From the Archives: Greta Gerwig on the Cover of Paste in 2009

In 2009, for our fourth annual Art-House Film issue of Paste magazine, we chose 25-year-old Greta Gerwig alongside filmmaker Joe Swanberg for the cover, calling them “the penny-pinching future of indie cinema.” That turned out to be quite the understatement, as Gerwig’s latest movie, Barbie, had a marketing budget several thousand times bigger than it cost to produce all her early films and raked in $377 million worldwide in its opening weekend.

But in our 2009 cover story, she talks about being amazed by the low-budget action film The Pharaoh Project. “It was beyond amazing,” she told Paste writer Steve Dollar. “The most official-looking car they could get their hands on was a cream-colored Toyota 4Runner, but they played it like it was an FBI armored vehicle. I just kept watching because there was so much to admire. It isn’t that far removed from the kind of movies I’ve made. The ‘let’s just go do it’ attitude. We’re interested in different things. I’m interested in the million tiny deaths that occur in everyday human interactions, and they’re more interested in sweet-ass roundhouse kicks. But the motivation to make something is similar.”

Dollar’s list of other “talented, original directors who have thrived despite—and sometimes because of—miniscule budgets and improvised means” included several other filmmakers who’ve gone on to mainstream box-office success like the Duplass Brothers, Jeff Nichols, Aaron Katz and Andrew Bujalski. But Gerwig’s career arc has been especially gratifying to watch, and looking back at our 2009 feature makes it even more so:

“Gerwig—who spent the past year racking up performances in neo-grindhouse genre flicks like Ti West’s House of the Devil and a non-mumblecore indie in which Iggy Pop plays her dad—has a good laugh about her efforts to go Hollywood. ‘I’ve made a bunch of audition tapes,’ she says. ‘I start cracking up because I can’t get through the scenes. Some of them, I have to cry and say things in Southern accents.’ She drifts into her best Scarlett O’Hara: ‘Johnny did not kill that bay-buh! I killed it! Because I hated it!‘ Nonetheless, the actress confesses, sure, ‘I’d love to be the girl in the dinosaur movie.’ Well, okay, maybe a movie with little plastic dinosaurs.”

For now, she’ll have to settle for little plastic dolls and being able to make any movie she wants. Congrats, Greta!

Josh Jackson is Paste’s co-founder and editor-in-chief.