Does Greta Gerwig Know Lines From Her Most Famous Movies?

Variety

Director, writer, and actress Greta Gerwig guesses film quotes from her most famous projects, including Barbie, Lady Bird, and Hannah Takes the Stairs.

Transcript

00:00 All right, here I go.

00:02 I know what this is.

00:03 Oh, God.

00:04 No.

00:05 What is it from?

00:06 Oh, yes.

00:07 [ Music ]

00:11 I know what this is.

00:14 It's like a crime scene in my pants.

00:16 That's in "No Strings Attached," directed by Mr. Ivan Reitman,

00:23 written by Miss Liz Merriweather, starring Natalie Portman.

00:28 It's like a crime scene in my pants.

00:32 I think this is the first thing I ever did with Natalie.

00:35 I feel connected to her.

00:37 I love her in May/December.

00:38 Oh, my God.

00:39 She's so brilliant and such a beautiful artist

00:42 and also such a brilliant human being.

00:44 Like, her mind is luminous.

00:47 Anyway, I remember really loving this.

00:50 Mindy Kaling was also in all these scenes with us,

00:54 and it was really fun.

00:55 I'd never done anything like that before, and it was great.

00:59 All right, here I go.

01:02 "Humans only have one ending. Ideas live forever."

01:06 That is Margot and Rhea Perlman talking at the end of "Barbie."

01:12 You understand that humans only have one ending.

01:16 Ideas live forever.

01:18 The thing that was first sort of terrifying but also interesting

01:22 was there is no character.

01:24 There is no story.

01:25 I think by its very nature, it's a doll.

01:28 It's an inanimate object that shouldn't have a story

01:32 because it is there to be projected onto.

01:34 The first thing that I thought about was the fact that my mom didn't like Barbie.

01:38 My mom was one of those moms that looked a little askance at Barbie,

01:42 and I loved Barbie, of course.

01:45 Even starting with that, that story,

01:47 that's a conversation between generations.

01:49 I think Margot's performance in this movie is--

01:52 I'm biased--I think it's extraordinary,

01:54 and I also think it's deceptive

01:56 because she makes it look so effortless, like who Barbie is.

02:02 But this idea that you would be able to play a doll

02:05 that has absolutely no interior life or desires

02:09 and then become human, I mean, that's a hat trick.

02:13 It's the dream as a filmmaker, but then when it actually happens,

02:16 it's overwhelming.

02:19 The weekend it opened, because I live in New York

02:22 and I went around to different theaters and checked the volume

02:25 and checked the projection because I'm neurotic,

02:29 I saw lines of people, and people dressed up in pink--

02:32 men, women, kids, everyone dressing up in pink--

02:34 and no one told them to do that.

02:36 That was a spontaneous thing.

02:38 It was this overwhelming feeling of like, "Oh, it belongs to them.

02:40 It doesn't belong to me, it belongs to them."

02:42 And they wanted to dress up.

02:44 I'll never have that experience again,

02:47 but I'm very grateful that I had it.

02:49 Okay.

02:51 Oh, yes.

02:53 "Murray says that we are fragile creatures surrounded by hostile facts."

02:57 That is from White Noise.

03:00 And Murray is played by the great John Cheadle.

03:03 And we're in the grocery store, which is also in the film

03:06 and also in the book sort of a metaphor for the Bardo,

03:10 like the Tibetan place between life and death.

03:14 "Murray says that we are fragile creatures

03:17 surrounded by hostile facts."

03:19 It's like the most fun thing, 'cause you get to give over to it.

03:23 I loved acting in this, and I miss it in general

03:26 because I think the way I understand writing or directing or any of it

03:29 is I feel most alive in it when I'm getting to do all of it in different ways.

03:33 And so I feel like it's part of who I am.

03:37 So I think I hopefully keep getting opportunities to act

03:41 because I think it helps all of it feel coherent to me, making things.

03:48 "Don't treat me like I'm a three-hour brunch friend."

03:51 That's Frances Ha.

03:53 That's me talking to Mickey Sumner, who's playing Sophie, in a bathroom.

03:57 I'm yelling at her.

03:58 Don't treat me like a three-hour brunch friend!

04:00 I'm not talking to you while you're like this.

04:02 I've written with Noah three times.

04:05 I've acted for him a bunch.

04:07 I mean, I love working with him in acting.

04:10 It's only fun.

04:11 I mean, the reason I wanted to write Barbie with him

04:14 was because we hadn't actually properly written together since Mistress America,

04:19 and I thought, "We'll have the best time."

04:22 And then we did.

04:23 We usually end up being very much on the same page.

04:27 Okay.

04:29 "Different things can be sad. It's not all war."

04:32 That was from Lady Bird.

04:34 Different things can be sad. It's not all war.

04:37 I adore Saoirse. Yeah, or Timothy, either.

04:40 I got to work with both of them again,

04:42 and I hope I get to work with both of them again in the future.

04:44 Saoirse, I just actually got to see her two nights ago.

04:48 Two nights ago?

04:50 We were at an event, and she saw me across the room,

04:52 and then I think we spent the rest of the night holding each other.

04:55 We love each other.

04:56 She's such an extraordinary talent,

04:58 but also I feel like a--kind of like a mother hen.

05:03 And now, here are the nominees for Best Picture.

05:07 I woke up in the morning to hearing about it.

05:11 Beanie Feldstein called me and said, "I will meet you at John and Vinny's."

05:15 So I met Beanie Feldstein at John and Vinny's and had a soft scramble,

05:19 and she brought me a giant bag of Cheetos,

05:22 which is my favorite item of food.

05:27 I would eat so many Cheetos and Diet Cokes on the set of Lady Bird.

05:32 I don't eat them all nutritionally, but it really kept me going.

05:35 And so she brought me this giant bag of Cheetos and Diet Cokes,

05:38 and we celebrated.

05:43 Jefferson went to Paris.

05:45 That's why we have ice cream.

05:51 God, is that from Mistress America?

05:53 No. What is it from?

05:55 Oh, God. Is that--Hannah Takes the Stairs? Yeah.

05:59 Jefferson went to Paris.

06:02 I mean, he was--that's why we have ice cream.

06:06 That's a deep cut. That's a long time ago.

06:09 That would have been an improvised line.

06:11 We wrote the characters and we wrote the scenarios,

06:13 but then there was so much improvisation.

06:16 But I can definitely see myself saying that, and that is not surprising to me.

06:21 I really was able to make kind of messy, wonderful learning art

06:29 and work with people who were also figuring it out and defining their styles.

06:36 And I met a lot of really people who are still close friends of mine.

06:42 I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for,

06:46 and I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for.

06:51 It was an adaptation of obviously the Louisa May Alcott's book,

06:55 but the way I approached it is because it had been adapted for screen before,

07:00 and beautifully so, for many different generations.

07:04 The way I approached it was sort of twofold.

07:06 I tried to read almost as much as I could of what Louisa May Alcott had written

07:10 just in general, of other things, of letters, of letters,

07:13 of other books, of stories, and actually this line is from a different book.

07:19 It's not from Little Women, but it is from her writing.

07:21 She didn't want Jo March to end up married.

07:24 That was not what she wanted for her character,

07:27 but she realized that that was the thing that needed to happen.

07:32 Her publisher told her, you know, book sales.

07:34 It's not something where I set out like,

07:36 I would like to make movies about ladies.

07:38 It's more that I write what's interesting and compelling to me,

07:43 and then they happen to often be about ladies.

07:46 And in a way, it feels like because I work intuitively,

07:50 it almost sometimes feels like a surprise to me that I've done it again.

07:54 I like women. I think they're just marvelous. I like men too.

07:58 I think I'm always interested in the interior lives of women.

08:03 [music]

08:15 [music]

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