Oscar Wild: Lucy Alibar talks about Beasts of the Southern Wild and Guillermo del Toro

Trevor Hogg chats with Lucy Alibar about her play being transformed into the Oscar darling Beasts of the Southern Wild as well as a new project with horror maestro Guillermo de Toro...

The Academy Awards were expected to copy the BAFTA nominations; however, the Hollywood event decided to take a left turn and honour an independent film about a six-year-old girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) struggling with her father Wink (Dwight Henry) to live in her environmentally threatened Louisiana bayou community. “We weren’t expecting any of that so that morning was surreal,” admits Lucy Alibar who is contending for Best Adapted Screenplay, her co-writer Benh Zeitlin has received a Best Director nomination, leading lady Quvenzhané Wallis is the youngest to be nominated for Best Actress, and the movie itself, Beasts of the Southern Wild, is up for Best Picture. “It’s funny it doesn’t’ always feel crazy and hectic.  I am able to be present most of the time.  Sometimes I’m like, ‘Oh, my God!  I’m having this L.A. feel!’  Then I ask myself, ‘What’s happen?’  But most of the time it feels really good.”  The native of Florida, who was struggling to earn a living in New York City, experienced a career altering moment when her one act play Juicy and Delicious earned her a placement in the renowned Sundance Screenwriting Lab program.  It helped me tremendously.  I was a playwright going in and left as a playwright and screenwriter.  It taught me how to see the world as a movie starting with the page, how to work closely with the director, and how to write a blueprint for the cinematographer and editor.  It taught me what a collaborative medium film is and how I can best work through that medium.”


It was during a summer camp as teenagers that Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin forged an enduring friendship and creative partnership.  “We both come from a strong tradition of hearing the same stories that your parents heard that become stories of the people of your land,” explains Alibar.  “We were interested in creating a new fairy or folk tale.”  Originally, Juicy and Delicious dealt with a father and son even though the young playwright was addressing her own paternal relationship.  “Benh wanted Hushpuppy to be a girl and at that point I had enough time that I felt safe doing that with him.  I’m glad that I did because there are nuances with a father/daughter relationship that are so unexplored.  It felt like a new territory for all of us.”  The emotional dynamic between Hushpuppy and Wink has struck an chord with audience members.  “Everybody has a unique relationship with their father in the way they don’t with their mother.  Fathers don’t have a manual and because of that every father/child relationship is so off-kilter in a colourful way.  I’ve gotten so many people after seeing the movie talking to me about their relationships with their fathers.  It’s so humbling to all of us is to know that we able to start or add to that conversation.”


“Quvenzhané is incredible and it’s a miracle that we found her,” states Lucy Alibar.  “I’m so excited to see more girls who are girls.  It’s about being a hero not looking for a boyfriend or a husband and that’s important to me.”  In order to expand the bayou community members Benh Zeitlin recruited some actors who had previously appeared in his short films, in particular, Pamela Harper, Lowell Landes, and Henry Coleman.  “The biggest challenge was learning how to craft a world for the screen and how different it is from crafting a world for the stage.  I had to understand the scope of what I was doing as supposed to seeing something in a closed stage.  All of a sudden the whole landscape became the stage, under the water, the sky, and across the water; there was so much more and I had to learn to make that the world we were writing about.”  The other major difference was being able to communicate emotions through images rather than words.  “Learning how things can be expressed through the actions of the other characters that are a lot more subtle than anything you could get on stage.  That was a huge blessing about writing for the screen because so much with the dancers of Elysian Fields and with the kids in all of the school boat scenes, I felt we were able to tell so much of the story through those quiet moments with the supporting characters.”


“We’ve always been best friends,” notes Lucy Alibar when talking about Benh Zeitlin.  "We’re learning how to do interviews together.  I tend to speak off the top of my head and say whatever is on my mind and come back to think about the fact that’s going to be out there forever.  All of these guys I feel are like my brothers so we have a great time being on the road with the movie.”  Other creative opportunities have risen such as adapting The Secret Garden, which revolves around a ten-year-old orphan girl who uncovers a hidden rose garden, for filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Pacific Rim).  “Oh, God, he’s a genius!  I’m so excited to start this project with him.  His brain is so big, expansive and muscular.  I love it.  In talking with him you get story after story, and it’s brilliant and spiritual.  It’s everything.”  Alibar adds, “You learn so much from every new endeavour so I can’t wait to start this one.”


Many thanks to Lucy Alibar for taking the time for this interview.

Make sure to visit the official website for Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.