Barbie Cut a Fart Opera From the Middle of the Movie, Says Greta Gerwig: I Thou

September 2024 · 4 minute read

If you watched “Barbie” and thought it was missing a proper fart joke, then you might’ve loved one scene that Greta Gerwig and editor Nick Houy left on the cutting room floor. In a new IndieWire interview with the collaborators, it was revealed that “Barbie” had a “fart opera” in the middle of its runtime that got cut because it wasn’t received as well as Gerwig hoped.

“We’ve always tried to get in a proper fart joke and we’ve never done it,” Gerwig said. “We had like a fart opera in the middle [of ‘Barbie’]. I thought it was really funny. And that was not the consensus.”

“It was in the wrong place, too,” Houy added. “We need to work it into a more significant narrative moment next time.”  

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Houy has been the editor on all of Gerwig’s solo directorial outings, but “Barbie” presented unique challenges.

“[‘Barbie’] was so much more a comedy than ‘Lady Bird’ and ‘Little Women,’” Houy said about opening up more to the test screening process. “So we were just, like, ‘Let’s put it in front of people and see how they react.’ Everyone’s different and every screening’s different and we’ve definitely learned, over the years, that you really have to let things have their fair chance and then act accordingly. Once you know it’s dead, you have got to get it out of there.”

Whatever choices Gerwig and Houy made in the editing room as a result of test screenings appears to have paid off. “Barbie” has earned critical acclaim and is a box office powerhouse, soaring past the $200 million mark at the domestic box office in just five days. Its $162 million opening weekend is the highest ever for a female director.

Head over to IndieWire’s website to read the full interview with Gerwig and Houy on the editing of “Barbie.” The film is now playing in theaters nationwide from Warner Bros.

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