Robbie Brenner0:00
When I first read the script, first of all, we had no idea what was going to wind up in our inbox. Greta didn't write a treatment. She just said, 'I am going to write the Barbie movie, and it lives somewhere between a Birkenstock and a high heel.' But when it did wind up in my inbox and I read the script, I thought, 'Oh my God, we are really onto something.'
I grew up in what I think was the greatest city in the world, New York City, going to plays and having so much culture from a very early age. I always knew that I wanted to be involved with storytelling. My father loved taking photographs, and he used to have an enlarger, so we would take photographs, develop them in the bathroom, and watch them come to life. But I would say my earliest memory of feeling like I definitely want to be involved with movies was when my father took me to buy a pair of sneakers. They had a hand crank, almost like an animated movie—if you cranked it, all the images would come together. I remember I was so uninterested in getting shoes, but I just wanted to watch all the movies.
I was definitely a social butterfly. I was always producing things—dances, social groups, where we were going to go after, what we were going to do, the dinners. I was constantly bringing people together and creating magic at a young age. I went to Tisch School of the Arts and studied producing. In film school, I met so many people I still have great relationships with. You meet so many people, but you learn every single aspect of filmmaking. I spent four years making movies in New York City until I moved to Los Angeles.
My first job when I moved to LA in 1994 was working for Mickey Rourke. Mickey was amazing. At that time, I was taking different classes, and he said, 'You don't need to take the class. Let's sit here, we're going to read a play tonight and talk about it.' We read some David Mamet plays. I traveled with him, saw a lot, and experienced a lot. A couple of years later, after he did 'The Wrestler,' we put him in 'Immortals.' I worked on that movie, so it was a nice full-circle moment for me.
I just like to empower people and support people. That's how I go about my business and my career, whether as a producer, an executive, or a boss. I think it's about giving people freedom and space to create and do what they do. I've watched people try to micromanage the process—the note on the note on the note—and it's like, I think you just have to allow things to be organic. Great movies start with singular, authentic visions. It's about filmmakers and writer-directors who have that singular vision, like Greta did on 'Barbie' from the very beginning to the end. They have a point of view, a story that's personal and intimate to themselves that only they can tell.
When I first read the script, first of all, we had no idea what was going to wind up in our inbox. She didn't write a treatment. She just said, 'I'm going to write the Barbie movie, and it lives somewhere between a Birkenstock and a high heel.' But when it did wind up in my inbox and I read the script, I thought, 'Oh my God, in that moment I knew we were really onto something.' In general, the movie was so much bigger than all of us. When you're on a journey like that, it becomes a living, breathing thing of its own. You have to step away and just allow it to be what it is.
I think you just have to stay true to yourself and what you believe and your convictions, and never waver from that. When everybody else is saying 'no, no, no,' I'm going 'yes, yes, yes.' It's the things that scare me that I run toward in my life, whether it was 'Dallas Buyers Club' when everybody told me you're never going to get this movie made, and I said, 'Yes I am, I'm going to do this.' And Barbie, too, is really the last thing I thought I would be making as the first movie I made at Mattel. But it is those things in life that give you that feeling where the hair stands up on the back of your neck, and you think, 'That's what I need to be doing.' So I would say it's good to be afraid, it's good to be scared—that's when you know you're doing the right thing.
