Interview: Laurel Parmet

A conversation with the writer-director of the indie drama The Starling Girl.

This was one of my favorite movies from the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Plot summary: 17-year-old Jem Starling struggles with her place within her Christian fundamentalist community. But everything changes when her magnetic youth pastor Owen returns to their church.

The film is a great example of this screenwriting mantra: Simple plot. Complex characters. Highly recommended.

Its writer-director is Laurel Parmet in her feature film debut. Here are excerpts from an interview she did with Screen Rant.

Screen Rant: This was your feature film debut. What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome there?

Laurel Parmet: Oh, God. The biggest? There were a lot. Production-wise, overcoming the schedule limitations and budget limitations was probably the hardest.

I lucked out. I had a great cast, and I had a great team behind me, so I really didn’t have to make too many compromises in terms of my vision. I got most of what I wanted, which was lovely. I think we had the standard limitations that you’re dealing with when you don’t have tons of time. Big picture, probably the largest thing to overcome was COVID. Of course, every film had to deal with those issues. We were originally supposed to shoot the film in 2020, and we were all ready to go, and then COVID hit. We held onto all of our pieces for about a year, and then everything kind of fell apart, which was a very difficult time.

But ultimately, I’m so glad that it happened that way because those two years really gave me time to develop as an artist. I wrote two screenplays for hire in those two years, so I became a stronger writer. It gave me more time to think about how I wanted to direct the film, so that was really beneficial. And then we brought on new financial partners, and these new people really believed in me and my vision and supported me wholeheartedly. Really, the second time around was the best version of the film that it could have been. Our cast was amazing, our location was amazing, and our partners were amazing.

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I love how complicated the dynamics are with her parents. You see the ways in which they too are being oppressed by their community, but it’s peripheral because the story is told through Jem’s eyes. How do you work with Wrenn and Jimmi on their characters, and that dynamic with Jem?

Laurel Parmet: Everybody understood from the beginning that it was Jem’s story. It’s in the script, and it’s something that I expressed from the beginning, that the film is set entirely from Jem’s perspective. We, the audience, are experiencing what she’s experiencing. I think that is how the film works ultimately, because you are able to be taken on this ride where maybe sometimes you are rooting for this relationship because it’s what Jem wants. I think that would be harder to achieve if it wasn’t through her perspective.

Every decision that we made, and that the actors made too, was really at the service of helping to make sure that the film was set in her headspace. Those were conversations that I had with all the actors really early on and that everyone was very supportive of. But also, Wrenn and Jimmi are incredible actors, and we developed the characters and gave them specific intentions when we rehearsed. And I think what was lovely is that all of the cast were able to see themselves in these characters.

The important thing to all of us was that, especially with the parents, the audience could feel for them too. We don’t want them to feel like they’re villains, or to stand back from afar watching these people judgmentally. I want you to get wrapped up in their stories and see yourself in their struggles. And Wrenn and Jimmi were so good at bringing humanity to these characters. They are people who love their families, and who believe that they are doing what’s right, even if maybe we don’t agree with them at all times. But every decision that they make is out of love. For them, God is love, and they’re interchangeable. It’s not like, “I’m doing this for God” versus “I’m doing this for my daughter.” It’s one and the same.

Here is a trailer for the movie:

The movie debuts in theaters on May 12, 2023.

Movie Website

For the rest of the Screen Rant interview, go here.

For an audio interview with Laurel Parmet, go here.

For 100s more interviews with screenwriters and filmmakers, go here.