“My name is Greta Gerwig and I am the co-writer and director of 'Barbie'.” “(SINGING) I'm just Ken. Anywhere else it would be a ten.” “The most I can say about this sequence is that this was what I most knew I wanted it to be, and no one else knew what I wanted it to be. Every time I look at this, I realize how ridiculous how we did it, that they obviously arrive on these pedal boats to a beach that has no water. It is a solid mass with those waves that are sculptures. And I had everyone in this scene pretend to move in slow motion except Ryan, who is singing. And I think I got four takes and I thought, this is just: Is this so ridiculous that I'm faking slow motion? But then I thought, I guess I have to commit. Now I have done it. There's nothing else I can do. My stunt coordinator, Roy Taylor, who is a brilliant person, very brilliant, and he worked with my choreographer, Jenny White, because he wanted all the fights to be somewhere between dancing and a kind of Buster Keaton or Charlie vaudeville ridiculousness. Chaplin. I love that kind of physical comedy. Then you see men dancing tango in the background as well as fighting. Because they are Kens, they are children. Everything goes together”. “Ah!” “Ah! Ah! “Then we have our Barbies, who are kind of looking in their pink jumpsuits, which I think Jacqueline Durran, who is the costume designer, made the pink jumpsuits because I wore them every day. And she said: I've decided what the Barbies will wear when they take back Barbieland. And I cried when I saw it because I thought, oh, it's a tribute to me. Much of this sequence is the song that Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt wrote, which was not in the script. But I asked them why they were writing the song that became Dua Lipa's 'Dance the Night'. I said we need a Ken song and I think he's going into battle. And then they wrote this song from Ken's perspective. And then I said, Ryan, are you willing to sing this? And he said yes, in the end. But initially I don't know. I think he said, “You never said anything about this at first.” But I think they sent me 30 seconds of an idea for the song, which I loved. And then I thought: Can you make it 11 minutes? Because I want it to go through this whole sequence. And then this part, this dream ballet part, Sarah Greenwood, who is a production designer, and Katie Spencer built this set to echo the dream ballet set of 'Singin' in the Rain' because I love that movie. And it has one of the best dream ballets of all time because they have a dream ballet that's inside another dream ballet, which, I think, when people say, will anyone understand this? I was like, yeah. There is a context for this. They will understand. And every Ken, every Barbie, is a dancer all the time. And then I chose all the actors too because they were good dancers. Jenny White, who was my choreographer, she and I saw a lot of different musicals, different dream ballets. But Busby Berkeley was a great reference.” “(SINGING) I'm just Ken. Anywhere else it would be a ten.” “I love that element of this film of 'we're putting on a show,' which is very connected to theater and also the pleasure of doing something in a childlike way. And we started with dance rehearsals, and I think that was a good way to get everyone to understand that it's not about perfection. It's about this joy. And they obviously embodied that. In a way, you want the audience to come out and say, I'd like to do something. I want to go to play. I want to go prepare something. I want to do a performance. And that's how I felt when I watched a lot of movies as a kid, or theater. I instantly thought, I'm going to put together my own version of 'Starlight Express' right now.” “(SINGING) Nobody else, nobody else, I'm just Ken.”
