Barbie Almost Included A 'Fart Opera' Scene, But Greta Gerwig Decided To Cut It
Farts! They're either the funniest thing ever or offensive to the extreme, depending on who you ask. A good fart joke, executed well, can become iconic — think of the now-famous campfire scene in "Blazing Saddles." But they can also be employed in a lazy, cheap fashion, and that can raise a stink. Comedies have been employing fart jokes for many, many years now, and you're either on board with that sort of windy humor or you're ready to pinch your nose.
"Barbie," Greta Gerwig's blockbuster comedy about the Mattel doll come to life, is void of fart jokes. But as it turns out, that wasn't always the case. Yes, we could've had farts galore in "Barbie," and in some alternate universe, audiences right now are chuckling away at all the farts up on the pink-hued screen. But that's not the world we live in. Here, we can only dream of the fart humor that would've been present in "Barbie." And in a recent interview, Greta Gerwig spoke about the gassy jokes that could have been.
'Too bad it didn't make it'
Appearing on the IndieWire's Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Gerwig and her editor Nick Houy opened up about their love of windy humor. "In every movie we've made together, we've always tried to get in, like, a proper fart joke, and we've never done it," Gerwig said. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on where you stand on this issue), Houy states that any attempt to get a fart joke into a movie "dies like two-thirds of the way through editorial."
But when it came to "Barbie," they decided to try again. As Houy says: "[W]e had a lot of fart jokes in this one, so I thought there was a chance we would get one in. Much higher chance of it being in 'Barbie' than 'Little Women.' [laughs] ... It's too bad. We had a whole fart scene, kind of, in this one. Too bad it didn't make it."
I do have to ask: if they try to get fart jokes in all their movies, did they really try to add one to "Little Women"? If so, I demand to know where. But back to "Barbie." As it turns out, not only were there originally fart jokes in the film — there was a "fart opera."
'This giant fart opera'
Yes, you read that right: a fart opera. What does that mean, exactly? I don't know. Here's what Gerwig had to say: "We had like a fart opera in the middle. We really put together this giant fart opera, and everyone was like — and I thought it was really funny. That was not the consensus." Houy added: "It was in the wrong place, too. We need to work it in to a more significant narrative moment next time. That's my plan."
While Gerwig and Houy didn't elaborate further, it's likely the fart opera had something to do with Ken. After Ken (Ryan Gosling) visits the real world with Barbie (Margot Robbie), he learns about the patriarchy and brings it back to Barbieland. He and the other Kens proceed to transform Barbieland into a dude-bro paradise, full of Kens behaving badly. If I had to guess, the fart opera likely occurred during this segment of the film. Or maybe I'm wrong! Maybe all the Barbies got together for a big fart opera at the end of the movie, only for that scene to be cut.
In any case, it sounds like Gerwig and Houy will continue to try to get a fart joke in one of their movies. Let that be a lesson to you, kids: never give up on your dreams.