Andrea Arnold Says Her New Film ‘Bird’ Started With the Vision of a ‘Tall, Thin Man With a Long Penis Standing on a Roof’

variety.com:

Alex Ritman Andrea Arnold’s initial inspiration for her Cannes competition entry “Bird” was perhaps not what many people might have been expecting. “A very long time ago, I had the image a tall, thin man with a long penis, standing on a roof,” she explained at the press conference for the film on Friday when asked about her initial visual prompt. “But I didn’t know if he was good or bad or what he was.” From this bizarre starting point, Arnold crafted a social realist drama about a family on the fringes of society living by British seaside and an unexpected visitor who becomes close to a young girl entering puberty.

Alongside stars Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogoswki, she once again peppered her cast with first-timers. For Keoghan, he didn’t even need to look at the script before signing up, with Arnold having been on a list of filmmakers he’d wanted to work with for the last decade. “I’ve been saying in interviews since 2014 that I wanted to work with Andrea, saying it over and over again,” he said. “And then the opportunity came up.

I wasn’t given a script or anything like that. It was a no-brainer.” Keoghan also likened the family at the center of Bird to his own upbringing in Summerhill, known for being one of the most economically deprived areas of Dublin.