Before Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie captured the zeitgeist with their Warner Bros-backed Barbie, the popular doll was the subject of a much darker indie pic directed by Todd Haynes.
Titled Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), the experimental pic used archival material, dramatized talking heads, and, most importantly, stop-motion animation featuring Barbie dolls to tell singer Karen Carpenter’s rapid journey from obscurity to pop stardom and her untimely death due to anorexia-related-complications. Among the team behind the film was stalwart indie producer Christine Vachon, who dug into the film’s origins and checkered legal past at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival this afternoon.
Vachon isn’t listed as a producer on the pic but receives a “Special Thanks” from the filmmakers and she told the audience in Karlovy Vary that Barbie’s parent company Mattel paid a visit to their office when the film was released but Haynes was able to trick his way out of any legal bother over the use of the doll.
“Todd bought all those dolls in garage sales. They were Barbie rip-offs, so he was able to prove to Mattel that it was an off-brand. That it wasn’t Barbie, but it was what you got if your parents couldn’t afford Barbie,” she said.
The 43-minute pic went on to enjoy a successful run in the downtown New York experimental film circuit and played at several international festivals, including Toronto, but has been withdrawn from circulation since the early 1990s after Richard Carpenter, Karen’s brother, and longtime collaborator, filed a lawsuit against Haynes, which the director lost. Haynes made the film as an MFA student at Bard College and used many of Carpenter’s songs in the film without obtaining permission.
“The reason he didn’t seek permission for the songs was because he didn’t expect the film to blow up the way it did,” Vachon said.
“It pops up on Youtube all the time. It’s kind of like Whac-A-Mole. It pops up and gets taken down. Pops up again and gets taken down, so you can almost certainly find it. And now it’s been restored. There’s a wonderful version that keeps popping up and it’s the true director’s cut.”
Speaking about the family’s suit, Vachon said she believes the Carpenters were “more distressed about how the family was portrayed than the song use.”
“The fact is, we still can’t really show the movie,” she concluded.
While the film still technically cannot be exhibited, in an interview late last year, Haynes said UCLA and Sundance have collaborated to restore and remaster the pic, and he is sure it will one day receive an official re-release.
“Yes, it’ll happen,” he told EW. “It’s not something we’re working on at the moment, but it’s going to happen — it will happen, yeah.”
Vachon had yet to clock her first feature credit at the time of Superstar but had produced a series of shorts. She went on to produce Haynes’ next feature, 1991’s Poison. The pair have collaborated ever since. Their latest piece, May December, starring Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman, played in Competition at this year’s Cannes film festival. As we told you at the time, Netflix picked the film up in a $11 million deal for North American rights.
Gerwig’s Barbie is set to hit cinemas on July 21. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling star as Barbie and Ken, respectively, alongside an ensemble supporting cast that includes America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu, Will Ferrell, Ariana Greenblatt, Emma Mackey, Alexandra Shipp, Issa Rae, Michael Cera, Hari Nef, and Kingsley Ben-Adir.
Plot follows Barbie and Ken as they go on a journey of self-discovery in the real world after being expelled from the utopian Barbie Land.