Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’ caused a world shortage of pink paint
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is the most anticipated film of the year, hitting movie theatres on July 21st.
The film, starring Margot Robbie as the eponymous character and Ryan Gosling as Ken, is no small-scale production. In fact, during production, the film caused a world shortage of pink paint.
Talking to Architectural Digest, Gerwig, production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer discussed how they created the Barbie dream world.
Gerwig explained: “I wanted to capture what was so ridiculously fun about the Dreamhouses. Why walk down stairs when you can slide into your pool? Why trudge up stairs when you can take an elevator that matches your dress?”
The director added: “Maintaining the ‘kid-ness’ was paramount. I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much.” Essentially, she didn’t want to “forget what made me love Barbie when I was a little girl.”
Thus, Gerwig wanted the set to possess “authentic artificiality,” stating: “We were literally creating the alternate universe of Barbie Land.” To achieve this, the crew used lots and lots of pink paint, so much so that Greenwood stated, “The world ran out of pink.”
To confirm this bold claim, the Los Angeles Times asked Rosco, the supplier of the hot pink colour, if this was true. Lauren Proud, the vice president of global marketing at the company, explained, “They did clean us out on paint. There was this shortage and then we gave them everything we could.”
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