This week, 60 Minutes profiled director, actor and screenwriter Greta Gerwig.
Her newest movie, the out-of-the-box blockbuster “Barbie,” was the very best grossing film of final 12 months, 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 accomplice 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 concept of a Barbie movie.
“I could not even fathom it,” he mentioned. “And Greta wrote these pages…and I believed, ‘I can write this Barbie film. I completely perceive what that 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 might a few “Barbie” sequel.
Gerwig defined that the movie begins “very mechanically…like a clock” with Barbie and buddies having fun with a picture-perfect day in Barbie Land. After which immediately, there’s an existential disaster: Barbie asks, “Do you guys ever take into consideration dying?”
That second within the film is the tip results of a writing course of that started with Gerwig penning a number of early pages for the script and exhibiting them to Baumbach. In these early pages, Barbie meets an previous lady in her yard and is confronted by the concept of her personal mortality.
“Noah instantly understood what I used to be doing and was like, ‘, that is thrilling and there is a film in right 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 Fowl” and “Little Girls,” the whole lot was scripted, down to every “you already know” and “um.” She says this degree of element is necessary to retain the rhythm of a dialog that is been written and skim aloud a whole lot of occasions earlier than the primary body is shot.
“As soon as we have now one thing that feels extra like a script, then we begin studying the entire thing out loud,” she defined. “We vetted the language ourselves, so we are able to hear if there is a joke that is repeated or a rhythm that is 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 function of Ken, Baumbach and Gerwig got here up with a wealth of concepts they could not match into their remaining draft. In an earlier model of the script, they additional explored the “Ken impact” in the true world and wrote a scene for the film by which Ryan Gosling performs himself.
“We had approach an excessive amount of materials for Ken. We’d 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 Film?” Gerwig laughed and mentioned she could not touch upon that, however she did not rule it out utterly.
“I imply, the reality is, you already know — I suppose we’ll see,” she mentioned with a smile.
The video above was initially printed on December 3, 2023. It was produced and edited by Will Croxton.