The Big Picture - The ‘Barbie’ Deep Dive With Greta Gerwig!

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Sean and Amanda are joined by Ringer-verse co-host Joanna Robinson to dive deep into ‘Barbie’—its innovation, its performances, its overwhelming success at the box office, and everything in between (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by Greta Gerwig to discuss her approach to building the ‘Barbie’ world, the unique challenges it presented, how it relates to the other two films she’s directed, the cultural phenomenon it has set off, and more (1:29:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Greta Gerwig and Joanna Robinson Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, I am Juliette Lippman and I am one of the co-hosts of Ringer Dish. Ringer Dish is the podcast for all things celebrity and entertainment. We've got you covered three days a week. So if your friends are sick of talking to you about, I don't know, celebrity real estate or the latest with the royal family or whatever Jennifer Lopez is up to, well, then you definitely should subscribe or follow Ringer Dish wherever you get your podcasts. On Mondays, you'll hear from me and Amanda Dobbins on Jam Session. On Wednesdays, you'll hear from Erica Ramirez talking about pop culture through the lens of friendship and friendships we see on the screen. And on Fridays,

you'll get all of the tea on Tea Time with Liz Kelly, Kate Halliwell, and Amelia Wedemeyer. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about a Barbie girl in a Barbie world. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Greta Gerwig, the co-writer and director of Barbie.

We talked about her journey of building Barbie into the movie event it has become, which is extraordinary. Really fun chat. Greta is always insightful about her process. She's a great hang. I hope you will stick around for our conversation. But first, we are joined by the great Joanna Robinson returning to the show to talk about a movie that she asked to talk about many months ago, well before she knew this would be the mega event it is. Barbie, hi, Jo. Hi, I'm so delighted that I planted my flag on this episode and you let me keep it here. Joe, can we give people at home a visual if they're not watching? Could you tell us about some of your sartorial and or, you know, that my hair is pink? Yeah, exactly. Literally in honor of Barbie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was just inspired by all the people who it's very temporarily pink,

but I was just inspired by all the people really dressing up in their finest pink to see Barbie, and I wanted to be a part of it. Is it a spray situation? No. Okay, all right. You did great. I was just wondering how it works. Looks great. You didn't tell the listeners at home that I'm also dyed pink, right?

My skin is dyed fully pink. It's kind of a Tobias from Arrested Development situation. Sure. You pinked yourself. I did. Joanna, I kind of want to ask you about the Barbenheimer mega explosion, so to speak, before we get into Barbie in full. And I think we'll talk about the movie in full spoiler fashion.

But, you know, this has been a crazy time for movies, an exciting time. I think it's the most excited, the best time we've had since 2019 on the health of the, you know, in theater experience, which we all care about on this podcast, but just for the conversations that are happening. It's been really delightful. I saw both of these films, Oppenheimer and Barbie. I saw press screenings, but then I went again over the weekend just to like get to mix and mingle with the broader audiences. I saw Barbie the second time I saw Barbie I went actually to a drive-in theater which is something I started doing in the pandemic and I saw Top Gun Maverick for the second time at the drive-in and it's just like a real if you want like a I am among this is an event people are tailgating everyone's in

costume there are a lot of kids around it was just like felt like a real americana party situation the drive the barbie drive-in situation so um yeah and then just like anyone you've taught almost anyone you've talked to has seen one or the other if not both and has an opinion and both of the films have a lot on their minds thankfully so that there's a lot to talk about and that's just thrilling that communal experience that sort of like, I felt it around Endgame. I felt it around The Force Awakens, like when we were like, Star Wars is back, baby, you know, and then whatever happened next happened next. But like, you know, that like, we're all going to the movies together, which is a feeling I think the

three of us and maybe Bobby also here like took for granted, you know, when we were younger, this was always the case and it is feeling rare and rare, but like what a joy that it still exists. So Amanda, you've seen the film a second time now. Yes. What was your, what was your second viewing experience? Like you talked about your press screening experience last week on the show. Sure. I took my husband, who takes issue with a lot of his portrayal on the podcast, but really was upset with how I presented his choice to see Oppenheimer first. So I should say that my husband, Zach Barron, wrote a cover story about Ryan Gosling. And so he has spent a lot of time with Barbie and he was just looking for a little diversification in his content experience. He also very kindly went with me yesterday at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday to a sold-out screening of Barbie at the Americana. And we were there with a lot of kids. We sat next to, I sat next to three little girls all wearing pink.

It felt like, you know, they're not in school, So it felt like a lot of parents, kids, young people. But I also saw some older gentlemen wearing pink in the lobby. It was like... Was it CR? No, it wasn't. Even older than CR, if you can believe it. Wow. Such a thing exists.

And it was a delight. I also, I thought of Bobby because I saw it in Dolby. That's the kind of treatment that Barbie's getting right now. So it was a delight. I also, I thought of Bobby because I saw it in Dolby. That's the kind of treatment that Barbie's getting right now. So it was fun. It was fun to get to be a part of the experience and also to see that experience happening midday on a weekday. I had a very similar experience. I saw it a second time at the very same movie theater that you did,

but I saw it on Thursday night, opening night last week, and it was pandemonium. Yeah. It was, the Americana was a rockin'. It was Lollapalooza 1994. It was absolute bananas in there. And I gotta say, this is not a cinematic textual read. It's just an emotional experience,

but the movie is way more fun with a big crowd laughing along at the movie. And I thought, you know, there was good vibes in the press screening that I was at, but it's a press screening. And seeing it with people who are emotionally invested

and excited to be there, to Joe's point, taking that for granted and having that experience just significantly improved the movie. It did, interestingly, I think, underline some of the things that maybe didn't work as well

about the movie too because when a movie theater like that gets quiet, it's even more noticeable. So it was a really interesting experience. It was a lot of fun. It definitely made me like the movie more. And I'm glad that I did see it in that way, because that's not always the case for us, for all three of us, frankly, when we are going to talk about something on one of our shows or write about something. We see it once. Sometimes, in my case, I see it months in advance

of when it's actually coming out and don't get a chance to revisit it before really digging into it. So I'm really relieved that we are doing this the way that everyone is doing this. And frankly, we should do it more often, although they may not be able to match the energy of a Barbie.

Yeah, I was going to say, I see a fair number of movies out in the wild, not usually with as many people as I saw both Oppenheimer and Barbie. I think also it's hard to like overstate how impactful the dressing us up aspect of the Barbie experience is. That sort of like, it's something that I've witnessed via TikTok of like the Taylor Swift era's tour or the Harry Styles concerts where like people plan their costumes, their outfits well in advance. And it's something that I can't remember

ever being the case for a movie. I don't know if you guys have an example. I don't know who decided we were all wearing pink. I probably Warner Brothers decided we were all wearing pink and like Manchurian candidated us through TikTok or whatever, but like having the Barbie boxes that you could like pose and take your photo in at the movie theaters, brilliant marketing, having everyone just like people showed up in, I think I had a hybrid press. I know I did a hybrid press influencer screening, which is sometimes the case. And that was my first understanding that people were coming in costume because the girl sitting next to me was in full blown cowgirl Barbie, like full. And she looked amazing.

She had the long blonde hair and the pink denim and the cowboy hat, the whole thing. And I was actually thinking about her the whole movie because I was like, is she enjoying Barbie? Did she come expecting something else? And this is not what she expected. And then the lace came up and she was like, I fucking love that, is what she said to her friend. And I was like, yes! Cowgirl Barbie loved it! So I was just like, what an accomplishment,

honestly. I've got to say, in that spirit, I tried to show up to my second screening of Oppenheimer completely nude in homage to Jean Tatlock. And I was turned away, surprisingly. It's a tough beat. Barbie.

What an amazing accomplishment this movie is. It's insane. As I said, directed by Gerwig, written by Gerwig and her partner, Noah Baumbach, who is also one of our favorite filmmakers. This is a story about Barbie discovering who Barbie is. It has an extraordinary cast,

including a number of actors who I didn't realize were in the film when I was texting you both about it last night as we were preparing this episode. I'm not sure if it's helpful to run through every single person who's in the movie, but Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, of course, the stars,

Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Mackey, Dua Lipa, Kingsley Ben-Adir, memorably, America Ferreira and Ariana Greenblatt, who play critical roles that I was not really aware of heading into this movie. We'll dig through that. Amanda, where do you want to start? What's the best entry point to discussing Barbie? I mean,

I know you liked it. Yeah. Well, should we try to summarize what it is? I tried to in the doc. And I think by summarizing what it is, and I don't mean in a plot sense, though, because you did it pretty well. It's Barbie trying to figure out who Barbie is. And then to a lesser extent, Ken trying to figure out who Ken is. And in those roles, they are standing in for all of us trying to figure out who we are as people, as women, as consumers, as what else?

Presidents, physicists. Sure. Corporate toy executives. As men, I guess. Certainly as men. In its own way. As beach. Sure, as beach, yeah.

You know, it's like, it is a coming-of-age story. It is sort of like an existential, not quite the corporation that makes Barbie. And it's also just a full comedy, like joke for joke, dense reference, very, very tightly written. So there's a lot going on, which was delightful to me and was even though I believe in Greta Gerwig above the power of almost anyone else living right now, I was not expecting like that level of complexity to what was sold to us as a movie about a doll. and I think part of the exhilaration of the movie for me is that it pulls almost everything off and we're going to talk about Mattel and and the and the dolls and the IP and the the corporatification of it but it's pretty much in every other way having its cake and eating it too and I mean that positively I'm just like, well, we're going to do all of this and it can be all things to almost everyone. And that's just amazing. That's just really hard to do. It's hard to do this this well. So I'm pretty in awe. And now that I've said all that, I can also say that it's just like really fun, which the other thing right you know it's it is still like a great big budget time at the movies even as it's doing all of that like intellectual like backbending that it itself mocks in the in the movie so I don't know it's it's incredible I

haven't seen anything quite like it Joe I you haven't talked a lot about it so you you go yeah I mean I just agree with. I think it's a miracle, like what she was able to smuggle into a massive IP movie. And like on that credit on the criticism front, you know, there are plenty of things that people have found to criticize about the movie. Like the main critique is why are you falling over yourselves to praise essentially a big budget toy commercial right and i i i don't know if i'm just like making excuses or whatever but i was just like isn't it smarter to put your message about both women and men and the patriarch and everything this movie has on its mind in such a glossy everyone's gonna go see it package and then you reach the widest audience

possible through it like i like greta and noah and margo could have made a version of this story that wasn't barbie tm and how many people would have gotten the message uh the same way that they did seeing it this way so yes mattel is to make a gajillion dollars in merchandising off this movie. Absolutely. That's true. And like, you know, we can't, we can't ignore it, but I just, I think the way this movie engages in the positives and the negatives of Barbie is, is brilliant. The way that Margot Robbie as, as executive producer was able to shield, I'm sure Sean talked to Greta about this, but like shield Greta and Noah in the like creative process

for them to write the story this way. All of that is just like, I can't believe, I can't believe this happened. It feels, it's odd to say this about a bubblegum pink Warner Brothers Zaslav victory movie that it feels transgressive, but it does to me. Yeah, our point of view on what it means to quote unquote sellout has changed pretty radically over the years. We talked about it quite a bit this year because of the number of product-oriented movies that have been released. The connection that I've been trying to locate with Greta as a filmmaker in particular, I haven't quite landed on it specifically, but it feels a bit like REM Signs with Warner Brothers.

You know, something like, you know, you already were certified as one of the great independent filmmaking voices of your generation. Little Women is a big studio movie. It's an adaptation. And so this is sort of like, it's not out of time. It's automatic for the people. You know, it's like. Which is sort of like, it's not out of time. It's automatic for the people, you know, it's like, which is my favorite REM album. Well, there you go. Um, I also, I love them all, including monster. Hello, Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald. If you're listening, I love them all as well. Um, and you can never take away their, the college rock

bonafide of REM and you can never take away Francis Ha or Lady Bird from Greta Gerwig. Um, but this is a calculated decision in some ways to Joanna's point, you know, saying rather than writing a yet another coming of age story about original characters. And I pointed out that I see some reflection of this and what Christopher Nolan did with Batman as well. Choosing to identify a character or a piece of property and use it to catapult yourself really. And to me, like, I think it makes a lot more sense, I think, for you guys to talk about kind of the idea of femininity and feminism that is communicated in this movie. To me, the movie is like a huge success of craft.

It's like a handmade movie with craftspeople at the top of their game and two writers whose minds I'm just really interested in having a lot of fun and doing an outsized old school Hollywood spectacle. The one other kind of movie that I think you didn't mention that it is, but you did mention when you, in our document is it's a musical Fantasia and it feels like a Busby Berkeley musical. It feels like Greece. It feels like Xanadu, you know, Greta has talked about that. It certainly feels like the Gene Kelly movies that she loves so much that you love so much. much. And so when you take those parts of it, when you think of like the constructed world of Barbie Land, and I'll say for my purposes, the movie is humming in the first 30 minutes and incredible in the final 40 minutes.

It's the middle of the movie when we're not in the place that is constructed where I got a little lost. But when she's in that place that she has spent so much time on, that her production designer spent so much time on, where Jacqueline Duran's costumes are popping, where we see the dream ballet near the end of the film, that stuff is like, one, there's very few filmmakers that are trying to do that. Two, there's very few that can actually pull it off. And three, it's exciting that in a movie like that, it's not a CGI explosion. It's a crafted experience. Yeah.

The other name we should say is Sarah Greenwood, who did the production design and created, not just like the Barbie dream house, but helped realize, you know, the hand-painted like scenery behind the Barbie dream house that gives you that like fake, but like neorerealist almost intentional art that is this this this movie set and i agree with sean like the the making of it and the design is so integral to what the movie is doing both as like a movie about a toy but also just um to look at as art. And I think that that type of filmmaking

is often undervalued. You know, like you do actually have to have the right color pink. You have to have like the house match the set and the car and the, and there's a, Kyle Buchanan did a piece in the New York Times today with the production team.

And they're talking about the proportions of how tall Barbie is and then the ceiling of the house and what that communicates to your brain about, you know, toy world versus the real world. And like that is that is like precise and exact. And I think many people would overlook it but that is the level of detail that goes into what you're seeing that makes it so exceptional so shout out to them amazing work and i think um they came up they the color palette they referred to it as technobarbie yeah which instead of like technicolor which is just like you know they're like we're gonna we're gonna do this homage to the golden age of cinema or, you know, these beautiful Technicolor musicals, etc. But we're going to do it through this pink lens.

And it's so perfect. You also get the geography of Barbie Land so, you know, so easily, like you understand where everything is in relation. And that's absolutely brilliant. I also love the detail that instead of background performers, all the background performers are dancers, because they could hold their body in a certain like sort of stiff artificial way that you like, you don't know to look for it, but it just lends this sort of stiff artificiality to the world. I mean, they all had body movement coaching, all the Barbies and all the Kens and all the Allens,

but like just the one Allen, but like, you know, that, that in the background where you're not looking intentionally are these intentionally placed bodies. I, the shot of Margot Robbie going down the Barbie slide and she, do you know how much Pilates you have to do to be able to hold that exact position with the legs out just- Tell us. Just like at least, that's like five years of base work, you know?

Like Margot Robbie's been working for a very long time, and then I think she probably had a body movement coach in order, that is hard. It just, and she has the physicality as well down. I can't wait to talk about her performance. Let's do that. Margot Robbie is one of the producers of this movie. It does not exist without her. There had been Barbie IP floating through the movie universe in the last 10 years. I think Sony had had its hands on it for a while. And I think when their option expired, I think Lucky Chap, her production company, snatched it up. And so she

identified Greta and Noah as writers. And that ultimately led to Greta asking Margot if she could be the director of this movie, which Margot very wisely agreed to. And then, of course, partnering with Warner Brothers to make the movie. And she's also the star. And in the pre-release, in part because of Zach's wonderful story about Ryan Gosling and because of the trailer

and the way that Ken was being positioned, there was a real pre-release hype around Ken stealing the movie. And there may still be some of that, but the best performance

in the movie to me by far is Margot Robbie. It's incredible. I think she had the hardest task and some of it, I'm sure, is due to Pilates

and some of it is due to the fact that she's had the hardest task. And some of it, I'm sure, is due to Pilates. And some of it is due to the fact that she's such an exceptional actor. And emotional depth, you know? By the way, listen. Emotional Pilates. Yeah, body movement is acting too. You know, it's all part of the thing. I just think it's very hard. No, she has like a sincerity and also comedic timing and just like a winningness that the entire movie pivots around

and I think that she really sells a lot of the broader and maybe like slightly harder to reach on paper emotional moments but she's just lights out it's it's unreal she should be nominated for best actress what's your Margot relationship Joe I don't know if we've had a discussion of her before. I mean, I know I'm not a Babylon head as you are, but in general, and I loved her in that movie, I think she can do no wrong, honestly. I think she's absolutely incredible. I feel like in some context,

we talked about Asteroid City and how her scene was the very best part of that movie. One of them, yeah. Asteroid City and how like her scene was the very best part of that movie. Yeah. And I just, I not only admire her as a performer, but I really admire what she's done with her stardom in terms of Lucky Chap and like putting on all female screenwriting workshops and really trying to get like female creators to make not only any movie,

but big budget movies for her to sort of take the reins on a Harley Quinn story and whether or not, however you feel about birds of prey, like her active involvement in that character and in that storytelling is impressive to me. The fact that she took the reins on this gave the pitch likened matching barbie and greta to like matching dinosaurs and steven spielberg and her pitch to warner brothers telling them that like i love that telling telling them that we have to address the people who hate barbie as well as the people who

love barbie like that has to be part of the movie um so as a producer on this i'm just so awestruck by her and what she's done because she isn't for years and years and years in hollywood someone as beautiful and as talented on camera she is didn't have to do that but she wants to do that and she wants to create you know better projects and better roles for herself and for other women in Hollywood. I think that's really incredible on top of just being a stone cold killer in every role that she's ever done. Will you revisit the stories of Harley Quinn in an effort to better understand Margot Robbie? I saw it once and I supported her. Did you see the film The Suicide Squad?

I honestly don't know. I genuinely, and I'm not just trying to do fake Gwyneth. I wasn't in Spider-Man, but I honestly don't know. I genuinely, and I'm not just trying to do fake Gwyneth. I wasn't in Spider-Man. But I literally don't remember whether I saw that one or I saw another one

or maybe I saw the sequel. I don't know if you can do this with a straight face, but I also think she is genuinely amazing as Harley Quinn. So I've been on the team

for a very long time. So it is exciting to see her do what, you know, she's doing what like Warren Beatty did in the 70s. You know, like it's just like I'm picking and choosing. And the same way that Warren Beatty was like, heaven can wait. That was, you know, a film that was made in the 30s. And I want to do my version. Dick Tracy, that's IP that I can adapt into this candy colored exploration of heroism and masculinity. And she's just doing the same thing in a really exciting

way um and it's rare that someone who does that also is as gifted a performer should we talk about ken do you want to talk about ken yet you want to wait i guess we can talk about the performance i don't know maybe maybe we should all just do it together. Yeah. You know, just like keep it on trend. I mean, the movie is very interested in Ken. It is. Very, very interested in the emotional journey, which was surprising to me, but not in a bad way.

I just like, I kind of, I, you know, there's definitely plenty of bad faith, you know, reviews of this movie that say. Are there? Yeah. We actually couldn't get ben shapiro to do this episode unfortunately so we invited joanna it's a shame yeah comparable honestly um two titans i don't know what you mean but but i think that um i just think there's just a tremendous amount of empathy for the kens also just sort of sort of side question why do you

think there are so few and i don't really question, why do you think there are so few, and I don't really care, but why do you think there are so few Americans in this cast? There's so many British, Australian, Canadian, Gosling, Simu Liu, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera. It's funny. I was rewatching Little Women last night because sometimes my job rules. And I was also reflecting on how I actually, I meant to Google whether Eliza Scanlon is American or she's Australian. So none of the little women are American, despite it being one of the, you know, American girls. Yeah, that's true. And the most important little one. Yeah. who can say maybe that's just you know gretta's a citizen of the world at first i thought she just liked the same british tv i like because

not the cast of sex education is here etc but then i started counting it up and i was like oh my god it's like isa ray will ferrell scott evans america ferreira rhea perlman ariana glee greeblatt those are americans those are the only americans in the entire film yeah um yeah well Issa Rae, Will Ferrell, Scott Evans, America Ferreira, Rhea Perlman, Ariana Griblet. Those are our Americans. Those are the only Americans in the entire film. Yeah, pretty much. Well, you know, there's the longstanding Bill Simmons' hottest take about the dissolution of the American actor

and how we have no great American movie stars anymore, especially on the male side. You know, I take issue with that as an Adam Driver fan, as a Timothee Chalamet fan. We've got a few entrants, but there is a little bit of an epidemic amongst the acting community of America. And Greta Gerwig has cast them aside. And she's selected from Canada and Australia and England. I'm not mad about it.

I just think it's interesting in both Little Women and this, I would consider very... I know Barbie has world brand recognition, but these are also just... American company, yeah. Very American. in like both little women and this i would consider like very i know barbie has like world brand recognition but these are also american company yeah very american it's an american export for better and for worse yeah i mean narrated by helen mirror you know what i mean like we're just like you know yeah it's a good point i don't know what accounts for that um i the other thing i wanted to point out is just in addition to kind of conceiving this physical world the movie is part of this interesting trend of movies like um the truman show which has been cited quite a bit i think pb's big adventure is a big influence

on this movie i think the lego movie is a big influence on this movie um the kind of metatextual manufactured reality of the characters that they live in which then when you make a movie like that it isn't just that the physical bearing of the movie is enough you have to create like a tonality and a kind of set of rules for how the world works which i think is very underrated and very similar like johnny you were pointing out that the geography of barbie world is very coherent which i agree with like we kind of understand where we are when we're watching. But I also kind of intrinsically understood how the world operated, which that is another example, I think, of the kind of magic trick that you're describing where you're like, okay, cool. I know, like I know what Barbie Land is.

I know who's in charge. I know that no one has sex. You know, I know that like there's no friction in the day-to-day lifestyle. The script very deftly and in in the tone of the movie like almost meta textually explains all of it to you like you know Kate McKinnon serves as as weird Barbie which is a wonderful performance on a number of levels but she both explains a lot of how the world works and then is like you know at some point they're talking about the portal but she's like it's not actually a portal we just, you know, like that she's explaining both the rules and making jokes

about the rules. And the, you know, the way you get from Barbie land to the real world is known to all of the people. And at one point, Will Ferrell's like, it always starts with roller blades. You know, they're like, they are, they are self-aware of the fact that they have to explain the rules and that they are absurd, but managed to do both that exposition and the jokiness of it to just take you along on the ride. It's a very fine line to walk tonally. And I agree. They pull it off. rated element of that um is simply the opening lizzo song yeah where we're narrating and we get like two versions right to like i love that understand what's wrong good but you know like

the opening you know to see that there's no water to see she's not drinking anything um and then to hear like lizzo explain why this is perfect and why this is the world we live in um you know you we've already talked about musicals like between that song and the ken song like what what you know they've achieved with this this is a musical like when when i saw the trailer where they showed not only the like disco party but also simi lu dresses gene Kelly, essentially, or Danny Zuko, if you prefer. Like I was like, is this a Greta?

Are you doing a full blown musical? And thank you very much for doing so. And like Greta Gerwig has like Lady Bird lets us know that Greta Gerwig and Francis Haught, like lets us know that everybody says, don't everybody says, don't that's musical nerd shit. You know,

that wasn't intentional. She's a musical theater nerd, you know? So it's amazing. Yeah, I love that too. I'm glad you pointed out the two versions of the Lizzo song, which I think actually that's the best thing that explains what I'm trying to describe. Sort of like, here's the logic of this world. And we can visually tell the story by pouring milk that doesn't exist. And the shower doesn't have water that comes down. are just very discrete storytelling choices that work so so well

um you know the movie itself is about a character who has to leave a place to go to another place it's a journey movie as well as a musical and a comedy and all these other things and i think that the you know once we get through basically the first act of the movie and it's become clear after that encounter with Weird Barbie, that stereotypical Barbie, as she comes to be known, needs to go to the United States of America, I guess. Is Barbie land? Is that part of the United Nations? Or like, is it on Earth? She explains, Weird Barbie explains that she needs to go to the state of Los Angeles in the country of California. With like a geographically correct map.

That is how it feels sometimes. Yeah, exactly. We are all residents of California on this podcast. And as I've said, I think this is where the movie I think started to kind of dip in the middle for me. And I felt this as well with my audience because the laughs started to dip a little bit. And so the raucousness

as we were trying to figure out sort of what is the plot of this movie. And there's something at the core of it which is that it's not just that Barbie needs to go make the kid who's

no longer happy about Barbie happy again. It's that she needs to kind of retrieve America Ferreira's character and Ariana Greenblatt's character and bring them back

to Barbie land. And that's the mission. And what I could feel when I was watching this movie, and I'm curious how you guys feel about this, because we'll probably spend a lot of time on the third act, which is so, so interesting, but that felt like a problem being solved by screenwriters as I was watching the movie, as opposed to what felt like on the edges of the first and third parts of the movie, a kind of like pure manifestation of creativity of like, here are the things I'm trying to say with the movie.

Here's how I envision this world. And this just felt like Robert McKee's story in some ways. It was like, we got to get a character to go to a place. How do we get that character to go to the place? Okay, the character works at Mattel, but they're not respected at Mattel.

Mattel is run by men and we're going to build this world and it's going to look different than everything else that we've done. And it's not bad. You know, I'm not trying to say it's bad. It's just like it really pales in comparison to the rest of the movie. And maybe that's its intent.

But usually in the second act of a movie, what you're getting is this dramatic intent. This is like ratcheting of the stakes that gets you even more invested in the outcome. And so even seeing it a second time, I was like, okay, this is the flaw of the movie for me personally. I would agree that not every minute of Barbie is firing on the same cylinders as the rest. I don't know if that's an accurate way to say that. But I will say that. Is that a car metaphor? I don't know about cylinders.

I was like, was that right? It's a very good simulator joke about cars. You know, as she is witnessing people and having sort of this awakening. And at the same time, Ken is having a comedic awakening. Like, I think all the Century City patriarchy horse stuff that Gosling goes through is hilarious. It's really, really funny. And the little montage that he gets of all of the male stuff that explodes. Also, I just... Century City, for anyone who is lucky enough to never have visited, is, I would say, the Hollywood Business Center. It's where many of the agencies are located.

It's, like, this outcropping. It's, like, two blocks of, like, high-rises, including Nakatomi Plaza, in what is is otherwise like a pretty high riseless city and were they in the lobby of caa or was it just supposed to look like the lobby of caa i don't know if they actually were but it certainly looked like yeah and so when ryan gosling is um riding the elevator and watching some men tell off a female associate and then learning about Ronald Reagan and horses. That is like a very direct joke on CAA and agencies and like the business of Hollywood.

Yeah, I should maybe be more specific. I liked Ken's discovery of the patriarchy. I thought that was very funny. I really liked Barbie's park bench sequence and also Barbie's

first meeting with Ariana Greenblatt's character and the collision between Gen Z and the idea of Barbie. And that's an essential part of the movie, right? To kind of like foreground what the haters think Barbie represents. And also foreground, I think how,

I asked her about this, but I was like, I think this is a little bit how older millennials think about Gen Z, where it's like, why are you so mean about this? Like, like this I think this is a little bit how older millennials think about Gen Z where it's like why are you so mean about this like can you just relax um and but I what I didn't get is just everything that was happening inside of Mattel and that was the stuff that I felt like the this sort of like we're just solving this problem as much as we can and like the chase

sequence inside of Mattel and Will Ferrell's Andre of Men. I don't think we need a car chase either I don don't think we need a car chase. No, the car chase. Car chase, yeah. And also, I mean, the car chase and the shots of the car were, to me, the most obvious spawn con. You could just feel all of the representatives. I don't even know what car. Don't do it. I don't give them the money. You know? Don't do it.

Don't give them the money? I'm just saying you could feel all those people being like no we need the angle this way do you think that's how money works

they just you know I think we're all learning everyday the new ways in which money works no free advertisement except for

two Barbie movie podcasts yes that's the cast but so but Sean to your point like the

specifically the Mattel stuff as like plot mechanics and like the needing to get this character and these characters from, like, A to B, I get it. And it felt more obvious to me, and that's before you even get into, like, the actual SpawnCon and, like, I agree with you. I'm also like, if you're using the plot mechanics and the Mattel stuff to do like a playtime homage, like that's, you know, I can't be that mad. Even though I agree, the movie slows down a bit. I felt it in my screening as well. You know, the momentum that characterizes the rest of the movie, it shifts. It might ultimately be necessary for that to be there for the movie to hang together. I'm not saying like excising it somehow would make the movie better.

And frankly, I think it's doing a lot of this stuff better than Marvel just dumping Stan Lee into a cameo and being like, don't forget Marvel Comics. That's where this all came from. There are hacky versions of this throughout all films that operate in this kind of world. But I think we'd be remiss if I didn't point out the things

where I was just sort of like, this is a movie where the highs are very high. And so when something isn't really operating for me, it slows down pointed out.

It definitely just slows down. And I think what really hurts it on a rewatch is that Will Farrell doesn't really have quite a journey that he got like an arc really it just sort of happens and like the best thing i think he is funny yeah but the best

thing that comes out of it are the like meta jokey commercials that we get as like the mattel execs are like checking in on like what's selling like when the mojo dojo casa whatever right house is selling or depression barbie or whatever it is barbie was really the family-sized starburst and then actually just showing the bbc pride and prejudice clip i was just really like wow of course thought of you yeah i mean yeah my sister and i saw that we were like oh i don't. At some point in this podcast, we're going to have a lot of fun at Sean's expense. And I enjoy that. But like, that was fun at my expense. That was just like a direct hit on the target.

It was the BBC Pride and Prejudice and Closer to Fine. Oh, yeah. I was like, uh-oh, it's me. Oh, no. And, you know think it's it's greta gerwig too right that's the point right it is a kind of self-reflexive pop culture right yes you know like it's something that i i i really respond to that i think that that's really smart to do that and it is and i've talked about this before and joe i'm curious whether you feel the same way um if only because i think your pop culture you're you're more. If only because I think your pop culture,

you're more of an omnivore in your pop culture diet. But it really feels like her references are like from my brain in a way that I don't experience with any, you know, even the little girl who plays with the weird Barbie montage, which explains how weird Barbie works, which is also just like very funny. And that's definitely true of every Barbie. But it's like to Spice Girls, spice up your life. You know, and I was just like, oh, no, but yes, here we are.

I got a huge, huge laugh in my audience. It was really funny. Yeah, no, I feel exactly. I mean, yes, I understand that, like, I will watch superhero movies with Morgley than you will but like i do think that almost exactly the same age you know i guess it doesn't matter since you're not from northern california but like from northern california musical theater yeah like anglophile like all the stuff that greta gerwig is i definitely am and so i i felt that with lady bird like totally complicated relationship with her mother like all this sort of stuff i was just like oh no and also crash into me you know it's like it's both the pop cultural stuff and the

emotional stuff and the synthesizing of it too it's it's really uncanny i think the other thing is that's like me and paul schrader no well i like i know but like it is do you know it's like but it's like you and the bear it's like you you, which I love, by the way. Oh, my God. The bear is amazing. But it's like you and most things. Well, I actually want to talk about that idea. The sort of like comet-like aspect of this movie where it's like there's so few things that are like this that are directed at women. And there are so few things like this that are directed, you know, first at women that are this successful. But whether or not something should change or are we overlooking kind of what is at the center of pop culture?

I think it's a good conversation to actually have with Joanna too. Well, the thing that I was about to say about the references is that there are some that feel really like niche specific to me, old millennial, like who loves BBC Pride and Prejudice. But I actually think they're pretty broad. And like, and to some extent, like even like Barbie and making a Barbie, there is something equally omnivorous about Greta Gerwig's like pop cultural reference frame. And it feels like slightly tilted from what we normally look at, but it encompasses a lot.

And that is also very exciting because like it can feel tailored to me, but I think that there are also lots of other people who are like, oh, like me too. And me too. And me too. It's just, I think the frame is different. I think depression Barbie hit for a lot of, I don't know about men, but like definitely a lot of women that I know. And, you know, but they're like, oh, but for me it's the 2005 Pride and Prejudice or, but for me it's something else. And I'm like, for me, it's definitely the BBC Pride and Prejudice.

But like, so the specificity of that reference is for us, but the broader sense of that reference that everyone else gets, you know, stalking your ex best friend on Instagram or whatever the case may be is like, that's for everyone. So, you know um now do you want to talk about ken yeah do you want to talk about your reaction to ken um well

here's okay this is this is the intent so i'm not uncovering some magical piece of information but obviously the way that ken is positioned in Barbie land is the way that women are positioned in our entire world for the thousands of years, right? That all Ken's are diminished and are only understand themselves or sort of forced societally to understand themselves in opposition to those in power, those who are perfect, those who are better in represented by Barbie.

I think that introduces an interesting conversation about both Barbie and Ken because Barbie also doesn't really have an inner life and the movie is about Barbie finding an inner life. So is the idea there, and I'm pretty sure that it is, but is the idea there that most movies are about men who don't really have an inner life and need to go explore and find that inner life? Yes. And then they return to women who are uh confused by their inability to be at the center of the

story because that like the way that ken is free because i think joanna is point right yeah yeah new credit and maybe that's because she's a woman but she's very interested in ken in ken's interior life and his desperation to be understood co-written by noah you know what i mean like i don't know how much of their like you know own relationship or whatever is is seeded into this but like i think that i actually this is a classic hero's journey right you're offered the birkenstock or the high heel and like you refuse the call and you go on the hero's journey it's very classic iconic what is going on with ken is not usually what the female characters get to do exactly like this there's like so much more for the kens in this

than there would be for a woman a comparable you know girlfriend to her wife of character in a kitty oppenheimer say i i wasn't gonna say it out loud that's the sense. Just a name that popped up for no reason. Randomly, you know. So, I mean, I just think that, and that's what I, and I love that about the movie. Like, I'm not, I mean, I do get a little salty. What if Kitty Oppenheimer was like, I'm the president now. Like, I'm in charge in the immediate aftermath. And had a whole musical number about it?

Starring Emily Blunt, I would watch it. Absolutely. Mary Poppins returns again. Hello. Emily Blunt, I would watch it. Absolutely. Mary Poppins returns again. I do get ever so slightly salty when people are like, Ryan Gosling stole this movie, which is a very common refrain. I don't know that I can argue on a certain level

because he certainly is the big performance that everyone is walking away talking about. I think we all agree about what Margot Robbie has accomplished here. The three of us agree. But I do love that the film has room for an empathy for the Kens that the movie cares about. You know, my colleague Ben Shapiro, I think, is the one, right, who counted the number of mentions of patriarchy in this movie. Right. mentions a patriarchy in this movie right um the did he count like just like the book title

about the patriarchy that ken checks out from the teen library count as one of his well or does he not acknowledge reading my my question the question my my trial by content co-host dave gonzalez had was um did you start counting at number one like why do you start counting at number one? Like, why do you start counting at the first one? You know what I mean? But anyway, I think that this movie cares about the impact the patriarchy has on both men and women. I think we have phraseologies that are introduced, like stole the movie or, you know, that are inevitable. I was trying to think of like what the comp is

in another like celebrated or beloved movie there are not a lot of examples but like my cousin vinnie was recently on the rewatchables and marisa tomei won an academy award for her performance in a very broad comedy and if you walked out of that movie you were like joe pesci's great but marisa tomei who the fuck is that yeah yeah and i i think that there is an aspect of that specifically because marisa tomei gets this incredible testimony sequence, right? This, you know, pause attraction and that whole thing. And Ken just gets a lot of great lines.

He just gets a lot of the jokes. And so because of that, people are walking away being like, and also that people love Ryan Gosling. I mean, Ryan Gosling for fucking losers like me and for women across the world. He is, he threads the needle. He's the guy. He's the brooding emotional guy he's he's the dude he's the brooding emotional artist and he's also the guy in the notebook and so he's perfect to steal barbie you know like they just they nailed it with with gosling and so i think that's part of the reason why that's come about i i i'm personally fascinated i wish i could see on a piece of paper

how many ken jokes noah wrote how many ken jokes Greta wrote, who rewrote whose jokes, what was the interplay there? Because there are a few that are just extraordinarily devastating and funny. And I think it's a big part of why it's a success, I think, for him. The thing about that, I love that you made that Mike has a Vinny comp. And the thing that I love about that is that I was reading a long interview with a screenwriter like a couple years ago and he was talking about how they like wanted to cut out Marissa Tomei's like speeches from that movie because the exec said who cares about the girlfriend of the guy you know what I mean and that is so often the case of movies of like who cares about the girlfriend of the guy and Greta Noah and Margot and Warner Brothers is like we care about Ken you know and

you know that's great the nice thing about the movie and the Margot Robbie and the Barbie character is that the movie cares about Ken, Ken gets a lot of things but it's just very clear that Barbie like does not care

about Ken at all like never and there is something like so sweetly dismissive about the both way it's written and the way that Margot Robbie performs it that for me I feel no anxiety about the fact that I think she's amazing and also he like has like an incredible you know and that people are just like let's can we talk about the dream ballet and also like his Ken Metallica like crotch you know logo love that like that's that's great i i don't know who cares it's like very funny that he is like being a willing doofus and and is also in on the joke and the movie knows that it's casting like ryan gosling is ken and it's like playing with that it's just it's really

delightful the supporting k's also wonderful. And like, don't steal the show in the same way, but without them, I think Ryan Gosling would like, look a little weirder.

Like the competition that he feels with Simu Liu, it's like amazing. And Kingsley Ben-Adir just sort of like trotting one step behind him

the whole movie is so funny and you know shitty god was amazing like i think that um i agree like i i okay here's my question if amanda and i felt like shot through the heart this is us in a mirror when we see colin firth bbc prime judges up there yeah what was what was that moment for you sean Sean, in the Ken sequences? Well, I mean, there's two jokes, two very specific jokes that are tipped with poison when they strike your skin. Like, I almost couldn't breathe when the Godfather joke happened. I literally was just like, that is the good version and the smart, funny comic joke version of my project for the last five years. Like, I was just like, I don't know what to do.

I mean, so when they eventually get back to Barbie Land and, you know, the Kens have created the patriarchy in Barbie Land and the Barbies are attempting to unseat the power that they've taken. They are, I guess, undermining them by indulging them. And one of the ways in which they indulge them is, I can't remember who the Barbie is. I think it's Kingsley Ben-Adir is watching The Godfather and someone sits down next to him. Issa Rae is like, have you seen The Godfather? Are you watching The Godfather? Yeah, it's so good. And he immediately launches into, I'm sure, a speech I have verbatim shared on this podcast and others about Francis Ford Coppola and the collision of the studio system.

And, you know, nailed that. And then shortly thereafter, there's a moment in which the genius of Stephen Malkmus in a post-Lou Reed musical environment is explained. And, you know, again, direct hits. Man down. They got us. They got us. They got us real good. Now, of course, one of my favorite sequences in movie history

is Jesse Eisenberg running to the Museum of Natural History to go see the squid and the whale. And that is scored to a beautiful Lou Reed song. And Noel Baumbach is a huge Lou Reed fan. And I'm almost certain a huge Stephen Malcomus fan. Yeah. And so I'm so interested in their kind of creative union. And then especially the other thing is that

this is the first thing that they've done since White Noise. Right. Which is in a way this sort of bizarro Superman version of Barbie. You know, it's an anti-consumerist adaptation of another form of IP in the form of an award-winning novel written by, you know, an angry man. And this-

For Netflix. For a streaming service and not a theatrical home run, exactly. And that is fucking beautiful that they're playing chess is the thing that is exciting about it. You know, they know each other. They know the jokes.

They know the game. They're making money. They're having success. They're winning awards. Like, it is very rare to see this kind of partnership in Hollywood. And frankly, exciting as somebody who's been holding their stock since I was 11 years old. So I'm stoked for them. What I would love, and again, now I'm just like fan faking someone's like real life relationship

and artist club artistic collaboration. But I would love if Greta like turned to Noah was like, what do I do when I'm depressed? And he's like, you eat all these Starbursts and you watch BBC Prime Precious. And he's like, what do I do when I'm mansplaining? And she's like, you do this, you know? It's so funny because my hope and I also, you know, have fanfic for their, you know, relationship and partnership or whatever because they're two of my favorite filmmakers. But it's so funny. I want them to be self-knowing.

Like, I want Greta to have put in the depression Barbie, like, and the starburst and the pride and prejudice just like I want Noah to have, you know, done the Malchus joke, like, knowingly. And I do think that the movie, part of what I respond to is there is, like, a self-awareness and, like, a loving interrogation of all of our own assumptions, as well as, you know, the entire world and patriarchy at large. So, I'm kind of good with it either way. How about that? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Shall we talk about Gloria and Sasha? Ariana Greenblatt and America Ferreira's character and how they, what they do in this movie and what they're responsible to and how that's executed. Because I mentioned this to Greta when we spoke, but America Ferreira sort of becomes the of Barbie, almost under the cover of Night. And I thought that was very interesting. And it worked well for me personally.

What did you guys think of the way that that part of the story was told? It's just a great use of America Ferrera. an actress that I don't think has gotten to do as much as she deserves to do was phenomenal on the like pretty okay. Superstore like for the last many years playing a very similar mom character. And I love that her journey is connecting with her daughter. Like that moment, like seeing her daughter admire her is her triumph. And I'm wondering how, you know,

you two young parents feel about that. What do you think? Well, I started crying when they did the flashbacks of America Ferreira playing with the doll to reconnect with her daughter, you know, because it's what they used to do. So let's just say it worked for me. I just, I was like, literally the,

frankly, the hokiest part of the whole damn movie like brought me to tears and i was like looking up at the ceiling just being like i'm not gonna cry right it's really early i'm not gonna cry this is ridiculous i thought she was wonderful i was surprised um she has a very she has this sort of climactic um speech that has been referenced or compared to the famous Gone Girl, Cool Girl speech. But like... Sort of ideology of the film in a speech. Yes, yeah. And about the roles that the kind of conflicting expectations for like a woman and society writ large. This one is generous of heart as opposed

to the cool girl speech, which is self-hating. I, and I don't, I say that I really like Gone Girl and I think that speech is important, but it's just written from a different perspective or like, I guess just like a different emotional valence. It's one of those where you like can feel, you're like, oh, here we go. Like here is the speech. But I think she does it like pretty beautifully. So it worked for me. And I really think her,

she and Margot Robbie is kind of like the two emotional poles of the movie are doing a lot of work to make all of the absurdity and the in jokes and everything else fit together and it really worked for me she's like a lot of people have been talking about uh rachel mcadams and um are you there god is me margaret as a performance this year of like such maternal warmth and i just feel similarly of american for like such a warm and emotionally authentic and accessible and like real feeling person to put in in this plastic world to to make that and like the fact that barbie is personally important to her her childhood

her connection with her daughter so like she has a personal investment in the you know well-being of barbie it's not just like they care about this barbie it's like they care about the concept of barbie it's also it's like this is sounds so reductive but it's like a mom as a person as opposed to a mom as a mom which i you don't get that much of in movies actually the moms are usually just fixated on being moms. So I appreciated that. Yeah, she has a creative life that she's exploring. Now that creative life is contributing to the bottom line of the Mattel Corporation.

I am contributing to the bottom line of the Spotify Corporation at this very moment. But I think also that speech, it reminded me more I I know it's getting compared to the gone girl speech but it reminded me so much of Saoirse Ronan's like Joe's speech in Little Women about like you know what it is to be a woman and what you're supposed to want and what you're supposed to not want which is you know a creative liberty that Greta Gerwig took with the original text which is um which is fine or not fine however you you care about that but like i think it's fine if she wants to put one of those speeches in all of her because i you know on like i've heard the little women's speech clipped

countlessly on tiktok and so like i can you you know, the America Ferrera speech was printed in full in the LA Times, I think, like, almost before the movie came out. Yeah, exactly.

And then Vanity Fair had a piece about it, like, two days later or whatever. You know, it's just sort of like, they knew what that speech was. It seems like it's a hallmark

of what Greta does. And if she wants to do that for, like, Susan in Narnia, I'm excited for it. I would count on it. You know?

Yeah. Um, that's, it's very similar to how I felt, uh, watching Ethan Hawke's character in first reform to wrap himself in barbed wire and C4. I was like,

this is a manifestation of my truth. Thank you for speaking at Paul. Um, somebody has to do something. Uh, you know, I think I think in a very similar fashion, are you there? God, it's me, Margaret. I'm just the dad of an extremely bossy,

blonde, two-year-old girl. And so she is very much the author of my life these days, you know, and whatever she wants to do is what's going on. So I have kind of like already seeded myself over to like, Barbie's in charge, it's all good.

Like, I'm rolling with it every day. I thought it was, I thought that both Ariana Greenblatt and America Ferrer are very good in this movie in tough parts.

In parts that in a synthesized world have to be human. Yeah. And there are virtually no other humans. Even Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie,

as played by Rhea Perlman, is a ghost. You know, like, it is just not a movie of humans. And even Conor Swindells, you know, is the Mattel employee. It's not really a human being.

You know what I mean? Like, there's just not a lot of people in this movie. What a weird use of him. Like, what a great actor and him like what a great actor i thought he was gonna become a ken when i when they announced the casting i was like oh and he looks like a ken also he'll become a ken i don't know i like maybe more people know his name maybe this can put him on the track to being james bond just just putting it out there that's a chris that idea, but I also love it for him. No, I love that. Ruth Handler didn't fully work for me. I agree.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I thought. I didn't really have a hard time with it. The sequence in sort of like the white box room and like the Billie Eilish playing and all that sort of stuff. Like that kind of emotionally worked for me, but it felt kind of drawn out like there was just i don't know i could have done with like half as much rhea perlman honestly in the i think the in my opinion the best of these kinds of movies and i see the truman show and the wizard of oz is like the polarities of barbie they both have god figures

who turn out to be not quite what we expect them to be you know there is the man behind the curtain in the wizard of oz and then of course there's ed harris as the kind of megalomaniac yes and they have good intentions and their intentions get away from them because of their desires for power and ruth handler was a capitalist businesswoman you know but this is also like real said like a man who loves like the great man histories and the guy you know it's really to me i'm not i'm not like um i'm certainly not criticizing ruth handler i don't know very much about her i think in the story it's like it's very clearly trying to echo yes a framework of stories like this where it's sort of like but the flip side is is that they do imbue ruth handler with a kind of magical godlike power that those other movies reveal is a

kind of false power and so I found that interesting you know like and I was kind of hoping to talk about the ending a bit and kind of hear from you guys about what you thought about it because um I guess I don't know if I fully understand what what happened to Barbie which is that you know eventually she does take back control of barbie land for lack of a better word the barbies uh reign once more they have a better understanding of the plight of the ken and hopefully they create a more just world in a way that we can't hear on earth well the kens get homes i would like that for them where do they sleep we don't know but they only get to be appellate judges you know maybe not even that lower circuit court yes yeah someone someone was like in

interview i think it was a simulue someone was like where do the ken's sleep do they huddle together for warmth on the beach and he's like those fires aren't even real man i don't know i don't know where they sleep but barbie barbie wants to of course become a real person and i guess it's ruth Handler's ghost who grants her the ability to have genitalia? Is that what happened? She said, you have this power within you. Yeah, Ruth Handler says you don't need permission.

You can grow, you can manifest genitalia. You can be whatever you want to be. Okay. Yeah, you can have it all, including genitalia. I guess, is that a message of the film? Is you can't have it all including genitalia i guess that is that a message of the film is that you can't have it all amanda did we finally get that you can have it all manifesto you've been i mean it is it's i mean it's like the update of it it's also that you can't have it all or that having it all is you know because the the america ferrera character

suggests at the end like what about ordinary barbie Barbie and a Barbie who is just like trying to wear a flattering top and get through the day. And maybe she's a mom and maybe she's not, and maybe she doesn't want, you know, cause like, it's all okay. Like it's just,

so I think that, you know, that's like the inverse note of, of having it all. Um, and, and, and maybe the,

you know i i've seen some criticisms that the the movie like doesn't have the solution or the answer to feminism and you you know uh and it just is kind of like well it's complicated so i think that is i think that's a fair takeaway i think it's well it is complicated that's my experience i think it's it's well, it is complicated. That's my experience. I think it's, it's okay. Or maybe in some cases, preferable to not be perfect. Yeah. To not have to be perfect.

Barbie, you can have cellulite and go to the gynecologist. You know what I mean? And I think that like, um, when, when the, when the ending was happening,

um, and I don't know if we all assumed she was going to work and maybe go to work yeah something like that um i was like oh are we doing a working girl ending like that's really yeah yeah yeah girl and i was like and then the fact that it's the gynecology joke is really good and even if that means beautiful every parent in america now has to explain to their child what the word gynecologist means like it's a it's a price i'm personally willing to pay maybe it's a good start towards a better gynecological future for all of us because i love my gynecologist but in general it's an area of medicine that could use some

support you know some light some more people we need we need more people yeah we actually do do the work you mean like literally Like, literally, yes. I don't know if you know this, but it's very hard to get a gynecologist appointment until you're pregnant. Because they can only make... They make more money off of you when you're pregnant. I see. So, yeah. It's very...

Actually, we just need gynecologists. An impromptu science corner here. Yeah, well... Thank you so much. Joanne, back me up here. No, 100%. And also, people don't talk about it yeah like you know like you should go to the gynecologist the way you go to the dentist and like do you want me to come over and explain it to alice what she has a mother yeah it'll be okay but i think um i what i loved is like when

when america ferrer is giving that speech about ordinary barbie and the flattering top she's wearing this like lavender blazer and i love that like barbie or barbara i suppose as we should call her at the end is like wearing a blazer i don't know it's just like very like yeah yeah i'm ordinary barbie um the only here's the only person i think gets a short shrift in this movie um is amer Ferreira's husband. I was like, he never stops being a punchline. That was so funny. I truly

loved it. I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. I liked it too. I thought it was pretty funny. I have been that guy, of course. So, you know. I'm enough as well my husband zach also like really laughed when they cut to him on the duolingo and i was like okay all right it's working for everyone actually a mutual friend of ours is literally in the middle of that and was

explaining it to a friend at my daughter's birthday party and i was trying to picture my friend doing that exact scene and then the next day i saw barbie and i was like of course i mean this is something that 40 year old men around the country are doing all the time it's very sad duolingo sweeping the nation um i also want to shout out we haven't but like michael cera as alan i just think is a tremendous phenomenon really funny like absolutely fantastic so i um i read that jonathan groff was the first choice for this part and i didn't realize that until after the fact and that would have put a very different spin on the Alan part to me. Because he looks like a Ken.

Whereas Michael Cera doesn't look like a Ken with love and respect to Michael Cera. Exactly. I just don't think that that joke works as well. I love Jonathan Groff and I would have liked to have seen him in a musical sequence. I also really like Jonathan Groff. But he's not the Alan of this movie. And what a comeback for Michael Cera. He's fully back.

So exciting. I saw him at a screening of The Heartbreak Kid in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. He was killing it. I was like, this is really my guy here. Alan gets a fight sequence. How wonderful. Remember when he beats up all the construction workers? Oh, yeah.

He was really good. But I guess I'm just fully Barbie pilled because I was like, oh, I don't really care about Alan. It's good, but I don't care. I don't think Barbie really cares about Alan. I think Kate McKinnon, Weird Barbie, and Alan are important to talk about the inherent problems in Barbie land of people being ostracized and how Barbie land needs to make improvements in order to, um, you know, embrace everyone to say nothing of growing up skipper,

you know, that was quite a revelation as well. No, I, I, I remember that. I remember that. I,

I did it, but you were more of a, you were a Barbie. You played with Barbies. Yeah, I was, I like so many Barbies. I was like,

no, I mean, I, I don't have any regrets about it I will say I the weird Barbie connection that I made was that I had a Dr. Barbie and she had like super long blonde hair and I cut it short into like a practical sort of like bob because I didn't think that Dr. Barbie would have like long flowing blonde hair in the operating room. Yeah. So, you know, that made sense to me. Yeah. Barbie as a storytelling mechanism for children. Like that's that's how I use Barbie is I would like create plays for my Barbies and have them acted out and then like bore my parents with them. Right. Yeah.

That's beautiful. We're recording this podcast on Wednesday. And as of Wednesday, this movie has made $188 million in America and $195 million overseas. It's about to be a $400 million movie in five days. Do you think it gets to a billion? That's what Margot said. Margot said that in her pitch to warner brothers she's like this is going to be a billion dollar movie and then was like i i fully lied about that i don't know that this is going to be a billion dollar movie it made 13 million dollars on a monday i mean so that's i think the fourth highest monday ever and that the other ones were all holiday weekends.

This is not a holiday weekend. So it's on some wild box office trajectory right now. Now, who the hell knows if it'll hold? On the other hand, there's not shit going on right now. Let's just say for the sake of our ringer universe, we talk about this because it's usually so quiet at this time of year. I'm about to go on vacation. Amanda's about to go on vacation.

I'm actually quite interested in this specifically. The U.S. Women's World Cup is happening right now. Yeah. But aside from that, there's no tennis. There's no golf. There's certainly no basketball, football, all those other things. I guess the MLS is playing. But in the world of sports here at The Ringer, we're very quiet.

Yeah. Television, of course, slows down in the post Emmy window we're doing an OC rewatch on the prestige TV feed perfect example of how we're trying to program through the summer

yeah and now movies now of course there are movies like Haunted Mansion is coming out this weekend Talk to Me is coming out this weekend

but there's not a ton of stuff that Meg 2 notwithstanding that I think is going to do much at the box office. So you could see a four, five, six week run here where it gets to a billion a lot quicker

than we think. I don't know. What do you think? And just anecdotally, people who haven't seen it are still having a hard time getting tickets. Right. Yeah. Which is amazing and suggests sort of, it has like a little bit of like that repeat where I saw it with this person and now I need to go see it with this person,

almost like Titanic vibe of it. But also I, I really think you can't underestimate the, like, I want to dress up in pink and go. Yeah. It's cool. Yeah.

That was how I felt when I saw it a second time. I was like, Oh, I went to a party tonight, which I never feel that way at the movies, you know? Like it's so that in and of itself, I think will drive a kind of sustained business.

I have a question for two of the biggest cruise heads I know. Yeah. Why do you think they scheduled Mission Impossible only one week in front of this weekend? Well, one, I'll say I'm very surprised by how much it's dropped. Obviously, I'm higher on that movie, I think, than most living humans. But even still, I'm really surprised by how much it dropped over the weekend. I think they just got over their skis. I think that there was just some post-Maverick over-optimism about how strong the brand was.

And they're paying the consequence for that right now. It does also seem like everyone is a little stunned by the Barbenheimer phenomenon. Definitely. People in the industry who do this for a living are like sure and like yes you know we as professionals identified that it would be a big deal and sean and i like it's not a coincidence that we're going on vacation like the week after this because we knew this would be kind of like a big working week for us so i think people understood it would be something but it does have that sort of like viral sensation just took on a life of its own and like who could know yeah even even among people

who I you know the Warner Brothers marketing department we've said it over and over like they they did a good job yeah they did their jobs like very well but you can't predict this level of success it's out of their hands too and I I like the Titanic comparison that you're making. As far as Mission Impossible goes, I mean, that has historically been a late summer movie franchise. That's a, you know, it's like the fourth week of July, usually, or August even sometimes.

And so they moved ahead of that. And then they tried to get ahead of, you know, something that obviously Matt Bellany, I think broke months ago about the desire for the premium screens. And that's a huge part of the oppenheimer thing oppenheimer making 80 million dollars in three days which is that's what i'm saying it's like oppenheimer bumps mission possible out of all of the imax screens so like if i'm tom or anyone involved in that chris i would say let's not leave just a week in between so that we don't get bump for Oppenheimer.

You know, so. It does make me think that it's more of an outlier than anything you could possibly imagine, though. I mean, comparing it to Titanic. I don't it's not going to do Titanic numbers, but even making that comparison and it being credible means we're in rare air here with what happened with this. So exciting. It is. It's really fun. Well, they're both good. Like to me, that's It's so exciting. It is. It's really fun.

Let's do it again. To me, that's what's so cool is they're both good. You can take issues with them in either direction, but it's so rare when something like this happens and you feel like they act. I mean,

that's a segue to the conversation I want to have with you both, which is like from an awards perspective, let's be real. What do we actually think is going to happen here?

Do you think, especially if a lot of films start to get moved off of the calendar? That is a big factor, is that we're already seeing a lot of awards season. You know, I think Zendaya is one person who Margot Robbie will not be competing against in awards anymore because Challengers got moved to 2024, much to my deep pain and sorrow. Though I get it, because how else were they going to sell that movie? Yeah.

So if things keep getting moved, especially big ticket, blockbuster, things that rely on movie star promotion, then there's more room in the awards race. I think the gimmies are like production design. Yeah. Costumes. Song. Hair and makeup. I think the gimme's are like production design. Yeah. Costumes. Song. Hair and makeup.

Mark Ronson doing his first ever film score. Like that's pretty incredible. Screenwriting. Greta had such a great little insight about that too. I hope people listen to that about like why she chose to go with Ronson in the way that she did. And what a choice that he made that I think helps the movie. But I won't spoil it for this conversation. Listen to that.

Definitely listen to that and then if you have more questions there's a great Ronson interview and variety about like fantastic about like the behind

the scenes of making of this. My guy. It's just like it's wild but here we all are. Cinematography? Possible. I mean it's

it's Rodrigo Prieto who's one of the most respected cinematographers. But all are cinematography possible i mean it's it's rodrigo prieto who's one of the most respected cinematographers that's cinematography is where i start to wonder whether the like academy's biases and what is serious and not serious start to creep in i don't i'm not endorsing those in fact i disagree like vehemently but we we all know how this goes well actually there's a there's a good comp to that which is that you know roger deakins made some news earlier this year when he talked about what he thought was the best cinematography of 2022 because he was nominated for empire of light and he was like it is an absurdity that greg frazier was not nominated for the batman he's

like that is by far the best cinematography i saw all this year and i think that that speaks to what you're describing, which is that there is a kind of bias now. Now Deakins did win for Blade Runner 2049. Barbie is different from Blade Runner, but. I know, but that was like Deakins' It was his first. Like 18th nomination.

Yeah, like 14th nomination. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know this didn't work out for like Tom and Top Gun the way that we thought it might, but like, will there be a sort of like, if this makes a gajillion dollars will there be a like thank you for saving cinema like movement

behind Barbie certainly behind Oppenheimer and like I have vowed to myself to not do the sky is falling routine for the rest of the year so I'm not going to do that but I do think that the inverse might be the feeling in Hollywood when we get to awards season?

Because if stuff does, like if Dune 2 moves, and Amanda and I were texting about this last night. We did right back. I know. I'm sorry. I got caught up watching a Stanley Kubrick documentary. That's a true story. The most on-brand thing I've ever heard. That is legitimately like a joke cut from Barbie.

I am who I am. By the way, we didn't even talk about the 2001 opening, which I absolutely loved. And I just, the little girl in the glasses. Fantastic. She's well cast. Very special. It's a great year for young performers in glasses just absolutely stealing the show. Congratulations to them.

I think that if a lot of those movies move off, especially movies that could make a lot of box office, it's going to be hand-wringing every week about saving movies. We saved movies, but then they died. And I don't know if that benefits

or doesn't benefit Barbie in terms of the awards race. It's a little unclear. I'm not, I'm very, I think that this is a great opportunity for the big picture to do a lot of fun episodes

if, in fact, many of the most anticipated movies of the year move. And we will go forward and it'll be fine but i love seeing new movies it is my favorite thing to do yeah and so that is why this weekend was so exciting because we saw two new movies that were good and so did everybody else everyone else saw them too like because we're we're always seeing the new movies and that and it's fun to talk amongst ourselves about it but to talk to like literally anyone out in the world probably has an opinion not literally but like almost anyone out in the world has an opinion

about barbie and oppenheimer and that's fantastic um pie in the sky you know like i know i know that like when we used to talk about before the globes became what they were and then are maybe back to where they were before I don't know but it's such like a globes movie right like Margo and Ryan and yeah like they all win the globe but like if Ryan gets nominated for an Oscar and Margo doesn't I will be not happy um I think they both should be nominated. I know. Yeah. I know. Prepare your heart, though. Because that might happen. I will just say on the record right now that I believe Gosling, Robbie, and Best Picture are all going to happen for nominations. I don't think any of them will win.

What about Greta for director? Probably. I will say this. If Gosling, which he should, category frauds himself into supporting actor, I think he could win. He, he should be in supporting actor. I'm not even,

I don't even think it's category fraud. Also, all of these things are made up. So just run. Exactly. No, I'm not, I'm not saying no shame in the game.

He's everyone. Everyone does it. He's wonderful. And it, yeah, I think they should all be nominated. I guess I'm like protecting my heart a little because the Academy so rarely does what I want it to do. I do also just wonder,

you know, you brought up the Golden Globes, Jo, which, you know, attached to all its other myriad issues is slated for January 7th, 2024. Which, like, will that happen? Well, furthermore, where will it air? There's no broadcast partner for the show right now. Because NBC ended their relationship

and then the Globes were sold and redefined. So I honestly don't know what to expect with awards season, period. I mean, obviously a lot of it is dependent on the outcome of the two strikes. I agree with you. It's just like what i've noticed in the sort of awards punt me the year-round awards conversation is that people are talking about the globes now the way they used to like four or five years ago and i'm like i didn't know we were back but like in some people's mind though who now owns

all of the trades that are talking about it? That's correct. That's a great point. You know. In this Barbie movie podcast, let's talk about corporate synergy. It's all relevant. I think that there are two films that I would be stunned if they were not nominated for Best Picture right now that we are aware of. One is called Oppenheimer, and the other is called Killers of the

Flower Moon. And after that everything is really up in the air. I think you can kind of safely bet money on Maestro right now just given. Yeah, it's premiering at Venice. Premiering at Venice. Even though Bradley Cooper won't be there. Right. And after

that, especially if they're talking about moving the color purple a lot of the other films are smaller releases we don't know what like salt burn is going to be the new emerald finnell movie we don't know what the holdover is going to be the holdovers is going to be we don't like the people who've kind of been there before we don't know what it is that they're doing and it's been a long time since they were back you know i think the movie that stands to benefit the most from everything that's shaken out here probably after barbie ironically is past lives yeah which everyone has seen and agreed upon yeah great point great point but i think i think to our math about like how to think about barbie in relation to the oscars in relation to something like the batman

or whatever is um is greta's cachet with the Academy and Noah's. You know what I mean? It's different than if a filmmaker we weren't aware of made this. Sure, but Little Women was nominated for Best Picture. She was not nominated for Director. So they have their tendencies. No, she was, wasn't she? Or was she nominated for Lady Bird

she was nominated for Lady Bird I think yeah right it was screenplay for both films but just director

was there oh that was the that was the 2019 gauntlet yeah that was the marriage story and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

and Parasite and yeah okay and The Irishman that was that was a bloodbath yeah tough that was tough I a bloodbath yeah tough

that was tough I don't know if she'll be nominated get back to your question Joanna I think it really is dependent on like

will audiences and the Academy love Napoleon and if so is it time to give Ridley Scott another award you know like

that's somebody who would be competing is he gonna release Napoleon I don't know it's unclear I mean none of those none of these movies

have moved yet. And these are probably conversations we need to have. To your best picture. To your best picture point. Are you saying like, Nolan and Scorsese lock for best director? I'd be shocked if I, you know,

and there's a big part of me right now today, having not seen 80% of the movies that are going to be nominated. There'll be surprised if Oppenheimer didn't win. Because there's so much support for that movie. There's been already reports I got a text message on Saturday night

about the first Academy screening of Oppenheimer and how his lines are on the block and then Ann Thompson reported that on Monday too that it's like

they're flipping for it. Those people love a free screening although in fairness Well they love a biopic with a great performance from a master filmmaker but also it was hard

to get an Oppenheimer ticket this weekend. Right. So, you know, that was... They were cashing in. I know a couple people

who were at that screening. Yeah. I just think that movie is going to do really well. Now, it might turn out to be the movie with like 14 nominations and no wins,

but I don't think so. Barbie, we'll see. Is there anything else you guys want to say about Barbie before we get to Greta? I just feel... I'm just so happy it's good you know what I mean

like I don't even have to dig to find ways to support it it's just easy yeah Amanda has posed or maybe you've posed

Joanna I don't know who wrote this but I think this question is quite interesting and I'd like for us to talk about it very briefly why don't you frame it

oh I'm just reading what I wrote I would say that Greta Gerwig is now arguably the brand name director interesting and I'd like for us to talk about it very briefly. Why don't you frame it? Oh, I'm just reading what I wrote. I would say that Greta Gerwig is now arguably the brand name director of her generation. So the other options are like Ryan Coogler and David Chazelle.

Yeah, and Barry Jenkins. Is Jordan Peele a part of that conversation? Oh, okay, yeah. That's a good one. He's a little older than them, but not that much older than them. But also just in terms of, because Get Out was the same year as Lady Bird. So in terms of breakout, Jordan Peele is a good pull as well. Peele and Gerwig were on the cover of the Vanity Fair's first Awards Insider edition that they ever did. The two of them that year.

And it's still one of my favorite photo spreads we ever did. Of them in old-timey director with like a bullhorn and like this whole thing it was like a really cute announcement of like arrival of these of these two voices i think that's yeah that's probably the crew though yeah the people that you guys just named you know it's kugler chazelle both of whom are kind of on the downswing a little bit after the last two projects right greta i don't know you know maybe kugler after black panther maybe was higher but like it's pretty close um and barry of course is one best picture and barry you know is is widely celebrated and he's now doing an ip project

next right um peel to me is the one who's doing exactly what i want he's the only one who's like fuck everybody else i have ideas of my own and I will explore them to the fullest extent. And when I do them, they will be events. Now that's my personal bias. I'm a guy who likes end game. It's not like I don't like this stuff. I do like this stuff, but I have such a admiration for the way he's trying to do it in a very similar fashion, in a very, in a Christopher Nolan fashion too where it's like I make my movies for Christmas or July and I'll see you then

and his next movie comes out next Christmas so and that will probably be my most anticipated movie of next year but it's pretty close and Greta like

hasn't certainly hasn't made a movie I don't like yeah she's even Nights and Weekends is a movie that I loved when I saw it at the IFC

in 2010 or whenever that came out. 2008. And I was a Swanberg head back then. So, you know, I've been down with Greta from the very first time I saw her and I love what she does. She's going to be able to do anything that she wants. She, of course, is doing Chronicles of Narnia next for Netflix, I think, as a two-film series. Yeah.

I don't love the idea of her spending four years doing that personally, but I don't underestimate her either. I just wish it weren't. I wish it weren't for Netflix, but otherwise I'm like pretty on board with it. I want to shout out a project

that I am like so interested in that my vault a director into this group next year, which is how much is the Twister sequel Twisters on your radar it's it's on it it's on it because it's of its wild cast and extremely unlikely director behind it exactly so lee isaac chung who did minari is is doing this and like and the cast is insane and i was just like anytime i've told someone who hasn't heard about this project, they are astonished that,

you know, because when you say like Twister 2 and or Twisters, if you prefer, like, you know, you're like, oh yeah, I think I know what that movie is going to be.

And then you're like, well, what if I told you it's Leah Zuchung and what if I told you it's Glenn Powell and Daisy Edgar Jones? Like that's, that's my movie of the summer next year, provided it doesn't get moved. So we'll see.

I think Greta has the belt right now. How about that? I agree with you. Okay. Yeah. that's my movie of the summer next year, provided it doesn't get moved. So we'll see. Um, I think Greta has the belt right now. How about that? I agree with you. Okay. Yeah. There's no doubt about it. Should we start doing the belt,

the director belt? Sure. Of a certain generation director belt? Yeah. She has the director belt of this generation. Yeah. Are we sure she's not? Martin Scorsese just launched a new, well,

his daughter just launched a new TikTok. So, about him. So his daughter has the belt for her generation? I think he has the belt, you know, just for like all of his work, including his presence on TikTok. The way he strides purposefully like outside, maybe near a pool in that TikTok is very charming. I'm a fan. Joanna, I want to thank you for participating in this epic conversation of belt holders and Barbie makers.

Where can we hear you? You can hear me on the Ringiverse or Trial by Content or Press TV where, again, we are doing an OC, mini OC rewatch of episodes one through seven of the one great season of the OC. And Sean, I want to thank you for never mansplaining the Godfather to me that's something you've never done to me thank you but

you are the first woman I know who's ever said that but Joanna despite that and despite your many mansplainings of 70s cinema and music

all genres it is your birthday it is and so we would like to wish you happy birthday, Sean Fennessey. There are donuts to my left supplied by Amanda that I'll be eating

as soon as we press stop. You can explain one thing I don't care about to me after we record as a birthday message. I promise it'll be more than one. Joe, thank you so much. Amanda, thank you for seeing me and being seen

by greta let's go to my conversation now with greta Gerwig is back on the show. Congratulations. We're talking after the extraordinary success of Barbie, which I loved. I'm so happy to be chatting with you. Thank you for having me again. Greta, I was curious when it became official that you were going to write and direct the film,

who was the first creative collaborator you got in contact with to work on it do you remember well i didn't really know i the truth is i didn't really know i was going to direct it until after the script was already written um so that after no one i were done writing the script i loved i loved it and i thought i i'd like to direct it so i actually had to i basically had to call margo back and say do you isn't it can i just because originally we were just gonna write it um and then i i was like i well i want to do this um and then i think pretty much right away um because i knew um the the old costumes were going to be so much of it. Um, Jacqueline Duran, who I had done, um,

Little Women with, I, I called her right away and said, uh, I, I, him, I know that we almost, uh, broke you on Little Women, but, um, I hope not quite yet because I've got another thing that is going to make you really, um, probably annoyed at me. But, um, but I think she was the first person I called when I knew I wanted to direct. When you made that call to Margo about wanting to direct, did you, did you have to pitch the vision of the script? Like, was there, was there like an explanation that you had to provide to make it make that make sense?

Well, I, when I started talking about it, I, I, um, you know, I, I already had this kind of idea of what it would feel like. And I knew I was wanting to lean into that aesthetic of the soundstage musicals. And I, I actually, I think I started sending her texts of, um, you know, images from movies that I would, um, pull and I would say, I want it to be like this or like that. So I never had an official like with that. Because, yeah, I sort of, you know, it felt like I already had such a strong visual sense of what I wanted it to be, and it was so exciting to me. And it was also, I don't know, when I started pulling different clips from films and different images. And I thought this is so irresistible. I,

I, I've, I think she'll, she'll enjoy this. And she did. What came first for you? Is it the musical Fantasia aspect of it or the mother and daughter and Barbie sort of needing each other part of the story?

I think as a director the thing that felt um it's almost like it's almost like i had the best way i can describe it is like the sort of the maximalism of it which is really very much to me mirrors the maximalism of Barbie. Like Barbie is too much and wonderfully too much. And she's, you know, there's not enough sparkles or ruffles or feathers. It's like more, more, more. And it felt like the way we wanted to layer too many things, too many ideas, too many. It was like that was part of that joy.

But it was almost like having a marching band playing right beside you um and then trying to hear someone who was whistling um very quietly at the same time and that was kind of what it felt like to try to balance these two sides of it so it wasn't that it was like one was first and the other one, it was like, how can I get quiet enough to hear this girl who's learning how to whistle? And how can I be centered enough to withstand the marching band that's right beside me? And that's the best way I can describe it so it was sort of happening simultaneously really did you find that a lot like people were saying you can't do this or this is not possible like what do you say when someone confronts you with

that well i think the the again the script was so maximalist the idea was so maximalist i think there was a little bit of an overwhelming quality of um I don't even almost like I don't even know where to start to the notes I want to give are so many but maybe that maybe there's nowhere to really kind of pick an entry point of of of it's almost like uh this it creates its own sense of submission I suppose because it's almost like it creates its own sense of submission, I suppose, because it's so hard to know where to start. But I think the truth is, you know, I really just keep going back to Margot that it was, it was Margot who would champion it. And then really just key people.

I mean, you know, I'm from Mattel was just totally confident and trusting, which was amazing. And that kind of felt, everything fell in line. There are key people at every step that said, no, let's go for it. And I think it was always a sense of how is this possible? And then somehow the right people lined up and said, why don't we just try?

Once you were actually going, I was wondering if you felt like you had a handle on how you wanted to build this artificial world. Like obviously you hire people to design the production and to design the costumes, but you're using a lot of old school filmmaking techniques that we don't see so often in this movie. The construction of an entire world

that we've basically never seen before has to take place and we have to buy it. And if you make one wrong move, it might take the viewer out of it. So how did you think about constructing a completely new reality? Yeah, well, I was very blessed with my collaborators. Like I said before, Jacqueline Duran was, I think, the first call.

And then Sarah Greenwood, who's the genius behind the set design. She was someone I knew I wanted to work with. I had a sense that it would be her. I really love her production design. I think she makes magical spaces. And I knew I wanted to do something that was quite theatrical and I had seen different things that she was able to do. And she did really beautiful, ingenious set design on actually Joe Wright's Anna Karenina, which sort of took place in the space of a stage and um i was really interesting in doing those kind of matte paintings and that backdrop feel so i knew

she had experience with that and then as soon as we got on the phone it was like she had so much experience with that kind of work and um and working with miniatures artists and working with um you know real like really we started talking about very early about things like how we wanted to create like the illusion of waves and like looking at different movies and different references of like, well, you can do it like this. You can do it with cellophane. You can do it with these rollers. You can do it with those those kinds of waves that go like this. If you had like an auto proscenium,

there were so many kind of, she had so much to draw from and and you know, we had about a year to talk before we actually went into production. So, and I mean, we had about a year to talk before we properly went into like pre-production. So just getting on the phone and sort of going over things. And then simultaneously, my cinematographer, Rodrigo Prieto, he was also deeply involved with all of these conversations

because it was how to kind of bring these different techniques together. Obviously, we're making a film in 2022, but how do we, how do we create this, this artificial world? And what's the best way to photograph it? And what's the best way to use, you know, visual effects that we can, we can do now, but that are embracing these older techniques. And so I think we really benefited from time more than anything else that we had this time to chew it through and then also jacqueline

and sarah have worked together before so they also were able to i mean it was all one like the anything any actor who came on set you know Jacqueline would have the paints colors up of whatever the environment was going to be to go with the fitting so that when she was looking everything she wasn't just putting people in costumes for an unknown you know it was all it was all designed in one thing like that that was kind of the way they discussed it together and then with you know and then with rodrigo sort of what his eye would be seeing so it was just a it was just extraordinary in terms of um you know that collaboration i'm interested in the relationship between this movie and your previous two films like there's a couple different ways in which it

feels very starkly different. No, there's obviously like it's a shiny musical Fantasia, but the first two films are really taking place like in the natural world. They feel like they are happening in real time in front of us in a place that is recognizable to us. This is a complete, you know, especially the first act and the final actor, just this total construct. So as a director, obviously as an actor,

I'm sure you've been on sound stages and done stuff like this before, but is it a significantly different task to direct a movie that is in this kind of created world than just going to a location and shooting there? Yeah, well, I mean, it is an extraordinarily different thing because I think so much of, you know, I mean, filmmaking always involves some tension between what you can control and what you can't control.

And I'm a planner. I like really kind of mapping out everything I'm going to do and trying to, you know, walk through things and have really specific shot lists and kind of really carefully construct the way I want to go about something, even when it is naturalistic. So that's, you know, I come to it with a lot of that, but, um, but I, I also, you know, also the accident of, you know, the light or the day or the fog or the thing, you know, that is the kind of thing you can account for, which gives so, so much. I mean, inherently you're going to have some of that anyway, because actors are always the thing that bring life that you can't, you can't totally anticipate, even though you, you, you think you can, you can't. Um, so in any case, it was the most, most um there's something about having that much control

over everything in the frame that is a little it can be a little unnerving uh at first because especially when you're used to always um planning planning planning and then accommodating you know the happy accident and so not having that accessible to you as as much and and and really the aesthetic doesn't call for it you know it's not it's not that's just not the way those those scenes are created um I felt like I had to kind of slip into another mode of filmmaking that I, uh, you know, it was almost like trying to wear like, um, like some item of clothing that you're not sure you can pull off. Like, like I'm going to now wear cowboy boots. We'll see if anybody notices. Um,

that's what it felt like a little bit. I've actually talked to other filmmakers about that, who, um, uh, I had a conversation just a couple of weeks ago with somebody who had just done a bunch of stuff on a soundstage. And I was asking them how they felt about being able to control everything in that way. And they, and he was saying, he was saying it really freaked him out. And I was like, I know it's, um, but I, I mean it was you know there's always there are always things that you need to figure out workarounds for and and there were certainly those on this movie um even even though I had supreme control of every everything in the frame and in Barbie land

but um but yeah it was it it was a different experience I think that's why i was so glad i was so steeped in the um in the film i just kept re-watching those films that were so um just so um as movies because i think it allowed me to find the the kind of freedom in it in a different way um than i had before so i don't know if that answers your question or i'm just no there's something about being able to control the sun which is upsetting yeah i mean that's sort of what i was that's definitely what i was getting at i think you hear a lot of horror stories from actors or even filmmakers to some extent about shooting on green screen and like the infinite possibility but unknowability about what you're

doing and then alternatively if you're in the world you got to deal with this the light you got to deal with the sun you got to deal with the day-to-day but this is like this is what a lot of movies used to be yes frankly very few are now yes it was like well it was also like when i was looking at the shot on the set which is always true you know it is like you know the accumulation of all these decisions you've been making for the past like year and a half and, and they're there, but it was like, you know, it was like I built a dollhouse, um, a life-size dollhouse in many different parts.

And I was able to shoot the dollhouse. Um, uh, and I don't know if there was, it was some, and it was also beautiful. I mean, all the artists who made everything, it was just so extraordinarily beautiful. And I felt that sort of, yeah, this kind of, I wanted my, honestly, I wanted my filmmaking to be able to rise to the occasion

of the artists who made it. I don't know if that makes sense like i was like it's so outrageously beautiful and rodrigo is such a genius and margo and all these actors are so great i was like i want to make sure i'm worthy to receive all these gifts or like that we can make it you know a film that worthy of, of how beautiful all of this is. Well, you did it. It worked. Everybody agrees.

Don't you? Um, I was thinking about this too, as a contrast to the, the previous films, Lady Bird and Joe from little women are, are such whip smart, outwardly confident,

you know, leads women. And Barbie is a nape, you know, she's, she's unsure of herself and going through crisis and the other two characters do have crisis but they deflect and they fight yeah and barbie's going through something different i thought that was kind of an interesting pivot for you identifying a lead who's in that position did you think much about that when you were constructing what you thought barbie's arc should be yeah well so much of it was, you know, the work. I think about the work Margot did as an actor,

because really, you know, at the beginning of the movie, she doesn't have any desires, and she doesn't have any interior life at all. I mean, her interior life is completely continuous with her exterior life. There's nothing, there's no distinction really between her and her environment. And that's a really hard thing to figure out how to do as an actor and not, I mean, she's not vapid, she's not stupid, but she's not, she's not alive in the way that we think of her as being alive, but she's got to activate it somehow and act it. And I think it was finding a sort of purity of, I was going to say intention, but that's not it because she doesn't really have intention. It's almost like a purity of being that she accessed, which was so different. And it's in effect comes off as innocent, but it's something even more extreme than that. And then she lets that sort of disintegrate and get complicated and polluted and changed as she goes.

And it's such an incredibly deft performance. And the truth is, I really only understand it by how she did it. Like, insofar as like her realizing it in herself and us working on it together was how, if she hadn't done it, I don't think I would have understood it in quite the same way. She unlocked it and I felt like we sort of unlocked it together. But it was, it was not obvious how to do it.

And it's, it's deceptive. It's almost deceptively simple the way she had gone about it's it's deceptive it's almost deceptively simple um the way she's gone about it because it was it was a tricky one i have kind of a related question to that because movies like the truman show or the matrix or wizard of oz like you've talked about these movies as inspirations or things that you thought about as you were putting these together maybe pb's big adventure these movies that have like an internal logic that feel like they're operating in a different world.

They maybe even have like a science behind them. Did you have like a textbook or a manifesto or a set of rules that Barbie lives within or that the movie had to live within before you set out to do it? I had a lot of aesthetic rules, I guess. My rules were, again, just going back to that grounding of older film techniques, the question we would always ask ourselves is,

how would they have done it in 1959? What would have been the way we went about this if we were shooting it in 1959? And so even down like the way we decided to rig and frame the car and Barbie land like you know there were ways they did it because they were using certain techniques so like rear projection or front projection or stuff like that like you wouldn't shoot it in certain raked angles because you would never be able to, you would never be able to use the technique that would, that would tell the story. So it was, it was always that,

and it was always wanting to really feel the, I mean, excuse the pun, I guess, but like to feel the box, to feel the box of the studio, to feel the edge, to feel that there's a wall. That was a big part of it too, that I always wanted to get a sense of containment, that I wanted to feel, I wanted to feel that there was, you know, a ceiling rigged with lights. I wanted to feel the, the, how the perimeters of it, I wanted, I wanted it to feel, you know, beautiful and ornate and exuberant, but also claustrophobic on some deep level. So there were, yeah, there were all these sort of aesthetic rules around it.

It wasn't, it wasn't so much like, this is how this world behaves in a, well, no, I mean, I guess we did do some of that too there is kind of like crazy like sort of the ontology of barbie world is pretty strange i mean even this idea the idea of selfhood as divided into lots of people felt kind of like mind-blowing in terms of the metaphysical possibilities there that like self is spread out um i liked that i thought that that was sort of beautiful um but yeah there's a lot of strangeness in it uh and definitely lent itself to conversation i have been thinking about this a lot since seeing it and the ontology is part of it who is this movie for kids because like on the one hand right it's it's obviously barbie so it's it's barbie it comes prefab we

know what barbie is and kids love barbie on the other hand you have put all of this sophistication and insight into human experience into the movie and i that's something that i obviously recognize and love and i'm thinking about when i think about the movie and i that's something that i obviously recognize and love and i'm thinking about when i think about the movie that you made but you know eight-year-olds are going to go see it and right on the one hand if you see something sophisticated when you're eight you start to think differently about the world on the other hand you might be overwhelmed or confused like how much did you guys think about that when you were putting it together you know the truth is i never really see such a sharp delineation

between like, here are the things for adults and here are the things for children. I think a lot of the things that I loved as a child were in some ways a little bit beyond me. And that was part of what was compelling about them. Like, I mean, when I was growing compelling about them like i mean when i was growing i loved musicals when i was a kid um obviously that's clear but like i don't even when i was pretty young like but you know one of my favorite musicals was um

into the woods and i remember um they played it on um you know they had a they videotaped it on, you know, they videotaped it from the Broadway show and they would show it on PBS. And it's great. It was all the original people. And, you know, the two acts were, you know, the first act was all the fairy tales you knew. And then they resolved. And then there was another act, which as a kid, it was so wonderful. It's like, well, there is no second act. Once they resolve the end of the fairy tales, that's it. And then it's so complicated. And then the giant comes back and starts killing people. And then they have to kill the giant. Does that

make him good or bad? Like, it getting so like heady. And I, I remember not fully grasping it as a kid, but also feeling like I was leaning into it because it was something that was asking more of me. It, it took something that had an, a tidy end and started messing it up. And I just, I remember loving that. And I think, I think, I think I, I mean, now, now as a parent too, you know, I read all these picture books to my son who's four and there are strange ones. And then there's a Maurice, you know, Maurice Sindak book outside over there, which is sort of scary in a way, it's terrifying, but you know, I feel him leaning into it and being interested in it. Um, and so I guess I've always thought that children are, um, extremely sophisticated, um, and they have a lot of capacity for things that are just a little

beyond them. I guess I have a memory of it, but then I just see not just my child, but like my nieces and nephews and kids are very smart. I don't, I don't think of them as not being able to handle things in some ways. They might be even more equipped to handle things that are kind of metaphysical and confusing because they don't have such, such a strong sense that the world has to be constructed in one way or another they're just figuring it out as they go i wondered this do you think you would have directed this movie if you were not a parent oh i don't know

i don't know maybe not um i never thought of it that way such a great movie made by a parent i say that as a parent but i mean it's such a great movie made by a parent. I say that as a parent. But it's obviously a beautiful rendition of a mother and a daughter and the complexity there. But I just liked how you did it. Yeah, that's probably true. You know, I think I don't actively

think of like, this is the movie or I'm making this out of the part of myself that's a parent. But I don't, you're probably right. I probably wouldn't have had access to of myself that's apparent but I don't you're probably right I probably wouldn't have had access to it in the same way if I wasn't yeah I we were about the same age I think and I I was laughing while wincing during the Gen Z girls um conversation at certain during lunchtime when Barbie confronts them and I was wondering like how much you think about the the generational divides you know

and the way that obviously this movie is resonating with people but like that felt like a pretty clear communication about maybe how generations see the world very differently and some are more outspoken about it i just want to kind of talk about the way you thought about that well i actually feel very indebted to um the Z, the next group, the guys coming up. Because I feel like actually in some ways, I'm going to be 40 in like a week. I'll be 41 in three days. Yeah. Okay.

So yeah, we're babies, early 80s. We're like the old millennials. We're like on the millennials that they're like, you just got, they made the cutoff. I know, we missed Gen X, just barely. But yeah, I think, I mean, in some ways, well, the character of Sasha, it was really important to me that there would be a real,

that there'd be a real counter argument to Barbie presented by a character who's incredibly smart and who's also right that was necessary that they'd be correct and also that other things are correct um but i feel in some ways that the younger generation is um i'm always amazed by, I feel like they're so smart and they're so, I don't know, genuine and interested and involved. Like, I feel like I'm constantly just deeply impressed by them. And I also have a lot of people, a lot of my friends, their kids are in college now. It's amazing to get to re-experience the world. I don't know. I think the kids are all right.

I think the youth are great. I feel like I'm learning from them all the time. That's how I feel. I wanted to ask you a bit about America Ferrera too, because I feel like she's, it like, it would almost be a spoiler to foreground her character too much in the marketing and promotion of the movie because of kind of what she comes to

represent for the story. So maybe she hasn't quite like had her moment, but that character is so critical and in many ways, the protagonist in a complicated way. I don't know if I'd yet heard you talk about writing that character and thinking about her, but I did want to hear you talk about that.

Yeah, well, America is so incredible in the movie and she is in many ways, she is, um, you know, yeah, in many ways like that, she's the heart of it. You know, she's, um, she holds so much, uh, not, not just of the story, but of, um, the resonance and the emotion and, you know,

particularly for the speech that she gives, that was something that she and I, like, I always imagined her doing it and I mean I imagined her in this part and I was so glad that she she said yes and then and then we had you know time to think about it and talk about it and we really like traded lots of ideas around everything and she really embroidered it with herself and um with her own experiences and it was something where it was so uh when we we shot it we shot it towards the end of the um towards the end of the shooting period and we shot it over a couple of days and it was something where she had been so so vulnerable in creating this character and bringing herself to it um and that when she

finally did it it was it was something where we were all experiencing it together and um i you know i started i don't know it was like the third take i realized i was crying and i looked around and then i thought everybody was crying on the set. And it was not just the women. It was men too. Men were like tearing up and kind of, you know, it was a lot of British men. So they were trying to keep it,

keep it very proper, but they were emotional. You could feel, they were getting emotional and they were kind of, you know, just like welling up, you know? And it made me think,

you know, and it made me think, um, you know, how, how much, you know, it's about, it's really, there's so much about the sort of tight rope that women are walking, but that men equally have a tight rope that they're walking and and they see their mothers and their friends and their daughters and their sisters walking it and they also feel it for themselves and it felt like when she was doing this speech it felt like this kind of collective sense of on that set it felt like it was like she was inviting everybody to step down from that type of tightrope in it and it

almost was like for the men and the women, it's like they didn't even realize they were up there until she said, hey, maybe come down. And then they thought, oh my God, I've been on this tightrope. And I think that that was the thing that was just so moving. And it was something where, you know, you're making a movie alone with this group of people and you feel so connected to each other and to the material

and you don't really know how it's going to resonate. But you think, well, if it resonates in this room, it's got a shot to resonate somewhere else. And I thought, well, this group of people got to experience it. And we just need to, whatever we do in the edit, we just have to preserve that experience so we can give it to a larger audience. I just have a couple of more questions for you.

One, I'm fascinated by pop songs over score for this movie. Obviously, Indigo Girls and Matchbox 20, Home Run, you nailed it. You continue to be the queen of the nineties. Appreciate you. But the new songs, like what was the thinking there behind doing that?

Yeah. Well, you know, I always, I had this idea that it would be, that it would be like a proper, almost like pop uh pop opera pop fantasia that it would be something where there were all these original songs written i mean some of that was you know i knew we were going to have like a lot of dance numbers and I knew I wanted that um the what became the the

beautiful like disco diamond of um dance the night by Dua Lipa so that was kind of the first thing I knew I wanted and I I think I knew I wanted it to be sort of grounded in disco um and you know the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is so obviously incredible. And, you know, I love the Bee Gees and I watched the documentary about them and how much they sort of, that, the feeling of disco felt like Barbie to me somehow. So that was where we started. And then it just felt like it could hold all of these different genres.

And that's when I started working with Mark Ronson and his, um, uh, his writing partner, Andrew Wyatt. And, and they started, you know, they worked on the Dua Lipa song and they worked on the Ken song. And then they started bringing in all of these different artists. And, um, we then, so what they would do, so they were the score as well. So they found these kind of gorgeous connections, um, between the score and the, and the, and the pop song. So it wasn't like we were going from pop song to score back to pop song.

It was, it was sort of like one kind of movement of storytelling. Another movie we're thinking of was like Xanadu with those songs. Like that was so great. And so things like that, that amazing, you know, Billie Eilish and Phineas wrote that gorgeous song. What was I made for? And we use it in the film, but also they were so generous to Mark and Andrew

that they said, you can use the melody however you want. So then Mark and Andrew would weave the melody through all of these different places in the movie in different ways. And they'd turn it into a waltz and it would have different instrumentation so that by the time you finally heard the song at the end, you'd actually be hearing it the whole movie but that was the way in which it was like a it was like a real disco ball of music and then they got to then they got to sort of like refract it however they they saw fit i love that um i read that you're gonna adapt the chronicles of narnia and that had me thinking that that now each of your films will be these kind of manifestations of experience of culture that you had as a kid i know i know i know and like how do you think about that like memory and nostalgia as these driving forces for

your creative directorial pursuits honestly i didn't really think of it until you said it no no no it's good it's good it's a i i i uh gosh i don't know um i don't know i guess i don't know maybe movies are always connected to childhood in some way or some reconciling between childhood and adulthood um i don't know what to say about it um i mean in terms of um i going to have to think about that. I really, that really threw me for, that was like a proper, like when somebody, it was like when your therapist is like,

maybe it has to do with this. And you're like, no way. So anyway, I feel like you kind of blew my mind there. I'm going to have to, I'm going to ponder. Okay. Think about it.

Call me back when you make Chronicles of Narnia. And I'll be like, I've got it. We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers. What's the last great thing. Last great thing they've seen. Have you seen anything good? I know you've been,

you've been hustling with Barbie. Um, well, um, the truth is I've, because I have a five month old and because I'm I'm, you know, because I'm also been hustling with Barbie, I have been kind of not as good getting to the theater as I would like, either the live theater, movie theater. But on the Criterion right now, they have all those Rossellini movies.

So I had never seen and just watched the other day Journey to Italy, which is so great. And I couldn't believe I'd never seen it. And I loved it so much. And I was like, I mean, it was terrific. And it was also, I don't know. It's like when you see some great movie that you've never seen before

and you just are so happy because it's like finding one more cookie in the tin where you just thought there was no more cookies in the tin. You're like, what's this one. It's a terrific. I mean, you know, I feel like movies are like that forever because there's so many great ones,

but yeah, I mean, yeah, I couldn't believe I'd never seen it. Also like George Sanders is one of my favorite actors. I love him every time he's on screen. I feel so comforted and I'm, um,

I know I just never seen it. I don't know. I don't know what happened. I wish I could see it on the big screen. Maybe someone will play it on the big screen soon, but, um, it was nice.

Great recommendation. Yes. It's good. It's not usually like that. He's not such a, he's not a romantic necessarily. Not at all. He's also, he's often such a he's not a romantic necessarily no not at all he's also

he's often like the side character you know yeah he's often like the guy who's um you know slightly more cynical or slightly more gossiping or he's commenting yeah which i like in him like i i find that to be kind of a great quality but in this one i could just spend a lot of time with him on screen and i mean obviously she's divine but um ingrid bergen but um yeah i've always loved him and i i just and so that was that was great um but yeah i mean i don't know why it feels like it's cheating when i watch it at home but it's not cheating it's just it doesn't it's I want to be able to see it big um it's not cheating we I it's a great recommendation hey congratulations on Barbie this it's insane what has happened with this movie and couldn't happen to a better

filmmaker so congrats thank you so much and thanks for getting on the phone with me I hope I made sense you were really wonderful thank Thank you, Greta. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you to Greta Gerwig. Thanks, of course, to Joanna Robinson and our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this episode. Next week, we'll be celebrating Amanda's birthday with a very special episode, long threatened and already recorded so we know it's happening. The time has come for the Movie Star Liquor Taste Test. We will see you then.