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