Auteur on Lady Bird (2017), written by Greta Gerwig. The complete coverage report, exactly as a customer receives it.

A self-renamed Catholic-school senior in Sacramento schemes to escape to an East Coast college during her final year of high school, but her family's money troubles and her combustible relationship with her overworked mother threaten both the plan and the bond between them.

Greta, thanks so much for sending this my way. This is one of the most assured voices I've come across in a while. It's the kind of spec where the joke and the hurt arrive in the same line and you never feel the writer reaching for either. Your action lines have a personality of their own. You're willing to end a scene on an awkward silence or a slammed screen door and trust the audience to feel it, and that confidence runs through every page.

Lady Bird herself is a hell of a protag, vain and generous in equal measure, and she's wrong about something in nearly every scene without ever turning into a lesson. When she explains to Father Leviatch that her name was given to her, by her, you get the whole character in one exchange. Then you keep complicating her. On page 6 she defends her bird-headed campaign posters with total bravado and then immediately asks, worried, whether they'll hurt her scholarship. That flicker of the scared kid under the persona is what makes her so watchable, and it's why the stolen bridal magazine and the lie about the Dream House play as funny and sad at the same time.

As for Marion, she's the best-written mother I've read in a spec in a long time, and the reason is that you refuse to make her the villain even when she's the opposing force. Her early-morning drive home from the psych hospital, where the action line tells us to remember this moment with her, does exactly what it promises. You follow her needling in the thrift store about dragging feet with a late-night scene of her sewing the dress, still in her nurse's uniform, then watching her daughter sleep. Her flat answer on page 30 about her own mother ends the argument and reframes the whole character in one line.

The prom-dress scene at Thrift Town is the best scene in the script, and it's built on dialogue that sounds overheard. Lady Bird asking "But do you like me?" and Marion faltering into an answer about being the best version of herself is devastating because neither woman is being unreasonable. The "Give me a number" fight on page 74 hits from the opposite direction, all heat and no exit, and I love that Lady Bird raises her hand and then simply leaves.

Thematically, the spec knows exactly what it's about. Sister Sarah-Joan's suggestion on page 86 that love and attention might be the same thing turns Lady Bird's contempt for Sacramento into a love letter she hasn't realized she's writing, and the final voicemail, where she reclaims the name Christine, closes that loop beautifully. The tone holds all of it together. Father Walther diagramming The Tempest on a chalkboard like a football play sits alongside Father Leviatch's private despair without any whiplash, and the 2002 to 2003 backdrop of the Iraq war on the living room TV adds texture without ever taking over.

So commercially, this sits squarely in the lane that A24, Focus and Searchlight have built for character-driven coming-of-age work, the territory of Eighth Grade, Booksmart and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. The budget profile is modest and mostly contained to Sacramento, and the mother-daughter pairing is the kind of dual-lead material actors chase, which makes it an attractive package for a director and two strong performers. The early-2000s setting also lands right in the middle of millennial nostalgia, and the specificity of the world gives it an awards-friendly prestige feel.

On the flip side, buyers will see a few practical hurdles. This is a low-concept, quiet film whose hook is voice and performance, so it will rise or fall on attachments, and pro readers will say as much. The music is a bigger issue. The audition and the fall musical lean on Sondheim, and "Crash Into Me" does real plot work twice, on page 47 and again in Kyle's car. Clearing those can get expensive, so I'd write those scenes so the songs could be swapped without collapsing the beat. The candid sexual talk and the pot scene are earned, but they'll likely land an R, which complicates marketing to actual teenagers, and the New York coda adds a second city to an otherwise contained shoot.

Before this goes out anywhere, it needs a careful formatting and proofing pass. On page 48, Larry's line about the golf pillow has no character cue. On page 51, the exchange where Julie asks about the emergency and Jenna explains her great aunt died appears twice in a row, and on page 90 Larry snaps the picture of Lady Bird standing alone twice. The sluglines on pages 47 and 68 place the girls at "St. Francis," which contradicts Immaculate Heart everywhere else, and Julie is "Pickett" on the sign-up sheet but "Steffans" on the cast list. Typos like "stares at her re." on page 1 and "Ronald Regan" on page 40 will cost you credibility with a reader, as will the scrambled sentence on page 60 about pressing ENTER.

Julie is where I'd spend the most rewrite energy, because her back half is all aftermath without causes. Her tears on prom night, when she tells Lady Bird some people aren't built happy, are a lovely line with nothing under it. The Yellowstone father who suddenly resurfaces on page 96 comes out of nowhere. You already planted Uncle Matt and her mom fighting on page 50, so let that relationship fall apart on

screen and give Julie's sadness a source. One mention of her real father before prom night would also earn the summer departure.

I'd also love one more beat for Father Leviatch. His crying game, Diana's gossip about his son and Marion's intake interview on page 59 build a sad and moving thread. Then his request that Marion keep his breakdown from her daughter goes nowhere. That secret quietly mirrors the one Lady Bird keeps for Danny, and I'd pay it off with even a glance, like Leviatch in the audience at The Tempest or Marion stopping herself from saying something at dinner.

Miguel's thread is strong, and that's why the missing apology stands out. Lady Bird's jab after the Davis results on page 61 lands as a real wound, and Miguel's response that he didn't put down his race is one of the rawest lines in the spec. He then lands the job his father was competing for and hands his sister his grocery shift, and she never acknowledges what she said. Since she's working his old register with Shelly on page 100, that's a natural place for one small, awkward attempt at amends.

The summer stretch lets Marion drop out of her own story right when the stakes are highest for her. We see her silent treatment, and then she disappears until the legal pad on page 104. Meanwhile, Larry and Lady Bird sit with a banker and talk about refinancing the house on page 103. Marion told her daughter on page 74 that they never expected to stay in that house for twenty-five years, so mortgaging it again for the East Coast school is a huge payoff. I'd give Marion a scene where she finds out or signs, because her anger needs that concrete cost.

One small plant goes unharvested. In the final voicemail, Christine asks whether her mom felt emotional the first time she drove in Sacramento, and says she did. We never see that drive, though. She passes her test on page 101 and the script moves straight on. A short scene of her driving alone through those streets, echoing Marion's drive home on page 10, would make the voicemail land as the payoff it's reaching for.

Now for the more granular scene notes, starting with the breakfast blowup on page 13. Marion throws the pan, retreats to the bathroom and turns on the hair dryer. Lady Bird follows her out while Miguel trails Shelly, and then Marion shouts from offscreen that she's going to bed. A reader who hasn't connected her night shift on pages 9 and 10 to this morning gets lost. I'd add a line establishing that she's just off work, and place her clearly in the hallway or bathroom when she shouts.

On pages 29 and 30, Lady Bird sneaks past her parents and plainly sees the severance paperwork, then sits through Marion telling her that Larry lost his job. The script never lets her react to already knowing. One look, or a line where she admits she saw the papers, would deepen the scene and make Marion's anger about sneaking around even sharper.

The Thanksgiving at Danny's grandmother's house on page 40 plays almost entirely as montage, and the napkin-folding is charming. However, the grandmother later misses Lady Bird at Christmas and

is badly shaken when Jenna rings the doorbell. Neither moment carries full weight because their only direct exchange on the page is Lady Bird's compliment about the house at the door, with the napkin bond playing out in montage. A real conversation at the table would earn both callbacks.

The men's room discovery on page 47 is staged so fast that it's hard to picture. Lady Bird opens a stall, finds Danny and Greg, and Julie tumbles in behind her, and then we're in Julie's room. I'd hold one beat on Danny's face as he sees Lady Bird. The bigger issue is that the follow-up scene says their boyfriends are gay, but Greg was never set up as Julie's boyfriend. He's only her fellow "extra" friend at the diner. Seed that pairing earlier so Julie's grief has a reason.

On page 68, Julie's empty desk in Algebra II sets up a clean fight in the hallway. Still, I'd open up the reason she switched sections. Lady Bird assumes it's about her, but Julie was just humiliated by Mr. Bruno and his wife after opening night. Letting Julie admit, even briefly, that she couldn't sit in his class anymore would give her a private life and make Lady Bird's self-absorption hurt more.

The Dream House reveal on page 76 has a logic gap. Jenna is standing at the grandmother's door, Lady Bird yells at her to leave, and the next cut puts Jenna in the McPherson kitchen. How does Jenna find the real address? A line explaining that the grandmother pointed her to the right house, or that Lady Bird caved and gave it up, would close the hole.

Page 94 at Julie's apartment seems to be missing a scene. Two CUT TOs sit stacked on the page, and then the girls are laughing over the last slice of cheese. Lady Bird said some ugly things in the hallway about Julie's mom, and the reconciliation skips her apology entirely. Even three lines of her owning it would let the prom night celebration feel earned.

Page 103 crams two big beats into one moment on the lawn. Lady Bird reads Kyle's father's obituary and then opens her acceptance letter. She never contacts Kyle, which is a missed chance to show how much she's grown since the sex scene. The school itself also goes unnamed from the waitlist through the acceptance. Naming it would sharpen her want, and it would help the reader orient once she lands in New York.

In the closing pages, the party and the hospital could be any campus until the street slug tells us we're in New York. I'd plant the city in the dorm scenes, through a window view or the sound of the street outside. Without that, Christine's lie to David about being from San Francisco loses some of its sting. Watch the cues there too, because the same character toggles between COLLEGE BOY and DAVID, and Lady Bird's cue switches back and forth with Christine's in the middle of the scene.

Greta, this is a spec with a heartbeat. Its protag and her mother are as fully alive as any pair I've read, and its sense of place makes Sacramento feel like a character. The work left is mostly finishing work. That means a careful proofing and formatting pass, plus filling in a few supporting threads, so Julie, Miguel and Marion's summer get the same care as everything else. The bones are excellent, and the voice is unmistakably yours. I can't wait to see where you take Christine next!