Greta Gerwig found a helpful “Barbie” critic in her then-10-year-old stepson, who responded positively to her pitch video, encouraging her about the film.
On Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast, Gerwig unpacked the process of pitching the idea, based on her script, to 20 people at Warner Bros. in early 2021. The pitch came after Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling agreed to be attached to the project, as well as Gerwig having written the script.
“I made a little movie pitch with my editor, Nick Houy, who I’ve worked with on every movie I’ve done. And I actually remember they said ‘No, no, we don’t do it this way. You have to do like a PowerPoint and then talk,’ and I just thought ‘No, that’s going to be boring. I’m going to make something. I’ll just make it, I’ll hit all the things we’re supposed to make, but let me make this,’” Gerwig said. “I remember with that video, too — my stepson, he was 10 turning 11. And I showed him the pitch video, and I was like, ‘What do you think?’ And he said, ‘I’d watch that movie.’”
“I was like, ‘Well, if he thinks he’d watch it, I don’t know. That’s pretty good,’” Gerwig continued. “He’s not interested just because it’s [us]. If anything, it’s the opposite. He was engaged. He was like, this looks funny.”
Maron summarized it as “he’s not old enough to be culturally indoctrinated with cynicism.” Gerwig also pointed out her stepson’s observations after he’d watched the second teaser trailer.
“He was like, ‘No, this looks hilarious. I want to see this.’ I show him lots of stuff because I think he’s really smart and he’s really funny. And I remember I showed him — we had the teaser trailer, but then we had the second teaser, which had like the ‘Hi Barbies,’ ‘Hi Kens,’ and I was like, ‘What do you think of this?’” Gerwig recalled. “And he was like ‘That’s funny. I like it.’ I said, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘That’s exactly the kind of stupid stuff I’d expect Barbies to do.’ He’s like, ‘They just say hi to each other all day.’ I was like, ‘Oh, that’s good, right?’”
Gerwig said she often checks the temperature of things by asking her stepson, now 13, what he thinks about movies and more. Maron praised the integrated humor that doesn’t feel crammed into a kids’ movie for grownups.
Maron added, “On some level — certainly with the men in the movie — it speaks to an emotional immaturity that goes from age 5 to the end of life.”
Gerwig emphasized that girls are equal opportunity and can also be quite emotionally immature at times.