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"All I Wanna Do" is Kernochan's debut feature. The film, which is in limited theater release, is about a group of teenagers at a girls boarding school in the early '60s that may be forced to merge with a boys school. Kernochan also went to a girls school in the '60s, and her characters -- played by Lynn Redgrave, Gaby Hoffman and Kirsten Dunst, among others -- face problems that she encountered back then and that she came across while trying to make the film. After 10 years of production, during which producers and financiers said the film would need more boys to succeed, Kerchochan finally got it made the way she wanted it. I recently caught up with her in a series of phone calls from her home in New York and from Los Angeles, where she's casting for her next film.

You credit "All I Wanna Do" as "a film by everyone who worked on it." I'd never seen a credit like that before.

That's becoming a huge issue, the possessory credit the director takes on films. Is it really "a film by" the director? I feel very strongly that for anyone to take that credit is rampant egoism. A film is a collaborative venture, not really "by" any one person. I just felt that everyone had contributed so much to the film, and it was so influenced by everyone's effort. Since so many people joined me on this cause, I decided to use my right to a possessory credit to put that in.

"All I Wanna Do" wasn't your first title. There was "Strike" and "The Hairy Bird."

"The Hairy Bird" was the original title. It's still my favorite, but the distributor at the time felt that it was too vulgar. I like the fact that it's vulgar, but that's my sensibility. Also, to me, the picture is about the incursion of the penis in young girls' lives -- that's what it comes down to. So I thought the title was completely apt. And I had animation to support it -- there's a flying penis in the animation, in the credits. It's kind of small; some people don't notice.

I'm afraid I missed it. But I did catch the "Hairy Bird" song.

I sing lead on that. The story is that I reconvened the singing group I'd put together when I was in high school. Glenn Close was in it, actually, and four other girls. And I just contacted them all and got them into a studio, and we recorded this. It was the first time we'd sung together since we were 16.

Darlene Love [the lead vocalist on many Phil Spector hits] also contributed to the soundtrack. How did you hook up with her?

Our soundtrack producer had worked with her once, so we contacted her. She happened to be in town, and she just hopped over to the studio and did it. I was so honored, I just about died. Because those songs, to me, when I was growing up, were just everything.

I actually wrote the songs she does. It's expensive to buy period music, so I hired myself for free.

The film is anchored in a particular time and place of American girlhood. What do you perceive as some major differences between being a girl then and now?

Contraception is a biggie. How you dealt with it was very clandestine, and you were on your own -- you didn't go to parents, there were no counselors, so you could end up in these really confusing situations. The contraceptive-foam scene in the movie was based on ... some personal experience. [Laughs]

People actually have been upset about the movie's handling of bulimia, because we didn't deal with it too much as a story line. But in those days, we didn't have a name for it, and we didn't really know what to do about it. It was bewildering. I knew that girls who threw up were upset about being overweight, but nobody knew anything more about it. So, consequently, I didn't really deal with that too much in the movie, except to imply that the character would be OK.

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