Case Study No. 1296: Fiona

A Bird of the Air Trailer and Preview
2:11
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A sassy parrot and a free-spirited librarian upend the well-ordered life of a solitary man. Lyman (Jackson Hurst) is a loner, working the graveyard shift for the Courtesy Patrol. When a green parrot flies in to his trailer he becomes obsessed with finding its owner, which leads him to Fiona(Rachel Nichols). She has been eyeing Lyman from a distance and decides to help with his parrot search, whether he wants her to or not. Along with her basset hound, they set out on a quest to find the bird's previous owners and Fiona begins to unravel the mysteries of Lyman's past. But when Fiona joins Lyman on his nightly rounds, she witnesses a reality more intense than the romantic version she had envisioned.
Tags: A Bird of the Air A Bird of the Air preview A Bird of the Air Trailer Drama Jackson Hurst Rachel Nichols Romance posterous
Added: 2 years ago
From: ipadmovies11
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meet lyman
a quiet man

who is
about
to meet

a bird
that's all talk

and a woman
who speaks her mind

an unexpected
mystery

together they will
take flight

to uncover
the past

and discover
their future

based on
the new york times
notable book
"the loop"

jackson hurst

rachel nichols

a
bird
of
the
air

---

From abirdoftheair.com:

CASTING A BIRD OF THE AIR

"Chemistry is a tricky thing," explains casting director Amanda Mackey Johnson. "Sometimes there's electric chemistry when they just stand next to each other."

"Rachel's character (Fiona) has a zest for life," offers Johnson, "a sense of connection that's interesting and infectious. Jackson's (Lyman is) the opposite. Lyman is disconnected from people and not comfortable in his own skin.

"But opposites attract."

Director Whitton had a clear vision of the actors she wanted to cast.

"I thought Carole Lombard for Fiona and I think I kinda' found her. Lyman I always thought was second-look handsome. You know, the kind of guy that you look and then look again. Oh wow. I think I failed on that account because Jackson is stunningly handsome.

"And then I wanted Billy Wilder to direct it. But Billy's not around and neither is Preston Sturges.

"I got two out of the three."

"It's a character-driven piece and it is a love story and their chemistry was like lightning in a bottle. It was hard to ignore. I thought, 'Well, aren't we lucky.'"

The screenplay by Roger Towne made actress Nichols want to take on the challenge of playing Fiona, whose own flighty history at first seems an unlikely match for the stoic, staid Lyman -- the ultimate loner, who lives in moonlight and shadows.

"I read the script and then read the script a second time and fell in love with it. When you read a script and it makes you laugh out loud, it's an indicator of something you want to do," she says. "I was drawn to the project deeply."

"Fiona," Nichols begins. "I call her a sun seeker. She's one of those people who says, 'Alright, there's no sun, alright, I'm leaving, I'm going to find sun'.

"She's funny. She's kind of quirky. But she's loveable. She's very bright. She's a little bit of a bird with a broken wing, with her running and escaping things. There's a bit of a history there with her wanting to run. There's a lot of her in me and there's a lot of me in her."

And Lyman?

"The strong, silent type," she says, "I thought, yeah, Fiona would be drawn to him skulking around looking at him before he ever met her. I thought they were well matched."

---

From wikipedia.org:

A BIRD OF THE AIR
Directed by Margaret Whitton
Screenplay by Roger Towne
Based on the the novel "The Loop" by Joe Coomer

Lyman (Jackson Hurst) is a loner whose job patrolling highways at night, aiding stranded motorists keeps him at a distance from other people. When a rare, highly talkative parrot flies into his home one day, Lyman needs to figure out where the bird comes from and tries to decode its often cryptic utterances. Enlisting the aid of Fiona (Rachel Nichols), an unconventional librarian who is as interested in Lyman's secrets as she is in the bird's, the pair set off on a search that doesn't always lead them where they think they're going, but gradually leads them to one another.