The Hairy Bird[Australia and Canada English film title] (also released as
Strike! and
All I Wanna Do[United States new film title]) is a
1998 film written and directed by
Sarah Kernochan and starring
Gaby Hoffmann,
Kirsten Dunst,
Lynn Redgrave, and
Rachael Leigh Cook. The movie was filmed in
Toronto,
Ontario,
Canada.
The film is set in 1963, at the fictional "Miss Godard's
Preparatory School for Girls"; the setting is based loosely on Kernochan's experiences at Rosemary Hall during those years. Redgrave plays the
headmistress of the school, students of the school are played by Dunst, Hoffman, and Cook, among others.
The first part of the film provides a glimpse into life at an elite
New England boarding school in the era between the
Bay of Pigs Invasion and the assassination of President Kennedy. Odie (Hoffman) is forcibly transferred by her parents from a co-ed school to an all-girls school. After a brief hazing period, she is welcomed into the DAR (Daughters of the American Ravioli) whose members meet in secret to eat cold ravioli stolen from the kitchen, and to discuss their future ambitions. When the group finds out their school is going to merge with a boys' academy, factions form and war is declared. The rest of the film deals with their subversive efforts to kill the merger.