Barbie's Fart Jokes Were A Gas

Even without a fart opera, there's still a whole lot happening in "Barbie." At various points, Helen Mirren narrates the story, Ken invents patriarchy and falls in love with horses, and there's a commercial for "Depressed Barbie" — and that doesn't even cover the whole dream ballet situation. So how did Houy and Gerwig balance the wild pace of the movie while keeping viewers along for the ride?

"We're both big George Saunders fans," Gerwig said. "And we talked about his Russian short fiction book because, to me, it was one of the best books about filmmaking without being a book about filmmaking. He says, you have to keep your reader in the sidecar with you. As you're writing and editing, you keep checking on them. Is the reader still in the sidecar or did I lose the reader on a turn?" 

"[Finding the places] to really keep the pace as tight as possible and then where to let it breathe, I think, is so important," Houy said, as a follow-up. "It's everything. I think we've definitely done versions of all of our films where we're like, 'That was too fast, throughout. Way too fast throughout."

"Barbie" is in theaters now, but there's no fart opera. If we had to guess who's silently ripping one throughout the movie, though, our money's on Allan (Michael Cera).