Caitlin Moran Talks 'How To Build A Girl' And Adapting Your Own Work For The Screen [Interview]

Best known for her novels “How to Build a Girl” and “How to Build a Woman” and her prominent work as a journalist and feminist, Caitlin Moran is poised to break into the world of the big screen. Even though she created a television series with her sister Caroline Moran in 2014, her adaption of “How to Build a Girl” starring Beanie Feldstein (“Booksmart,” “Lady Bird”) marks her first foray into screenwriting – and she’s already working on more.

READ MORE: ‘How To Build A Girl’: Beanie Feldstein’s Charm Saves This Derivative Teen Comedy [Review]

“How to Build a Girl” follows the plight of a teenage girl who wants to break free of her smalltown working-class life to become a music critic. Directed by Coky Giedroyc (“Women Talking Dirty,” “Stella Does Tricks”) the film had its world premiere at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival. Our critic praised Feldstein in particular, writing “Clumsy and erratic, though possessed of an undeniable bounding and puppy-like energy, ‘How to Build a Girl’ is a star vehicle for Feldstein that, while it often does not do its star justice, also knows when to just stay out of her way.” 

READ MORE: ‘How To Build A Girl’ Trailer: Beanie Feldstein Turns Into Dolly Wilde In The Upcoming Coming-Of-Age Comedy

We spoke to Moran about the challenges of adapting her first screenplay and the charm of Beanie Feldstein. 

What was the process like in adapting your own novel for “How to Build a Girl?”
It’s an absolute thrill to take something that you’ve written and have another go at it. It’s almost like if you could have a child and raise them until the age of ten and then go “oh, I see where I made all the mistakes, I can start again and make them a better person.” But technically for me it was about how I’d never written a script before and had no idea what I was doing. I was kind of just going on an internal rhythm of what goes on in a movie and figuring it out from scratch. 

Then I learned the phrase “show don’t tell” which felt like learning because in prose it’s just tell, tell, tell all the time but I was playing with this whole different toolbox. Things like what people do when they’re lying and how to convey that people are thinking about what they’re doing, it was those sort of things that were completely new to me and now when I’m out I’m just watching people.

It’s been great to learn a new skill and I have three different movie projects in the works now and I intend to pump them out until I die because it’s just the most fun in the world. 

How was working with John Niven (also credited as a screenwriter on the film)? That has to be one of the key differences between screenwriting because when writing a book I imagine that it’s a relatively solo project and this is more of a collaboration. 

He worked with me on the first few drafts and then once I got my head around the fact that I was writing a film I had to kind of fire him, though that’s not really the right thing to say as it was more like something I think I needed to do on my own at that point. It is the story of my life and an attempt at something so specific that I wanted to do tonally. I want to tell a girl’s story with a female character and I think you need to do that through a woman, particularly if you’re the woman who it all happened to. 

I find that point so particularly true that I find when I’m watching films about teenage girls that it automatically reads more authentically to me when a woman is behind it. Not to say that men haven’t been able to produce good films about teen girls, but there’s just something that sinks under your skin when a woman is writing a teenage girl’s story. 

Absolutely! And even the most liberal, feminist men – and this is aside from John and generally is something taken from watching movies and observing male screenwriters – use tropes that they seem to believe women have to have had some sort of terrible experience happen to them at some point to explain why they’re this extraordinary person or why they want to be a great writer or a politician, because that’s how they can easily access a motivation. 

I wanted my teenage daughter and girls across the world to get to watch a movie where the stakes are pretty low. My hero is a normal girl, she gets herself in trouble and she gets out and that’s comforting to me that you can see a real-life girl go through the world not being punished, but instead just goes around having some small adventures. 

I agree though,  I’m kind of tired of pretty much all films where women have to overcome pain to become great. They can just be great. 

Yes, absolutely. You just have to earn your money. There are few films about working-class girls and poor girls, but for most people, the biggest thing they have to do is earn some money. Generally, movie making and book writing are middle-class pursuits and there are always these stories of girls going out and finding themselves through these passions, but I come from a working-class background and always find myself asking “but where are they making their money?” You know, how are you making your rent, how are you paying your bills? There’s fun to have in exploring that because that’s most people’s real-life adventure.

What did you take from working on something like your television series “Raised By Wolvesand how did you apply it to “How to Build a Girl?” 

The big difference from “Raised By Wolves” was that I did that with my sister (Caroline Moran), and my sister is probably the only person in the world that I’m terrified of. When we went in to make that TV show together she told me she’d heard the most successful writers’ rooms are the ones where there’s one person coming up with the ideas and one person typing and is actually in charge of the script. Everyone thinks they want to be the genius pacing the room and coming up with the ideas, but the one with the real power and the one you actually want to be is the person typing. Me and my sister already have massive power struggles, I’d be pitching all these great ideas and she’d go “yeah, that’s amazing” and then I’d read the script and ask where my great idea went and she’d say “oh we ran out of space, but don’t worry we can put it in the next episode.” 

She was the one that sort of did all the structuring and the hard work, so that’s why this time around when it was just me on my own I learned more in the end, because there’s nothing sweeter than just being totally in charge of something.

How was it watching the casting process? It must have been surreal to put new faces to characters you wrote – one of which was an extension of yourself. 

It was such a thrill, and what I didn’t realize while I was writing the script that the script I was working on was almost impossible in terms of casting. Then we saw “Lady Bird” after having trolled the UK for every possible actress that might be able to do it when we saw Beanie and we were like okay, call of the chase. Beanie in “Lady Bird” is just Beanie, she’s not just an actress but an actual phenomenon. She’s just completely unashamed to be who she is; she’s confident and shakes up everything she does; she’s got all this range and acts like a pro and everyone loves her.

Once we got Beanie that was half of the job done. For the character John Kite, I had happened to see Alife Allen at the Glastonbury Festival, where I watched him walk backstage wearing a long coat, drunk and carrying a pint but still walking with incredible dignity. Then he fell over, while still managing to keep the pint intact, and then just stood up, turned back around, said “I meant to do it that way,” and  then carried on walking. I remember at that moment thinking “that’s my John Kite.” For the rest of the cast with Michael Sheen, Emma Thompson and Chris O’Dowd, I just emailed everyone that I loved and said “do you want to just come and have some fun taking part in this” and there were these two weeks where I was sending out these emails and they just kept coming back yes. It was such an exciting period in my life. 

It’s a semi-autobiographical book and now film – does that make the adaptation process for you more difficult or is it like the casting process where you’re just excited to see it come to life onscreen?

We’re all so versed in movies now that I think most of us kind of feel like we’re in a movie about our lives anyway. In terms of writing, because I just didn’t know anything about writing scripts, the one great thing for me was that because 90% of the stuff that happens in the film happened to me in real life, I already knew how to play it. Generally, I think the things the audience will think I made up or greatly exaggerated are the things that actually did happen to me and the things that were kind of made up are the normal things. Everything ridiculous or absurd or bizarre that happened to Johanna was something real to me. I did conquer sexism in my workplace by sliding myself down on the lap of my sexist editor and I did appear on national television screaming “Scooby Dooby Doo.” So it’s almost like a documentary [laughs.]

The film deals with the idea of reinventing yourself – how important do you think it is for young women / young people in general to realize that they can continue to find themselves past the so-called “developmental stage.” There’s this idea where you’re supposed to know yourself by a certain age, but what’s lovely about this film is that it’s saying you can keep shedding skins and finding yourself way into adulthood. 

It’s so lovely you pointed that out because I think the mark of being young is thinking that there is a point when you’re done and you’ll be completely who you are, and that will be it when you’re 18 or 20 or 21;  that will be it, your life stops then. It’s only as you get older that you realize that never happens and everyone has pictures of the people you love and the pictures of places you want to go – that is all part of the blueprint you’re assembling on the walls of who you want to be. You’re taking percentages of all that and piecing it together and when you take that first version of yourself out into the world some bits work and some bits won’t, so you go back to the drawing board again. That goes on throughout your entire life and I think not knowing that is the biggest mistake you make. You build a girl, then you build a woman and then you get to build an old woman. You are just going to keep rebuilding for the rest of your life, but once you realize that there’s this brilliant freedom because we can think that if I don’t like this person, in three years time I’m going to be someone completely different so you can start building that new person now. 

“How To Build A Girl” is out on VOD now via IFC Films.