This Barbie…farts? Even though Greta Gerwig’s Barbie makes it clear that Barbie and Ken have no genitals (or digestive systems, presumably), the auteur still wanted to get some potty humor into her mega-hit film about the picture-perfect doll. While appearing on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Gerwig and her editor, Nick Houy, revealed that they tried to include a bunch of fart jokes in Barbie, even going so far as to film a “fart opera” that got left on the cutting-room floor.
Houy edited Gerwig’s two previous features, Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019), as well as Gerwig’s smash hit Barbie, which broke box office records in its opening weekend. A lover of potty humor, Gerwig said that she and Houy have tried to sneak in a fart joke into every film they’ve collaborated on, to no avail. “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. Houy added that the attempt typically “dies like two thirds of the way through editorial.” So, that’s why we never saw Tracy Letts’s Larry McPherson or Meryl Streep’s Aunt March let one rip.
Despite their 0 for 2 track record, the pair decided to double down on the fart humor in Barbie. “[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,” Houy said, laughing. “It’s too bad. We had a whole fart scene, kind of, in this one. Too bad it didn’t make it.”
Gerwig elaborated on the scene, describing it as a “fart opera” that was hit or miss depending on the audience. “We really put together this giant fart opera, and I thought it was really funny. That was not the consensus.” Houy explains that the fart opera didn’t make the final cut because it also came at an awkward point in the film: “It was in the wrong place too.”
Gerwig and Huoy didn’t elaborate on the fart opera, or “fartpera,” if you will, but it’s easy to imagine Ryan Gosling and his gaggle of Kens farting up a storm in their Mojo Dojo Casa House. Or perhaps Gerwig went the more subversive route and had Margot Robbie’s Barbie and her fellow dolls—known for their beauty and perfection—pass a ton of gas as a weapon, both fighting the patriarchy and discovering what it is to be truly human. Or maybe Michael Cera’s Allan just came down with a terrible case of IBS. (That seems like the most likely possibility.)
While Gerwig and Huoy couldn’t pull off the fart opera in Barbie, they haven’t lost hope for their next collaboration, whatever that may be. “We need to work it in to a more significant narrative moment next time,” Huoy said. “That’s my plan.” Until then, the Barbie fart opera will live on in infamy, existing in some alternate universe alongside the Cats “butthole cut.”