Play against each other on the same stage
Refuse to be a muse
After 12 years of love and two children, 40-year-old director Greta Gerwig finally remembered: "It's time to get married".
Last week, she and her husband, Noah Baumbach, registered at New York City Hall and attended the Billy Joel concert at Madison Square Garden after that.
Those who met the couple said, "They were celebrating radiantly and looking very happy." ”
2023 is also the year of "Greta".
"Barbie," which was released in the summer, set off a pink whirlwind and also made director Greta Gerwig $1.4 billion at the box office, becoming the first female director to win the global box office.
Not long ago, the Organizing Committee of the Cannes Film Festival officially announced that she will be the president of the jury next year. The reason: "Greta Gerwig is a hero of our time, and she has changed the status quo in this highly regulated film industry, in an era that needs to be examined more closely. ”
When she was in her twenties, Greta wanted to be a director, but because she doubted herself, she never dared to tell others.
Now that she has grown from an outsider to the most popular female director in Hollywood, she has learned to show her ambition generously and admit that she has the possibility of success.
01
From actor to director
How to make a box office queen
After seeing "Barbie" this summer, I know what is really out of the circle.
In less than three weeks, the global box office exceeded $1 billion, making Greta the first female director to direct more than $1 billion in a single director, and also allowing Warner Bros. Pictures to set a new box office high after the finale of "Harry Potter".
The Barbie effect is spread all over the world. The soundtrack album of the movie landed second on the Billboard album chart, and the search rate for "Barbie" and "Ken" on the newborn baby naming website skyrocketed by 200%, and even Nolan's "Oppenheimer" was tied to it and promoted as "Barbieheimer".
For Greta, she deserves to have such a "splashing wealth".
Long before Barbie, she was already a high-profile new generation of directors in Hollywood. Although there are only two works, it can be said that "one hundred shots and one hundred hits".
The debut film "Lady Bird" has a 99% freshness on Rotten Tomatoes and has been nominated for five Oscars. She has done many things with one movie that a director can't achieve in his lifetime.
By the time of the second "Little Women", she was already familiar with it, and she had already made this classic literary masterpiece that had been remade many times into her own zeitgeist.
It was this success that brought her the opportunity to direct "Barbie". But she didn't stop at the achievements brought by "Barbie" and turned down Warner's invitation to make a sequel.
More opportunities came her way. Netflix invited her to remake at least two of the classic IP "The Chronicles of Narnia". Disney's new version of "Snow White" is also in talks with her, hoping that she can serve as a screenwriter.
02
From actor to director
Girls should be ambitious
Greta's path to directing has not been easy.
Born in Sacramento, USA, she showed a talent for directing from an early age. When working in a team, she rushed to be the team leader to assign tasks to everyone, but was ridiculed by her classmates: "You are such a control freak!"
The experience of being ridiculed made her realize that ambitious girls are not popular in the group, and in order to fit in with everyone, she has been suppressing herself and not wanting to "show off" again.
In college, she enrolled at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she studied English and philosophy. She originally wanted to study acting, but she couldn't apply for a Master of Fine Arts.
The road to chasing her dream has been delayed again and again, but Greta has never given up. If she couldn't learn it in school, she would do her own research.
She spent 10 years crawling around in small-budget movies, and because of her natural and fresh acting style, she was called the "Queen of Murmur Movies" (Murmur Core is the code name for small-budget films).
At the same time, she has not forgotten her dream of directing.
She ran to the crew of independent films to hold up the radio, secretly observed the director's work on the shooting site, and wrote and changed the script in a notebook, but she just didn't have the confidence to actually do it.
She has a lot of concerns, such as uncertainty about her talent and fear that wanting to be a director will make her look "too ambitious".
The transformation came after a film festival, when she met the legendary British female director Sally Potter. She asked the other a bunch of questions about script writing, but Sally suddenly took her hand and asked:
"Honey, why don't you ask me the question you really want to ask – you want to be a director, you want to ask me how to make a movie, right?"
This question woke Greta up, and she finally couldn't resist writing the "Mother and Daughter Story" that she had rewritten many times into a formal script, which was the prototype of "Lady Bird".
She was 34 years old when this movie was made. Even if the film was a big success, she was worried that she would be eliminated by Hollywood when she was about to enter the reproductive age.
A 40-year-old woman is rare in Hollywood, and a 40-year-old female director is even rarer. For a long time, Greta was afraid to negotiate the price, for fear that she would be kicked out of the table if she opened up.
It wasn't until she met "Barbie" that she had the confidence to bargain.
03
Refusing to be a "muse"
Couples face off on the same stage
Greta and her husband Noah Baumbach were inspired by the movie "Greenberg".
At that time, Noah had already been nominated for an Oscar for "Squid and the Whale", and was a well-known independent film director, and Greta was called his muse.
But Greta hates this statement, she feels like a creator and not a "muse" for anyone.
Even after becoming a couple, she and Noah are completely equal, and the two often compete on the same stage in the market.
In 2017, her debut film, Lady Bird, was released simultaneously with Noah's latest film, The Story of Meyerowitz, competing at the box office.
Both movies open with parents driving with their children, and both have a collapse caused by the immaturity of the characters. Pieced together, it tells about the plight of the family from different perspectives.
They seem to be different, but they complement each other, just like the relationship between Greta and Noah.
Not long after the filming of "Lady Bird", Greta kept working on her next work, "Little Women".
Baumbach, on the other hand, was inspired by the story of his divorce from his ex-wife to create "Marriage Story".
In the 2020 Oscars season, the two faced off on the same stage again as husband and wife.
Before the vote, Greta told Baumbach loudly in her study, "I'll vote for myself!" and Baumbach laughed and said, "Okay, I'll vote for myself."
On the morning of the announcement of the nominations, the two put their phones away in another room and deliberately did not watch the news.
Their eldest son, Harold, was only a few months old at the time and woke up crying. While comforting the child not to cry, Noah repeatedly emphasized to Greta that "no matter what happened today, the most important thing is the child's smile."
Fortunately, the ending was very "equal", and the two each received six nominations and one Oscar each.
Before that, the last time the Oscars had a director who had a relationship compete for the same award was 10 years ago, with Kathryn Bigelow's "Bomb Disposal Unit" and James Cameron's "Avatar".
has been in love for 12 years and has not been married, perhaps because "Noah" has a fear of marriage. He experienced the divorce of his parents since he was a child, and his first marriage did not go well.
In the movie "Marriage Story", he said through the mouth of the character:
"A criminal lawyer will see the best in the bad guys, and a divorce lawyer will see the worst in the good guys. From this, one can imagine how pessimistic his understanding of marriage is.
But Greta's love healed him. Greta, with her great insight, infused Noah's films with pure joy, humor, and energy, leading him to create classics like Francis Ha.
Noah's mention of his wife was simply adoring: "Both as an actor and as a person, Greta is one of the funniest people I've ever met. ”
"With her, you can do things that other actors may not be able to. ”
is also a director, and the two are very compatible from the rhythm of life to values.
Sometimes Noah came home at 3 o'clock in the middle of the night, and his mind was full of "did he get the best shot?" Greta fully understands this, "It's too hard to be a director", this is their consensus.
The two usually get together less and leave more, and often stay on their respective sets. During the filming of "Little Women," Noah was only available every weekend to find Greta, and the two of them walked together on the shores of Walden Lake.
Not long after we were together, Greta once summed up the relationship this way: "I've never been in a band, but I think it's like to make music with someone. ”
"Like Lennon and McCartney in The Beatles, they're both great musicians, but when they work together, they make something greater than the sum of its parts. ”