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  • I'm Greta Gerwig, and I directed and wrote the screenplay for "Little Women."

  • Jo, would you like to dance with me?

  • So this is "Laurie" Lawrence and Jo March.

  • And they're hiding in a back room at a party, and they're talking about maybe trying to dance.

  • And obviously, this is Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet, who I adore.

  • You can laugh if you want to.

  • It's funny, I know.

  • I have an idea of how we can manage.

  • And then they dance.

  • Well, they're going to dance outside.

  • And this came from, it's in the book that Laurie and Jo dance wildly, they say.

  • But, I was looking for a hallway while we were scouting.

  • Because it's in a hallway in the book.

  • And I wanted a long hallway, and I had this idea for how it would look.

  • But I couldn't find one.

  • And then I just kept coming back to this location because I liked it.

  • And then I came back at night, and I thought, oh, you could see the dancers through the window, and then see them outside as these figures having their little party on the porch.

  • And my choreographer, who's very wonderful, Monica Bill Barnes...

  • She created this dance with Saoirse and Timothée.

  • And I wanted it to feel both totally modern and period accurate, in terms of I didn't want them to be doing dances that they wouldn't necessarily know.

  • But I did want it to feel joyful and young, like, you know, kid's dance.

  • And this is part of the story that takes place in their childhood, obviously.

  • And it has this very snow globe quality.

  • I wanted everything to feel very shimmery and very beautiful.

  • And we shot with a certain filter to give it that feeling.

  • And it has this warmth.

  • We called it this "golden glow" that we were going for.

  • And every part of it looks like a painting, but also an ornament.

  • And this is, of course, Laura Dern as Marmee.

  • And this is the first time you're really inside the March house, looking at it through Laurie's eyes, and seeing this kind of glorious female utopia.

  • And the actors...

  • I wanted them all to be speaking over each other, which took a lot of coordination, a lot of rehearsal to get this choreographed chaos going.

  • I enjoy baking in the middle of the night.

  • And don't mind the clutter, Mr. Lawrence, we don't.

  • Laurie, please.

  • But I just wanted it to be this cacophony of words and sounds, and everybody's doing something, and there's all these little moments.

  • I looked at a lot of Altman thinking about it.

  • Because he always has a way of creating spaces with lots of people and lots of activity.

  • And I thought one of the beautiful things about "Little Women" is the way the male characters hold the space for who women are without a spectator.

  • And he's looking at them, but they're existing naturally, and he loves them because of who they are.

  • And I think Timothée does such a beautiful job, and these girls are so wonderfully loud.

  • And then this kind of position of this magical house that looks like a little mushroom coming out of the ground, but inside it's like a jewel box when you open it up.

I'm Greta Gerwig, and I directed and wrote the screenplay for "Little Women."

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