In the early 90s, according to a story that may now have become slightly mythologised in the retelling, the actor Sarah Polley – then aged 12 – was asked by Disney executives to remove a peace sign badge she was wearing. When she refused, Disney blacklisted her. This story lost a little of its potency last month with the announcement that Polley was set to direct the new “live-action” reboot of Bambi. For admirers of Polley’s determinedly independent career, the record-scratch noise could not be louder: this is somebody who worked with Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Hal Hartley for God’s sake, before the age of 22.
Thoughts of Polley returned this week with the now-deafening noise surrounding the release of Barbie, directed by another former queen of independent cinema, Greta Gerwig. Coming up a few years after Polley, Gerwig was so indie that her films didn’t even go to Sundance, they went to South by Southwest. She was so indie that when she moved from micro-budget mumblecore movies to a scripted film with Noah Baumbach – Greenberg, in 2010 – the Guardian called it “her first tentative steps into the mainstream”. Greenberg was made for a budget of $25m, which it didn’t make back; now Gerwig has directed Barbie, for the film arm of mega-corporation Mattel, with a budget of $145m. Gerwig’s swerve into the actual mainstream prompts the question: does the phrase “selling out” have any meaning any more?
