Two women embark on the adventure of a lifetime in Director Josh Greenbaum’s comedy, Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar.
Greenbaum’s film tells the story of best friends Barb (Annie Mumolo) and Star (Kristen Wiig), who leave their small Midwestern town for the first time to go on vacation in Vista Del Mar, Florida, where they soon find themselves tangled up in adventure, love, and a villain’s evil plot to kill everyone in town.
On March 3, Greenbaum discussed the making of Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar in a DGA Virtual Q&A moderated by Director Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water).
During the conversation, Greenbaum spoke about the challenges of bringing a talking crab to life for the film.
“I always try to shoot things practically whenever I can. So, for the crab, early discussions were like, ‘Well, we'll just do it CG.’ And I was really hoping we wouldn't have to. We started to do some research and I found a couple guys in England who have crab puppets. We flew them in and dug a four-foot hole in the beach [for the puppeteers]. I had the recording of the Morgan Freemond dialogue play out of a speaker and Kristen [Wiig] got to sit next to this crab and act opposite him in real time. You're giving direction to the puppeteers. It's so fun because on the set you can see if you got it... as opposed to later on, [thinking] we'll put the CG in it and it will work.”
Greenbaum’s other directorial credits include episodes of Bless This Mess, Fresh Off the Boat, Single Parents, New Girl, Deadbeat; the television documentary series Behind the Mask; and the 2017 SXSW Audience Award-winning documentary, Becoming Bond.
Greenbaum has been a DGA member since 2013.
You can listen to Greenbaum's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.
About the DGA Virtual Q&A Program
Mirroring the ever-popular DGA Membership Screening Q&A program in the virtual space, DGA Members can now learn more about films directly from the filmmakers in this series of livestreamed conversations.