Greta Gerwig says Todd Haynes' “Superstar ”made “Barbie” backers nervous: 'Are you going to do that thing that he did?'

The "May December" director's first film used dolls to tell the story of Karen Carpenter's struggle with anorexia. To this day, it still packs a subversive punch.

It's safe to say that Greta Gerwig's Barbie  has conquered the world. As 2023 heads into its final weeks, the blockbuster doll film sits comfortably atop the year's box office, and seems primed to contend in major Oscar categories. But, as Gerwig herself admits, she wasn't the first filmmaker to make Barbie dolls cinematic.

That would be Todd Haynes, who's also in this year's awards conversation thanks to the success of his new film May December. Way back in 1987, when Haynes was still a student at Bard College, he made his first short film using Barbie dolls. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story portrayed the rise and fall of the eponymous musician, and her all-consuming struggle with anorexia, using modified versions of Mattel figurines. To this day, the short film still packs a subversive punch — enough to make producers wary of Gerwig's totally different take on Barbie, the filmmaker said in The Hollywood Reporter's new 2023 directors roundtable.

"It’s a wonderful thing that we’re sitting at the table right now because I think genuinely, you made [the Barbie movie’s backers] nervous about the possibilities about what it could be," Gerwig told Haynes during the THR roundtable.

Gerwig continued, "I would say the approach in that movie that you took, it was something that Noah [Baumbach, Barbie co-writer] and I talked about. The way you used Barbies was part of the cultural history of Barbie. But I think they were like, 'Are you going to do that thing that he did?' And we’re like, 'Well…'"

Superstar is admittedly hard to find these days — at least legally. Shortly after the film's original release, Richard Carpenter successfully sued it out of legal distribution on the grounds that Haynes hadn't properly licensed the Carpenters' music. Nevertheless, Haynes' debut survives in other forms for those who know where to look: Gerwig said in the new interview that she saw a bootleg at Cannes, and Maestro director/star Bradley Cooper admitted to seeing a print of it in film school before wondering, "Am I going to jail?"

For his part, Haynes sees Superstar and Barbie as two totally different animals.

"My use of Barbies was as a subtext to a story about how women’s bodies are commodified and this incredibly heartbreaking story of a young woman suffering from anorexia nervosa," Haynes said. "But you took on the cultural meaning of Barbie, and you exploded it and also made a concoction … a confection that everybody could share."

A lot of the confection feeling of Barbie comes from its practical soundstage sets. As Gerwig told EW earlier this year, "I wanted to make everything as tactile and handmade [as possible], and shooting miniatures and compositing it so it doesn't feel synthetic. It feels like it's real, it's there."

Read the full roundtable interview — which also features Michael Mann (Ferrari), Ava DuVernay (Origin), and Blitz Bazawule (The Color Purple) — at The Hollywood Reporter.

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Related content:

• Before Barbie, there was Todd Haynes' infinitely weirder Barbie movie about Karen Carpenter

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• A plea to release Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
  

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.