Greta had never met Ryan Gosling but both she and Margot knew he WAS their KEN!

nice to see you yeah yeah where what was the last time I saw you is that a woman yeah remember we did that massive panel yes Leicester Square yes yeah yeah yeah yeah I totally remember that but also I think I remember was doing like a one-on-one at the um Hotel yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah this is actually your third this is the hat trick the third one yeah thank you thanks so much um can I just say huge congratulations thank you on this film it's very aware that you come out of a cinema feeling like you've seen something totally unique because this makes you laugh yeah this made you want a high kick through the you know all of it just sing along it's just but also it's so clever because it's got It's got a real purpose it's got of you know it's got not a serious narrative but it does kind of make you think yes sorry I've suddenly realized I was like is that me it's normally my mom's phone and so it's fun but yeah it just covers so so many bases congratulations thank you thank you yeah I can't believe it feels so strange to be the last time you know we talked for a little women until now it kind of because of everything that's gone on feels like a Time splice like it kind of felt like we just I don't know yeah I've got a time machine from that moment to this moment yeah but yeah yeah thank you I'm so glad yeah all the time I'm gonna go was that two years ago or was that five years ago I only know from the age of my children hey I was like that was four years ago it must have done because of Yeah Christmas 2019. yeah that's right yeah so and did you know when you got on board with this what story you wanted to tell no I didn't I knew I was I knew I wanted to work with Margot um and she came to me about it but I didn't I didn't really know I wanted to direct it until after I had the script written that I did with Noah babak so I didn't have and it was but it but I had this sense of like this is just complicated and strange and the fact that there's no obvious path through it is part of what made it kind of exciting um and then once we had the script written I was like all right I I love this this is this is completely bananas I can't wait to do this and I guess with with that in mind there's the idea of the music in this is such an integral part yeah that a lot that had to be there before you filmed or was that yeah yeah well we knew I knew um I I always kind of I mean I have a long-standing love of the movie musical so um it goes back a long way and I also I always knew because Barbie was so uh you know it felt like it belonged to it felt like it belonged to disco to me in some deep way yeah and um and I you know was sort of thinking about it like you know it's from 19 it was invented in 1959 and it goes until now but this sort of sense of like it being um belonging to like every time in no time and I was thinking about I mean there's a lot of musicals I thought about from like you know like Wizard of Oz to Singing in the Rain to you know all of those but also Greece it was one that I thought about a lot because it is Xanadu 100 Love Xanadu also Xanadu has like older Gene Kelly in it and it like amazing I love that yeah um but yeah but Greece had this quality of being like you know it's a musical about the 1950s but it's a disco Musical made in the 70s about the 1950s and they were in high school and everybody's 30. and there's something about it where you're like this is exactly the sort of pitch yeah that's correct for uh this kind of movie so I had sort of had that in the back of my mind I had a playlist going of all the things I thought felt like Barbie to me yeah and then um I Mark Ronson came on and he just got understood it right away he understood exactly what the thing was understood exactly how pop music would function in it yeah and he he wrote with Dua the song that's the big sort of dance number at the beginning and then he then we had talked about different things with Ken and then he started he and his song writing partner Andrew Wyatt started writing this Ken ballads that was so wild and they they I I I think they had the lyric they said I'm just Ken but and then like and I was like that's it that's that's right that's right and then it was it kind of progressed from there and then in terms of like once we started to have the movie in in editing it was just like there's just so many opportunities for original songs that felt um you know it was it was like the soundtrack had to be an event in and of itself yeah absolutely yeah it's funny you mentioned there was a divorce because the way the film starts with this there's a sound of wind and it really my first thought was the wind was The Wizard of Oz you know with that colorful the the um yeah yeah and kind of it's like and then at that kind of landscape and the way they're dressed almost as well the little girls is kind of like oh oh yeah it's almost they almost like reverse with Wizard of Oz where we start in on leave us and then we come back and it's messed up yeah I thought it was great and then Helen Mirren comes in and she she's you know she's we feel safe we feel safe for sure yeah yeah she's extremely official yeah yes um uh before we we talk a bit more about music and stuff but but Ryan I mean yeah you said that this rule was written for him it was did he know that you were right in this room for it no no I never met him I didn't know you've never met I'd never met him I I really I didn't know him at all I just watched his movies you know like everybody else and I've always just thought he was I've always said I've always loved him in movies I mean quite dramatic roles too you know like I I remember watching him in half Nelson and just being like Oh my God he's amazing and Valentine yeah Blue Valentine like just these really like you know deeply felt roles but I also always had this belief about him which was not entirely based on any I mean he's so good on like when he's hosted Saturday Night Live he's really good at it yeah but I just always believed he's really really funny and um and I thought as soon as it was in when as soon as Noah and I were like it's Ryan it just started to make sense and yeah so but no I didn't know him and I had to like so I'd re I'd been thinking about him for like a year in a very like active way and then I had to like call him and tell him it was odd did he was he like okay I mean I think did he see the whole picture as well you know it was kind of like they're singing There's dancing there's roller boots I think he was just sort of confused about the whole thing he was sort of like I don't know like I think he he thought it was I was speaking almost in hyperbole at the beginning like I you know I've been thinking about you for a year I was like okay but like I I don't think he realized like how much that was true um I also don't think even when he arrived in the UK to shoot he knew what what it entailed but not totally he admit that there was lots of things that he kind of um got on board with after cheers just all of it like the just even things like little mannerisms or little you know his movements there there's no dialogue but also just the way he delivers so much of the dialogue as well and then oh yeah personality and it's just yeah and it's like the gift that keeps on giving as well because yeah it's just constant and you're like I mean Margo's amazing I'm not yeah not you know she's phenomenal in this and almost encompassing that kind of almost slightly robotic thing of her performance it's just so subtle but brilliant yeah no they're both like it's they're both like extremely go For Broke performances and I think that they had the safety in each other yeah that they were able to do something so wild but yeah yeah Ryan I don't know he tapped into something totally I I don't I don't know as much as he's been trying to like remove himself from that whole Disney Club thing it's so in him I know it's in him he's still in him he said a very beautiful thing he said um about himself with the role he said something like you know because he started off as like singing dancing you know all that and that he said he felt like for many years of his life he really tried to distance himself from that and to be like I'm a mature man now and I don't do that anymore and then like he sort of said that it was like almost making peace with that kid to do this role like that yeah that he was able to be like no that kid's gonna be the kid who does this role and that I don't know that felt very meaningful even just for us like making a movie about you know things children play with that you would need the kid in you to figure it out yeah totally I'd like nothing better than my kids encouraging me play with Lego or I know I know because so many like oh my God so much so many like it was my four-year-old the four is like just a little too young for Lego he's it's like it's like it I don't know what it does to him he like becomes a different person he like stares at it he's so intense and his little fingers can't quite do all of it yet but he loves it so much he's always he got a street sweeper Lego which he can't he loves so much he wants to be a street sweeper he loves them he waits for them we like watch the out the window he knows the days the streets come like because that's like the day that there's alternate street parking in New York he's like the street sweepers are coming they're coming behind the garbage trucks and then we like wait and then he does it and he's like so fixated but I I feel like that sort of that kind of like serious play yeah is so much of what went into the movie Yeah Yeah from everybody it's lovely why mark what was it about Mark and Andrew's work that you were like these guys are right for this project I think Mark has um when I think about like Mark's music that he is able to um create things that sound um modern but also Timeless yeah he and he's able to tap into so many different um genres and feels and it's just for me it's like you know I'm not a musician I'm not sophisticated I just know what I like and in in a way it's like for me when I realized um I realized when I was in college the thing I cared about in movies most of all was the director which I didn't totally realize like when I was in high school I'd go to movies like the way I think most people go to movies which is I'd I was following actors which is not the wrong thing to do but I was like I like this actor I like that actor and then when I got to college I I was I there was a video store that had that was organized by director and it suddenly that was when it hit me I was like oh you like the Cohen Brothers that's what you like it like I was like that's those are those it suddenly clicked in yeah and that's kind of sent me on this path and I'm on now but I think equally um with music like you know I like a lot of different musicians but I suddenly realized like oh I like the songs Mark has produced like yeah I like these songs they're all and I didn't totally know that they all came from the same person because I think unless you really are in music you don't necessarily think about the juicy stuff yeah yeah yeah or I mean I guess you know you know Quincy Jones and you know but yeah yeah like it's a bit it's less top of mind I think yeah you know um because he straddled both those worlds as well in terms of being you know Mark Ronson the performer as well as being Mark Ronson the producer as well that's kind of like he can bring both those worlds to it I think as well exactly and he also just I mean it was it was this you know it was a it was a suggestion I was like I love all of his stuff and then we got on the phone it was just instant yeah like and it was actually me him and Noah talking a lot and we just talking about music and feelings and and and even like scores um because he wrote they wrote their score too and they we talked about a lot about like um Dave grusin scores from the 80s which I always really loved like there's like a quality of them that it's um you know um it's like the instrumentation is something you'd never hear today yeah and there's like a sort of sweetness and a pureness about the is it's sort of like no one would ever do that now we I can't tell you how many times we listen to this sort of working girl March from Tootsie um like it's such a great yeah it's so great or the music from the um from the end of um Heaven Can Wait um it's just beautiful simple emotional and almost too much and I that's what we were going for in this well I think because of that because there are these kind of musical moments throughout the film um having the same person work on the score is working on them is so clever because he creates something different but there's also a Synergy between the two like even you know that that at the beginning when they're bashing the doors it's smaller isn't it that yeah old piece of music and then yeah and then it goes in it kind of like we get into like synth Vibe When we arrive in this world and then we get straight into lizzo who almost lyrically works as a narrator like hey I'm still singing I know I know she's um no she so they kind of went into this kind of you know synth disco world that then goes into the lizzo song and they had written the lizzo song before she came on as like score um and then when she came on she just I remember they were in the studio for a long time and Mark was texting me and I was sending voice notes back because they were just trying to figure it out and then at some point mark said she just started singing literally what was on screen and it became so funny because it was this like it was this tone um of it's almost like so ridiculous it's clever and that like it kind of it captured exactly what we liked about it so anyway they when Mark sent me the song I was like this is I could not have this is so perfect she understood it so right away and um yeah I mean really it was so it was like having Mark produced the soundtrack and Mark and Andrew you know write the score and then write some of the songs it was like it allowed it to be one thing like it allowed it to be an album not like a here's the score here's the pop song yeah yeah it allowed it to blend and then they could even reference the different pop songs in this score yeah like it would just kind of keep evolving so they reference like the like the do do a song is referenced in the kind of marching band version that comes up when you go to the Mattel offices yeah is like that's the do a song referenced and that's why it's so it doesn't feel out of nowhere yeah um and I joined that down in Cuba will meeting March yeah oh yeah yeah well as soon as they started doing it as a marching band it was like exactly it was like it just clicked in it was like it's that sort of like Goofy slightly goofy nobility like no nobility of of corporate America boardroom table kind of thing yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely there were some other brilliant cues that I really kind of they're when the tear yeah of course yeah and this kind of really I don't know if it's a music piano or something that kind of little and it's it's so powerful because you know we kind of Believe We Believe Margo was Barbie yeah and the idea that Barbie's crying is kind of so kind of like it's like oh something I punch in a weird way I know and that actually is that piece in that section is actually um so uh Billy eilish and her brother Phineas wrote this incredible song for the movie that's so beautiful I mean when they said that that we showed them like 30 minutes of footage and then they said they got it from that yeah and they said what do you want the movie what do you what kind of song do you want and I said well I want you to write whatever you want to write off of this I was like but I think what we're looking for is Barbie's heart song and she said Okay and then a week later I got a voice note from the two of them which with this I mean I just started crying it was such a beautiful song and then they said so generously to to Mark and Andrew they said you can take that song and do because as soon as we got that song and those piano chords we were like oh this is perfect for this week we call them The Shining section and then looking around in the world and um and they said you can do whatever you want with it you can sort of transpose it and do whatever you want so that particular song in different forms plays at that bus stop yeah and then it plays again um when Margot well not to give too much away but yeah when she's running through the Mattel offices opens a Magic Door and then she meets someone oh and um when she meets someone it's played they turned it into like a almost like a Lawrence Welk 1950s thing that's playing through the radio but it's the same same song yeah and then um it plays again when um Margo and Gloria meet and then and then it plays again at the end and it was just something where they they were just so generous with this song and they allowed it to expand and to sort of move through these different areas and so that also you know it that was another instance of the score and the music they all informed each other yeah it comes back in a bit bit at the end where she says come walk with me yeah yeah it comes in yeah and then it comes in then you hear a voice finally at the very end yeah when you hear Billy's voice about it I mean that voice is just I know I know she's such a good Storyteller isn't she I mean also just when we got the the first lyric like I used to float now I just fall down and I was like Ugh like that's so beautiful I know I know and like um what was I made for I'm just something you paid for I just like oh the whole thing was like I couldn't believe how good it was like I don't know that's the amazing thing about making movies is um you know they're these incredible collaborative efforts and you know when I think about the the music that's in the movie and I think about lizzo and Dua and Billy and Carol G and Sam Smith and Charlie XCX like every one of those people tapped into the same thing somehow but in their own different ways you know and and it was um you know I grew up a child of the 90s and like movie soundtracks meant a lot to me like going to Tower Records and buying movie soundtracks and I feel like somehow the movie soundtracks is maybe not is it not maybe is it as exciting as it was in the 90s but I think you're always maybe a little bit trying to make the movies that you watched yeah that you watched it meant something to you so I was like I just wanted it to be like this terrific soundtrack oh my God and Nicki Minaj Pink Panthers I mean like like every time I list the number of people who are in this movie I just can't believe it yeah um The Breakfast Club was the one for me that kind of really was like God yeah just in terms of like what you kind of like I mean you listen to that soundtrack non-stop something and yeah the film wouldn't be the film without it really yeah it's kind of like this marriage of the two is just something quite special my my one was I actually um weirdly um baslerman's Romeo plus Juliet that soundtrack was a big one oh God yeah totally and also like they like when because I was getting CDs at that point and you get like the jewel case and they have the booklet with more pictures which you'd like like really I mean like it really yeah loved it twice I love my vinyl is the kind of brick getting the sleeve out and just reading who's doing something back in vocals I mean the vinyl is better too because um you know it doesn't the problem with the jewel cases is they would they they were brittle and they'd crack and then you'd be like dead do I take it apart and get a new jewel case like if you were a little bit like I was which was like everything has to be pristine um went through my night I caught throw my CDs out yeah neither can no one it's actually like we've had like legit fights about this because they were all in our so son's bedroom for a long time because he was like no I need all my CDs and I was like oh my God but he you know the truth is and this is a you know it is real it's like there are things he has on CD um and on record that are not digitized and I think that there's um sometimes there's a little bit the danger with um everything being you know on streamer yeah is it makes you believe that that's a totality and it's not yeah um the same thing is I find this all the time with images um because you know whatever the algorithm is floats certain images to the top yeah and it's not a totality of images it's the ones you see so I I find like in researching and like when we were doing this movie and Little Women and all of them really is like going back to you know going to museums going to old art books looking at things that are not the first search term that arises because I actually think it gives people it makes people feel like well everything's on there yeah it's not all on there and you're gonna be limited if you only stick to that um you know yeah absolutely and a couple of other scenes if we do you don't want to take a simple coffee yeah and go for it um they're all kind of like fight section and the beach bottle and the dance fight it's like a Trilogy of like Joy I know it's like don't stop I know I know it's it's there was a there was a a dance troupe here in the UK who used to being like top of the pups I can't remember what they were called Gina might be able to remind me um hot gossip yes and that's what the dance fight reminds me of these because I was like tiny when they were and they were just if bands weren't able to perform on this music show they would have hot gossip like interpret the song that sounds amazing I was like Ryan it is kind of embody you know got it I've never heard of her videos exactly up my alley but it's the Journey of this thing that starts off yeah you know the kind of song Always number two yeah yeah and then into the whole kind of queen Opera Beach fight to talk to me a little bit about I guess creating that how long have you got a great a little bit about that whole yeah that whole section of the film because it's yeah it's brilliant well it was definitely something where like I would say it's sort of like Mark had these little Mark and Andrew had these little lines and chords and then we started growing and growing and growing it and then um it got to the point where I just I just I knew I knew I wanted it to become sort of like an epic uh almost like like almost like meatloaf like that just you know staying alive yes yeah of course yeah no I mean actually yeah I I literally just texted a video of that to Ryan yesterday like you know when they're doing like they're like this thing yeah amazing and the headband yeah all of that I mean like we talked about all of that and I just um you know I love that kind of like uh super dramatic Glam Rock thing like it's so fun for me um and then I think at some point we had this song uh pretty well written and then the dream ballet was just my uh Folly I don't it was it was what I wanted to do I was just sure of it and um so I said to to um Mark and Andrew I was like I need um I need this music to be like like go through all these sections I needed to be epic and um so then they just sort of um continue to create all these different crazy Bridges and different things and um and then they wrote the section for this this dream ballet and it was so wild and great and just and also the song sort of starting as you know I'm just Ken is a lament to I'm just Ken as triumphant was the um was kind of that that journey of that moment and yeah I really um it it's one of my favorite things I've ever gotten to to to put on film I felt there was something about it I was like this is actually deeply who I am I guess I I think this is um like I felt extremely I I mean I I remember the day Ryan shot like um this we did this sort of 360 shot on the battlefield yeah and he was like singing and like doing all this stuff and then they and then they Beach off um I mean I don't even know what I'm but I do know what I'm saying but um um I remember when he did that that day and I was like hid behind a bunch of objects so that I could be watching anyway um I I remember when he did that I just I felt you know I I'm you know when you make movies to a degree you're always exposed yeah um but you're never really exposed where people I I you know people assume there's like you know some uh some Auto biographical element or something and they think oh well that must be part of it and you know funny way that's like almost never where it is it's never in the more obvious places it's always like and I felt when I watched Ryan do that singing and on the beach and all that stuff I never felt more exposed actually as a person than that which doesn't you know nobody would be like oh yeah Ryan's singing in this crazy can battle is where Greta feels the most like uh oh I guess that's who I am but it is that is truly and that whole dream ballet I was like that is the most me I think of anything that I've ever done and I don't know I don't know what to say about that but I'm like I guess it's just out there yeah that's what I see what I want to make I think I think you speak even that kind of dance move that he does he's like no I know every time this thing I'm like every time I say it I'm like yeah there I am I mean in some weird way and oh God it's such a treat to get to chat too so nice to talk to you I can't believe it's been four years but yeah it happens it's making not so long next time I know yeah thank you so much thank you so much

Channel: Soundtracking Extra with Edith Bowman

Views: 6,526

Keywords: Barbie, Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt, music, film, score, soundtracking, Billie Eilish, Fineas

Id: dAglZCsoOr4

Length: 29min 15sec (1755 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2023