This week, 60 Minutes profiled director, actor and screenwriter Greta Gerwig.
Her newest movie, the out-of-the-box blockbuster Barbie, was the best grossing film of final yr, bringing in additional than a billion {dollars} worldwide.
When she was initially tapped to jot down and direct it, Gerwig enlisted the assistance of her companion in work and life, filmmaker Noah Baumbach. Baumbach, who has written and directed critically acclaimed impartial dramas like The Squid and the Whale and Marriage Story, was a bit perplexed by the thought of a Barbie movie.
“I couldn’t even fathom it,” he mentioned. “And Greta wrote these pages…and I thought, ‘I can write this Barbie movie. I totally understand what this is.'”
In an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, Baumbach and Gerwig spoke about their work on Barbie, their strategy to screenwriting, and why their partnership works. And Alfonsi tried to be taught what she may a few Barbie sequel.
Gerwig defined that the movie begins “very mechanically…like a clock” with Barbie and mates having fun with a picture-perfect day in Barbie Land. After which all of a sudden, there’s an existential disaster: Barbie asks, “Do you guys ever think about dying?”
That second within the film is the tip results of a writing course of that started with Gerwig penning a couple of early pages for the script and exhibiting them to Baumbach. In these early pages, Barbie meets an outdated lady in her yard and is confronted by the thought of her personal mortality.
“Noah immediately understood what I was doing and was like, ‘You know, this is exciting and there’s a movie in here,'” Gerwig defined.
The writing duo additionally revealed how their writing course of informs their strategy to directing. Each Gerwig and Baumbach mentioned they like to stay to precisely what was written within the script with no substitutions on set when the film is filmed.
Gerwig mentioned that within the movies Woman Chook and Little Ladies, every thing was scripted, down to every “you know” and “um.” She says this stage of element is essential to retain the rhythm of a dialog that is been written and browse aloud lots of of instances earlier than the primary body is shot.
“Once we have something that feels more like a script, then we start reading the whole thing out loud,” she defined. “We vetted the language ourselves, so we can hear if there’s a joke that’s repeated or a rhythm that’s off.”
Baumbach and Gerwig mentioned that when writing the Barbie script, they all the time had Ryan Gosling in thoughts to play Ken, even writing his full identify subsequent to Ken’s strains within the first draft.
When writing for the position of Ken, Baumbach and Gerwig got here up with a wealth of concepts they could not match into their last draft. In an earlier model of the script, they additional explored the “Ken effect” in the true world and wrote a scene for the film wherein Ryan Gosling performs himself.
“We had way too much material for Ken. We would write, and write, and write,” Gerwig defined. Baumbach interrupted and advised Gerwig to not “give it away.”
Alfonsi requested, “Would there ever be a Ken Movie?” Gerwig laughed and mentioned she could not touch upon that, however she did not rule it out fully.
“I mean, the truth is, you know — I guess we’ll see,” she mentioned with a smile.
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