“Lady Bird,” the feature-film directing debut of actress, screenwriter and Sacramento native Greta Gerwig, shot on location in East Sacramento on Thursday morning.
The shoot involved interior scenes in a white house in the Fabulous Forties. According to Sue Sheehan, who lives the same block as the filming site, the scenes depicted a Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was supplied by Corti Bros., she said.
Other neighbors and what appeared to be extras dressed in preppy-style clothing milled about outside the house as a crew member yelled, “Rolling!” The windows of the room in which the filming took place were whited out.
“Lady Bird,” a Sacramento-set coming-of-age film starring Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan (“Brooklyn”) as a fictional high school senior, is expected to shoot at various locations in the region during the next few days.
Gerwig, a St. Francis High School graduate, told The Sacramento Bee earlier this year that she had wanted to shoot the whole film, which she also wrote, in her hometown. But she did not get the California state tax credit for which she applied.
Those scenes being shot here seem to go well beyond the usual breeze-by establishing shots done by most productions centered elsewhere. Equipment trucks and what looked like talent trailers lined a few blocks of East Sacramento on Thursday morning.
Sacramento Film Commissioner Lucy Steffens told The Bee via email last week that “we are looking forward to ‘Lady Bird’ filming in Sacramento.” She did not specify days or times and wrote that “the production is not doing any press at this time.”
The production initially discussed going to El Dorado County as well, said Kathleen Dodge, who heads the film office there. But plans since had shifted and Dodge was not sure if that still was going to happen.
Gerwig also shot part of “Frances Ha,” the 2013 film in which she starred (and co-wrote with the film’s director, Noah Baumbach), in Sacramento.
Carla Meyer: 916-321-1118, @CarlaMeyerSB
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