I finally saw Barbie! I loved it – I loved the set design, the performances, the jokes, the clothes and the message. It was a pink ball of chaos and thoroughly enjoyable. Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig deserve a huge amount of credit for what they’ve achieved together. Margot put the whole project together and backed up Greta as writer/director at every turn. Margot was largely the one dealing with Mattel too, and I left the theater wondering how the hell Mattel got talked into that script, those jokes and Will Ferrell as Mattel’s CEO. Margot must have charmed their socks off. Anyway, Greta is getting tons of well-deserved hype – Barbie opened with $162 million domestically, the largest opening weekend of the year and the largest opening weekend ever for a female director. The New York Times chatted with Gerwig this week – some highlights:

Barbie’s opening weekend: “I wanted to make something anarchic and wild and funny and cathartic and the idea that it’s actually being received that way, it’s sort of extraordinary. I’m so grateful. I’m so amazed. I’m at a loss for words, really. I’ve been in New York City and spent Thursday and Friday just spot-checking different theaters, listening to the levels and making sure the picture looked nice and trying to relinquish control, which is difficult. But honestly, it’s been amazing to walk around and see people in pink. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine something like this. It’s just … it’s … sorry, I’m just disintegrating into noises.

When she realized the film was resonating: “I think part of the reason I was so fixated on volume levels was because it was a thing I could concentrate on. But mostly, it’s been running into people on the street who are excited and happy and exuberant, because so much of this movie was an attempt to create something that people would want to experience together. So it’s the little things. My producer David Heyman sent me an email from someone who lives in a tiny Scottish town, and there’s a movie theater there that has been struggling, and they had sold-out shows all weekend for “Barbie.” He was like, “The town is showing up!”

Credit to Margot for fighting for Gerwig’s vision: “I was originally meant to just write it with Noah, and then we finished the script and that was the thing that made me want to direct it. It felt so clear to me: If they didn’t want to make that [version], I didn’t need to make it. Margot, as the producer and star, was really the first person to line up and say, “I want to do it her way.” And then as we started adding collaborators and gathering more cast, suddenly there was a large number of people who were excited to do something that was this, excuse the pun, out of the box.

Barbie’s thoughts of death: “The first time I ever screened the movie for an audience, that line — “Do you guys ever think about dying?” — got a big laugh, and everybody who had been holding their breaths for a year and a half finally exhaled. The way it played was something I could always kind of hear in my head and see in my mind’s eye but outside that group that was there, it was a little bit of white-knuckling.

America Ferrera’s monologue about the tightrope that women have to walk in this society. “I always hoped that America would do this part, and I feel so lucky that she said yes. Over the course of a long time prepping it, we really embroidered it with her own specificity and talked about her experiences and her own life, and three takes in, I was crying. Then I looked around, and everyone was crying — even the men were tearing up. I suddenly thought that this tightrope she’s explaining is something that is present for women in the way that she’s describing it, but it’s also present for everybody. Everybody is afraid they’re going to put a foot wrong and it’s all going to come crashing down, and in that moment of doing that monologue, she was giving people permission to step off that tightrope. I don’t think I realized until then that’s what that moment was for. She had a piece of the puzzle in her as an actor and collaborator and artist that explained it back to me.

Whether she predicted the right-wing complaints about “woke” Barbie: “No, I didn’t. Certainly, there’s a lot of passion. My hope for the movie is that it’s an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of the things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men. I hope that in all of that passion, if they see it or engage with it, it can give them some of the relief that it gave other people.

Whether she sees Barbie as a potential franchise: “At this moment, it’s all I’ve got. I feel like that at the end of every movie, like I’ll never have another idea and everything I’ve ever wanted to do, I did. I wouldn’t want to squash anybody else’s dream but for me, at this moment, I’m at totally zero.

[From The NY Times]

That last answer is interesting because it was SO refreshing to watch a big studio movie which didn’t “set up” the inevitable sequel. I’m sure there are paths to take if Warner Bros wants a sequel, but script-wise, the film stands on its own and tells a complete story with no winks towards a potential franchise. Gerwig is also much more diplomatic than I would be able to manage about those nutty incel douchebags crying about Woke Barbie. Now, I was sort of surprised by some of the feminist messages layered into a Barbie movie as well – but any movie that centers Ken so much probably shouldn’t be considered “woke.”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.