How One Parrot Nearly Derailed Peter Berg's 'The Mosquito Bowl'

By Elena Vasquez

Peter Berg lost hours of shooting on "The Mosquito Bowl" because of a single parrot. The bird flew off mid-take, vanished into the jungle and landed in a 100-foot tree, the director told a recent Q&A in Hollywood.

"The Mosquito Bowl" adapts Buzz Bissinger's book about four college football stars called to serve in the Marines during World War II. The cast pairs Tom Francis as David Schreiner, Nicholas Galitzine as John McLaughry, Ray Nicholson as Tony Butkovich and Bill Skarsgård as Bob Baumann.

The film shot on location in Queensland, Australia. It moves from football camp to visceral sequences of war in the Pacific. But the scene that stumped Berg involved no combat at all. It required Tony and a jungle parrot, because Bissinger's book records that Tony sent his parents photos of a parrot perched on his shoulder.

"Buzz writes about it, so we had to get a parrot," Berg said.

How do you find a parrot mid-jungle?

"We were in the middle of the woods, and it's not easy to find a parrot," Berg explained during the conversation, moderated by Variety's senior artisans editor Jazz Tangcay. He shared the stage with Nicholson, executive producer Ezra Emanuel and producer Alex Gayner. Berg handed the bird hunt to Gayner so he could keep shooting.

The day before the scene, Gayner's team found one. "The parrot arrives with four handlers, and they are serious about it … it's the only parrot on the island," Berg said. The handlers took control of the set and made sure no one harmed the bird.

"Ray is brought on to set; I'm not allowed to say anything," Berg recalled. "They're in charge, and they're directing Ray and then they bring the parrot out." The bird had been clipped, Berg had been assured, so it would not fly away. The crew fell silent.

"Nobody on the crew could talk — dead silence. I'm scared. They put the parrot down. I said, 'Can we roll?' They said, 'No. Let the parrot settle.'"

Berg called Nicholson "incredibly professional" for following every instruction, using hand signals to keep quiet and avoid startling the bird.

What happened when the cameras rolled?

"As soon as I say 'Action!' the fucking parrot flies off. It's gone. It just flies away into the jungle, into a 100-foot tree," Berg laughed.

His first thought was the press. "It's going to be 'Peter Berg kills and loses the parrot.' So I'm freaking out. This is bad," he said.

The escape delayed filming for a few hours. The team eventually found the parrot in a tree and had to coax it down. When a handler retrieved the bird, they tied a friendly string to its leg.

"And we got the shot," Berg said.

"The Mosquito Bowl" is in theaters now. It debuts on Netflix on Nov. 25, giving the streaming audience the finished scene that one parrot and four handlers nearly kept from existing.