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| Bird In Hand |
Director Melody C Roscher's debut feature, Bird In Hand, follows bi-racial bride-to-be Bird Rowe (Alisha Wainwright), who arrives unannounced on her mother Carlotta (Christine Lahti) and step-father Dale's (Jeffrey Nordling) doorstep to break the news about the upcoming nuptials. However, Bird has an ulterior motive for visiting her childhood home — she wants to finally meet her Black father (K Todd Freeman). As tensions between mother and daughter escalate and the wedding plans grind along slowly, Bird agrees to help white couple Dennis (James Le Gros) and Leigh (Annabelle Dexter-Jones), who have bought a plantation property and plan to cleanse it of its ominous past.
Roscher has previously directed the short films Vessel and White Wedding, the latter of which Bird In Hand is based on. She has also produced Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene, Josh Mond's James White, and Antonio Campos' Simon Killer and Christine.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Roscher discussed the pain and joy of the creative process, and the influence of her inner world on shaping the story's specificity. She also reflected on a mini-list of movie regrets, being "messed up" by Vincenzo Natali's Cube, and being guided by George Carlin.
The following has been edited for clarity.
Paul Risker: How would you describe your relationship to cinema and why film as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or defining moment for you personally?
Melody C Roscher: I gravitated towards movies when I was super, super young. I used to skip school at six to stay home and watch movies and also music videos, which I was obsessed with. I felt the world was a much bigger and complicated place — it had to be for me when I was little. I lived on a small road in a rural place in Chesterfield County, Virginia, which is right outside of Richmond, Virginia. It was a four-road neighbourhood. We were feral kids running around and were parented by the neighbourhood. It was one of those places and nobody locked their doors. It was wild and awesome.
So, I thought the world was huge, and I just wanted to watch it. I'm also an avid reader, and I've always loved the thought of feeling connected, intrigued, titillated and moved, especially with how visual images can make you reconsider opinions and narratives in your life. I wanted to be a zoologist for a long time and then, around age sixteen, I thought, 'What am I talking about? I want to be making films.' So, I changed gears and left my zoology days behind me, went to film school and I've never stopped since.
PR: The process of making a film is one that brings people together with a shared goal, and so, cinema feels to me like a natural extension of your experience growing up. Hence, it might make sense that you're a filmmaker and not a novelist.
MCR: How many aunts and uncles do I have that are not related to me at all? The community of people around my sisters and me, and the responsibility they felt for us was huge. And the number of kids I was playing with on that street was also huge. So, I've always liked collaborating and the writing process of being alone in a room is very painful for me. I love it, but I also like to be in a roomful of people making the film.
PR: Low confidence and self-esteem hinder creative expression. It leads to second guessing, and, at its worst, it fills your head with the sound of laughter and heightens imposter syndrome. Speaking with actress Felicia Day, she said, "… finding that advocacy and belief in yourself, or at least belief in what you're working on, will get you through the hard stuff. If not, you're creating with other people's laughter in your ear, and you'll never get through anything because it's the modern world — somebody will always laugh at you."
MCR: There is a lot of truth to that, and I feel that where I grew up almost armed me with that ability. I grew up in this little redneck place, and I was so different. Nobody really understood where I came from or why I was biracial. Kids on the school bus were like, "What is the deal? What are you? I don't get it." So, I developed thick skin when I was pretty young because of it.
Maybe this goes hand-in-hand with what I was saying about why I was watching so much of the outside world, because I know I make sense somewhere — we're all just people here. And those concepts weren't lost on me at a young age.
I really had to have thick skin, and I think the choice was clear to me: I could believe in myself for myself, or I could rely on the world to somehow tell me I was worth something and worth listening to. But the world quickly made it clear that it was not giving me permission, so, I was gonna do my best and just keep showing up. And I have those days when I'm criticising myself so much that I can't write — it's just part of the process. I guess it's being able to do it again the next day that allows you to at least get to the other side and see what you've created.
PR: I love the fact that you skipped school to stay home and watch movies. We need to be cautious about what children and adolescents are seeing, but life's too short to experience everything cinema, literature and music have to offer. So, getting out of the gates early has its advantages.
MCR: There are definitely risks to that, of course. I have a mini-list in my head of movies that I wish I hadn't seen as young as I was, because I was just watching whatever I wanted, when I wanted. And funnily enough, one of the ones I was thinking about the other day, which I went and watched the trailer for, was the movie Cube. There's nothing that bad that even happens in it, but it just really messed me up. I was really affected by the movie; I was really scared.
At a young age is when you're the most impressionable, and you feel the greatest pressure to be like everyone else. So, it's important that you can experience those worlds where someone is nothing like you and isn't like anyone that you know.
Seeing a lot of imagery when you're young, even if it challenges you, and you don't totally understand it, is important. It might only teach you that you shouldn't cuss as much as the people that you're seeing on screen, but it's valuable.
I don't have kids, but if I did, I'd absolutely be letting them watch anything that they could sit down and commit to for an hour and a half. I'd say you can watch; you just can't get up.
PR: Bird In Hand is about a character searching, which is in synergy with your earlier point about looking out into the world. So, you take a specific experience familiar to you and insert it into a narrative.
MCR: It's definitely hyper-specific [laughs] but I always wanted it to feel like there was an access point to this film, in that you could be like no-one in the movie and still find a way to see yourself as being like someone in some way.
I really like character pieces, and I love stuff that's very lyrical without a lot of dialogue. Honestly, I love it all, but as a writer, I love crafting characters and having you move between them by changing your mind as to who you agree with. The fact is that it's complicated to be human. So, the specificity in the film and with the characters comes from being inside my own head. But if I did my job right, then hopefully it'll make sense to a lot of people.
To bring it full circle, I think a lot of people feel that they can't participate in the community or that they're withdrawing from it. Or they're isolating themselves if they can't ground themselves in their sense of self, and they can't find a way to love and understand who they are. This pulls the fabric apart. It takes away the joy of being human, which is community and figuring out a way to challenge each other but also love each other. And it is a very singular journey to end up in a communal experience.
If the movie was twice as long, it would have explored more of what the community aspect is, because Bird is very much going through this on her own — that's part of her challenge as a character. She's alone, some of it by her own making and some of it by things she could never control. On the other hand, I would hope that a character like her could be part of a greater fabric with more confidence and love, and able to better handle both herself and those that care about her. In stories, as in life, it's a means to experience something greater.
PR: As much as we crave to be functional and stable, there is something inside of us which finds the alternative far more interesting. After all, outsiders and misfits are some of cinema's most compelling characters.
MCR: I would be shocked if the most seemingly functional and normal person didn't have a complicated psyche. And that's enough to make a lifetime's worth of work, at least for me. It's about how we express that outwardly versus how we are on the inside, which is definitely a part of this movie. And I love stories where characters feel the need to perform a certain way in order to get what they want, when it's somehow in conflict with who they are on the inside. Or they feel they can't be who they truly are on the inside, and they're looking for a means of expression or are trying to claim that part of themselves.
There's a moment in people's lives when they have to decide if they want to be someone that gets married, which is something I haven't really talked about a lot. It's the undercurrent for Bird: Who am I? Am I a person who wants to be partnered my whole life, and with whom? What does that mean? Why am I doing something for them? Are they doing something for me? Are we truly one organism? What is that?
I think there's at least a period of time when you either question it before you go and look for that person, or you've already committed, and you're asking, "Why did I do that? What is this?" A huge part of the identity process is figuring out marriage.
PR: Bird is not the cynical character she could have easily been. This might be why she's slightly jarring for the audience, because she goes against expectations?
MCR; That's interesting. She's definitely always down to go against her mother. She can contradict anything, even if she doesn't truly believe it. But she isn't cynical, and I hope people don't find her to be cynical because she'd be terrible if she was.
PR: I believe George Carlin said a cynic is a disappointed idealist. I always liked that observation because it's probably true.
MCR: There's something George Carlin also said that I think about all the time when I'm writing: "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" And the way people will make quick assumptions about someone they don't know.
So, I love thinking about that when I'm writing. Who would be going faster than this character? What is the equivalent of going faster and being crazier than this character? Yeah, he's a genius.
Bird In Hand premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.
