Elle magazine recently interviewed Beasts of The Southern Wild co-writer Lucy Alibar on her trials as a starving artist in New York City, her inspiration for writing Juicy and Delicious (the one-act play that was the springboard for Beasts), and how she managed to raise $650 dollars for a trip to Cannes. Hint: her going rate for hugs is $10.
"It was about a boy named Hushpuppy confronting the illness and death of his father, a man capable of enormous love but apparently incapable of putting that love into words.
She made Hushpuppy a boy instead of a girl because her feelings about the play’s subject were so raw. She conjured a place where ancient beasts were rampant, lemons flew through the air, and feral children ate cat food.
And then her old pal Zeitlin saw the play and told her he wanted to turn it into a film. And then they got support from Sundance. The 11-year-old boy became a six-year-old girl (played by the incandescent Quvenzhané Wallis), Hushpuppy and her father became black, the ancient beasts became the movie’s signature fantastical “aurochs,” and Georgia turned into an impoverished Mississippi River Delta community in Louisiana."
See the full interview at Elle.com.
