‘Barbie’ director Greta Gerwig says original script had a ‘fart opera’
This Barbie has no flatulence.
The blockbuster “Barbie” movie’s soundtrack includes colorful hits from Lizzo, Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice, and Billie Eilish, but director Greta Gerwig also revealed that the film was originally intended to include a “fart opera.”
“We’ve always tried to get in a proper fart joke and we’ve never done it,” Gerwig told IndieWire about a longtime pact with her regular editor, Nick Houy.
But apparently there is no farting in Barbie Land.
“We had like a fart opera in the middle [of ‘Barbie’]. I thought it was really funny. And that was not the consensus,” she explained.
“It was in the wrong place, too,” Houy added. “We need to work it into a more significant narrative moment next time.”
Failed farts aside, Gerwig, 39 claims much of her original script, which she wrote alongside Noah Baumbach, 53, includes themes of female empowerment and criticism of the patriarchy and was supported by Mattel.
She did, however, previously state that the toy manufacturer wasn’t exactly thrilled about a line in the flick where Barbie is referred to as “fascist.”
Mattel executives even flew out to London where the movie was being filmed to try and persuade Gerwig to remove the remark.
Nevertheless, it still made the final cut.
“It wasn’t like I ever got the full seal of approval from [Mattel], like, ‘We love it!'” Gerwig told the New York Times. “I got a tentative, ‘Well, OK. I see that you are going to do this, so go ahead and we’ll see how it goes.’ But that’s all you need, and I had faith once it was in there and they saw it that they would embrace it, not fight it.”
She continued, “Maybe at the end of the day, my will to have it in was stronger than any other will to take it out. Part of me thinks that because it was all so idiosyncratic and so wild, it was almost like no one really knew where to start taking it apart. Like, where are you going to start hacking away at how strange it was?”
Gerwig also included several dis-Ken-tinued and controversial Barbie dolls in the movie, including pregnant Midge, Ken’s BFF Allan, Tanner the pooping dog, and Growing Up Skipper.
“Maybe because there was this sense of sheer joy behind it, it was this hard thing to say, ‘Oh no, we don’t want that thing that’s sheer joy.’ People wanted it to exist, in all its weirdness,” the director explained of her artistic choices.
The highly anticipated and marketed “Barbie” movie, which stars Margot Robbie in the titular role and co-stars Ryan Gosling as Ken, opened last Friday and broke box office records as people across the country rushed to theaters to see the pretty-in-pink feminist film.
Any of Mattel’s discomfort with the film has probably subsided by now as “Barbie” made $214 million during its first five days at the US box office alone, CNBC reported Wednesday.
Globally, “Barbie” has made a fantastic $470 million.
The Post has contacted reps for Gerwig and Mattel for comment.
