came to me pretty early on in prep and was like, “We have a problem. We are not prepared for this sequence.” And I was like, “It’s fine.” We had two nights. He was like, “We don’t have enough time,” and I was like, “No, it’s okay.” He’s like, “I’ve worked out the hours. This is how many hours we have.” I was like, “Yeah, but it’s like a close-up here and it’s a close-up here and it’s a close-up here.” And he’s like, “No, no. That’s my whole world turning around.” So we spent a lot of time prepping that, and it went so smoothly those three nights, and I just give all the credit to Jeff because it was his preparation that got us through that. Once we had sort of gotten over that hurdle, things sort of flowed pretty well.

The scene I was most nervous about was actually the last scene we shot with Brian, which is the scene in the office where he confronts her and he tries to call her mom and there’s a voicemail. It’s sort of the first time where she really opens up about what’s going on with her, and I was always nervous about that scene because I just couldn’t figure out one of the beats that Brian plays as Jaan. I just couldn’t wrap my head around how he hears this thing, confronts her, and then can sort of move on in the scene, but it’s still lingering underneath the scene. He played it so well, and I actually didn’t know that we got it on the day. I was still sort of nervous about it just because I was so, I think, in my own head about it. But once Martin cut the scene, it was like, oh, Brian was doing all of these things that I don’t know that I honestly was fully aware of that tracks the character totally through that scene.

It’s almost like Brian’s talented.

ISRAELITE: Almost. No, he’s a gift.

Image via Paramount+

DESPRES: For me, the scene that I was the most excited to film was the scene of the bird release. It was something that Dean, very early on from the very start of the movie, had this idea from a lot of research footage that had been done of what a bird release actually looks like, and that particular truck that carries the birds. We needed to get this truck, which was very difficult to do. It’s an actual one. We had to find somebody who was willing to play with us, and then we also needed some pigeon racers who were willing to release their birds. Pigeon racers, sometimes they respond to emails, sometimes they don’t; sometimes they take your phone calls, sometimes they don’t; sometimes they say they’re gonna bring their birds and then they don’t. And also the weather in Portland is so unpredictable, and it was this day, and we were like, “Oh my god, is the truck gonna arrive? Are the birds gonna arrive? Is the weather gonna hold?” And then we got there and it was the most gorgeous day, and all these wonderful characters, these bird racers, came and brought their birds. We only had the one shot at it, and we got it. I felt like I was in a [Federico] Fellini movie. Everybody was sort of pushing a piece of equipment and people had umbrellas, and we had to walk really, really far and bring all our equipment down. And then it just happened, and I mean, it’s such an amazing scene in the movie.

ISRAELITE: I didn’t even answer your question about what I was excited about — maybe that gives you an insight into making the movie. But I was excited about shooting the scene with the Russian Pigeon Mafia on the bridge, and partly because it was sort of day two of scouting, right at the beginning of pre-production, and that scene was scripted in a park and we were scouting for other things. I said, “Wow, wouldn’t it be awesome to put that scene on that bridge, and the bridge can go up and down at the beginning of the scene?” Knowing full well in my head, I was never getting it.

DESPRES: I thought he was joking when he said that. I was like, “That’s so funny.” [Laughs]

ISRAELITE: I mean, I did say it seriously, and was shocked in the moment when our line producer, Liz Brandenburg, who was amazing, was like, “Okay, we can look into that,” knowing, “Okay, this is something I’m gonna give up later.” I’m gonna say that this is the thing I really want and I’ll trade it later for something, and I never had to trade it. I said to the DP when we got there, I was like, “I cannot believe we’re on this bridge and they’re stopping traffic and we’re shooting the scene that was scripted in a park on this bridge.”

I think you should explain that this never happens.

ISRAELITE: No, it doesn’t. And I think that that’s testament to how passionate the crew was about the material. They love the material. And it’s incredible shooting in Portland. Everyone does a million different jobs. They’re all artists and the groups also have rock bands and also fine artists. So you’re just working with people who are artists and storytellers and want to bring the best thing to the screen, and I think the passion shows in the movie.

Image via Paramount+

I like talking about editing, so who gave you the best feedback or the best note after seeing the movie where you’re like, “I gotta fix this?”

ISRAELITE: It’s three people. So one is my wife, Alison Small, who’s an amazing producer in her own right. She watched a very, very early cut of the movie and sort of unlocked key things in the film about thematically where we were muddled, and it really kind of gave us a true North, thematically, very early on which was really important. The other is my cousin, Jonathan Liebesman, a great director in his own right. He came to an early screening and he keyed on a similar thing in terms of thematically what was going on, but at that point, we were more advanced with it but still hadn’t quite fixed it. Also there were a lot of pacing things that Jonathan pointed out that, once we started to implement those notes, the movie told us what rhythm it was. And then the last is André Nemec, a producer, one of the producers of Project Almanac, my first movie, who, after that same screening that Jonathan was at, told me the things that really resonated for him, and that can be as important as people telling you what isn’t right because you’re knowing what you’re keeping and why you’re keeping it. And at that point in the process, it’s important to know why you need to keep things.

For the two writers sitting up here, I’m curious, if someone has not read anything you’ve done before, or a script, what’s the first thing you’d like them reading and why?

ORLEAN: I’ve actually been asked that before and I’m always sort of stumped. I think I would probably say The Orchid Thief because I think it establishes a lot of how I approach stories — what attracts me, how I tell a story. So, I mean, generally that’s what I recommend, but I’m happy when people read anything. I’m also reluctant to be too prescriptive because I feel like if you want to read something of mine, whichever it is, go ahead.

GATINS: I would say Flight because it’s rare that a movie gets made that only has one writer a lot of times in our business. Through all the iterations and different studios and producers that it goes through, a lot of other writers touch it. So Flight was the same experience as this where I was the writer from start to finish, and it took a million years for that movie to find its way to the screen, too.

Image via Paramount Pictures

You have a track record of taking a long time for movies to get made.

GATINS: Yeah.

ISRAELITE: t’s not a joke.

How long did it take to cast the granger?

ISRAELITE: He’s played by three different birds, or maybe six different birds. They were in the credits. They have names. We tried our hardest, as Naomi said, to get real pigeon racers to give us their pigeons, and we thought, “Of course they want their pigeons in a movie,” and they didn’t because it was racing season. They don’t want their birds to mix with other birds because they might give each other diseases if they have diseases, or whatever. So, we bought 60 birds, and our amazing animal trainers/handlers, Roland [Sonnnenburg] and Lauren [Henry], raised 60 birds, and out of those 60, we started to audition which of those birds could do the things that we needed them to do. That’s how we got to the granger.

DESPRES: And they actually don’t really develop their iridescence until they’re a certain age, so it was like a week-and-a-half before shooting, and we’re looking at them…

ISRAELITE: We put makeup on one of them.

DESPRES: We did a makeup test, actually, on one of them.

ISRAELITE: It was all very safe.

DESPRES: Yeah, it was all approved. But just because their iridescence wasn’t quite coming in. I mean, that’s the problem with eight weeks of prep when you have to raise a flock of pigeons. But, ultimately, by the time we really needed their true close-ups, which were on a stage at the very end of the shoot, they were very beautiful and iridescent.

How did you guys figure out what the ending was gonna be? Was it always this ending? Did you debate on something else?

GATINS: I feel like it was always the ending. I’m trying to think of what the ending is.

ISRAELITE: Life is sweet.

GATINS: Oh, yeah. Life is sweet. No, that was always the ending. It’s interesting because the scene in the truck, there’s a couple of scenes, because again, like I said, we had a lot of conversation about the tone of the movie and some of the language and how she ideates moments in the movie, which is an intense thing. So we had to kind of strike this right tone. There were other little bits and pieces of dialogue in the office scene that Dean referenced earlier, and also in the truck, where he says, “Vietnam taught me the meaning of life,” and she kind of pushes him, but we cut out of that scene. Then he tells her later, not that he ever told her in the truck, but he kind of said to her, “No.” It was more like, “I’ll never tell you that kind of thing.” That was the moment I always ultimately wanted to land on, was him saying, “Hey, this probably is our last moment, but I wanted to just tell you, I know the meaning of life and I’m gonna share it with you now after everything we’ve been through.” So, yes, that was the end.

Image via Paramount+

ORLEAN: I do want to share an anecdote which really made me happy, and that is when I did the original story, the pigeon racer who really sort of taught me everything about how racing works, he was sort of my guide through this little subculture, told me that he had terminal cancer, and he didn’t ever want to leave his house because of his birds. It was very emotional. When the story was optioned, and all the people who I wrote about heard they had their life rights option and so forth, he was really eager, not in an obnoxious way, but in the way of someone who doesn’t feel they have a lot of time. He would check in with me regularly, “Is the film gonna be made? Is the film gonna be made?” And it always really troubled me as the years ticked by because I thought, “Gosh, if this movie ever gets made, I don’t know if Matt is gonna be alive to see it.” And lo and behold, his cancer went into remission and he’s alive to this day, which was really almost unimaginable. He had cancer in many parts of his body at the time that I was interviewing him, and I’m of course eager for him to see it. And also, I think the way John incorporated that into the script was really authentic and it feels really authentic to me. It doesn’t feel like a ploy to get you to feel sympathetic with him. In fact, this guy was delightful and very upbeat for considering the challenges that he was facing. But, like Jaan, he was driving his wife crazy because he never went on vacation. He never wanted to go on vacation because of his birds.

What was it like for you when you cast Brooklynn, you’re about to start filming, and then you hear, “Oh, by the way, she’s afraid of birds?”

ISRAELITE: It’s one of those things in prep where you literally are hearing a problem every 20 minutes, just problem after problem after problem. So to me, I was just like, “This is one of these problems that we’re gonna have to figure out, and I trust that the professionals around us are gonna get her comfortable with the birds because she’s just gonna have to be, and that she will pull through.” So I didn’t really stress too much about it.

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It was like a low stress situation.

ISRAELITE: Yeah, you’re just constantly bombarded. They’re all problems that have to be solved.

For each of you, what do you really hope that audiences take away from the film?

DESPRES: The thing that I hope audiences will take away from it, which is kind of what I take away from it, is this idea that what you need in life may not be exactly what you think you want, and that you have to be open and look up and embrace the unexpected, that sometimes that is what is gonna lead you to where you need to go. I also think it’s a really positive message about getting away from your cell phone and going on an adventure in the real world.

ORLEAN: For me, the story was so much about the yearning for home. Pigeons have it, humans have it. Obviously in the film, that’s the very center of what drives this. It’s Kaitlyn’s yearning to keep her home and her realization, ultimately, that home is not so specifically a building but somewhere where you are loved, and I really feel like the movie captures that and really lands that idea in a way that is really moving.

GATINS: I think that you should take away that if somebody has something valuable and you want it, just go fucking take it. That’s really my big take on it.

DESPRES: Sometimes crime does pay.

GATINS: No, it was funny because there’s a scene in the movie where she’s at her darkest moment, and the original line in the script was the school therapist says that it’s normal for teenagers to think about killing themselves, and “I’m feeling really normal right now.” And that’s heavy. So we had to kind of modulate, because I think that that’s part of what’s in this movie is this girl who, at that age, hits this really dark moment. When Jaan says to her, “Well, that’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” and he recognized it, he’s somebody who’s so many generations beyond her but can recognize it and talk to her about it. The idea that she fights through it, she meets this unlikely person who kind of helps her pull out of this thing, so I think that if you find your way, I like going on a ride with a character. You wanna talk about an arc, I just kind of love that I get very emotional watching it.

I love the brother, too. He’s this great moment in the movie. You described that sequence that you guys put together, because it wasn’t scripted like that originally because you didn’t have the buildings to do the jump that was originally scripted. So it’s like you did the thing with throwing the bag and all this stuff, and I’m like, “My gosh, that’s incredible.” It’s one of my favorite sequences in the movie. It’s so emotional when he says, “I’ll get my stuff.” Great. Life is sweet, that’s what I take away.

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ISRAELITE: I think my takeaway is, every time I would give people the script, they would always talk to me about how interesting the theme was with the pigeons and home and that metaphor, and that was meaningful to me, but it wasn’t the thing that drew me to the movie. The metaphor I took from the birds when the birds are released with the truck, they’re released by a guy called The Liberator, that’s his actual title when they go on the race, and to me, the birds always symbolized liberation in the film, that everyone in the movie in one way or another is in crisis. In one way or another, every single character is dying. And to me, what I take from the film and what I wanted to put into the film is this idea of pushing through to the other side of that crisis — not just solving it, but somehow soaring above it and being liberated from it. So that’s what I hope people take from it.

Little Wing is available to stream on Paramount+.

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