Independent Films, Film Profiles

The Hairy Bird

The Hairy Bird (also released as Strike! and All I Wanna Do[2]) is a 1998 film written and directed by Sarah Kernochan and starring Kirsten Dunst, Gaby Hoffmann, Lynn Redgrave, and Rachael Leigh Cook. The movie was filmed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.The film is set in 1963, at the fictional "Miss Godard's Preparatory School for Girls"; the setting is based loosely on Kernochan's experiences at Rosemary Hall during those years. Redgrave plays the headmistress of the school, students of the school are played by Dunst, Hoffman, and Cook, among others.The first part of the film provides a glimpse into life at an elite New England boarding school in the era between the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the assassination of President Kennedy. Odie (Hoffman) is forcibly transferred by her parents from a co-ed school to an all-girls school. After a brief hazing period, she is welcomed into the DAR (Daughters of the American Ravioli) whose members meet in secret to eat cold ravioli stolen from the kitchen, and to discuss their future ambitions. When the group finds out their school is going to merge with a boys' academy, factions form and war is declared. The rest of the film deals with their subversive efforts to kill the merger. It contains one of the best mass vomit scenes in teen comedy.The song "The Hairy Bird" plays during the film's end credits; the song was written by Kernochan and sung by a group which includes Kernochan and five of her Rosemary Hall classmates, including Glenn Close.