Barbie: Man & Horse Author Reacts to Movie’s Hilarious Inclusion of Book

Barbie has been in theaters for nearly a month now, and it’s breaking box office records left and right. After only 17 days in theaters, Barbie reached $1 billion at the box office, and it just won its fourth weekend in a row.  There’s a lot of love about the Greta Grewig-directed movie, especially Ryan Gosling’s Ken. Once Ken goes to the real world and learns about the patriarchy, he takes the ideas back to Barbie Land. However, it’s revealed that he was really more interested in the concept when he thought it was about horses. Ken gets a bunch of books from the library, but most of the titles are fake. However, Man & Horse: The Long Ride Across America, is an actual 2017 book by a New Zealand-based, retired university lecturer named John Egenes.

“I think I’ve reached the age where nothing much surprises me anymore,” Egenes shared with PEOPLE when asked about Barbie using his book. “We live in a wacky world. It’s just another one of those sort of serendipitous, wacky things.”

You can read the official description of Man & Horse: The Long Ride Across America here: “In 1974 a disenfranchised young man from a broken home set out to do the impossible. With a hundred dollars in his pocket, a beat up cavalry saddle, and a faraway look in his eye, John Egenes saddled his horse Gizmo and started down the trail on an adventure across the North American continent. Their seven month journey took them across 11 states from California to Virginia, ocean to ocean. As they left the pressing confinement of the city behind them, the pair experienced the isolation and loneliness of the southwestern deserts, the vastness of the prairie, and the great landscapes that make up America.

 Across hundreds of miles of empty land they slept with coyotes and wild horses under the stars, and in urban areas they camped alone in graveyards and abandoned shacks. Along the way John and Gizmo were transformed from inexperienced horse and rider to veterans of the trail. With his young horse as his spiritual guide John slowly began to comprehend his own place in the world and to find peace within himself. Full of heart and humor, Egenes serves up a tale that’s as big as the America he witnessed, an America that no longer exists. It was a journey that could only have been experienced step by step, mile by mile, from the view between a horse’s ears.”

“It’s sort of that kind of a story, going out and taking on a challenge that’s kind of bigger than life, and then, accomplishing it,” Egenes explained to PEOPLE. He also added that Barbie was “quite a good film.” 

Watch Ryan Gosling Channel Ken:

Before the SAG strike, Gosling seemed to be enjoying himself while promoting Barbie by channeling Ken. In fact, ComicBook.com had the chance to chat with Gosling alongside Margot Robbie, and we asked Gosling how it felt to explore his goofiness in the new film. This led to Robbie praising Gosling’s comedic chops, which he pretended not to enjoy. 

“Yeah, it was,” Gosling revealed about finally getting to be goofy in a movie. “I mean, you know, Greta [Gerwig] and Margot [Robbie] are really brilliant, you know, and this whole piece is so brilliant because it’s so fun, it’s so inclusive, and it’s just a fun ride if you want to go on it. But there’s so much more to it. You know, it’s like one of those magic eye pictures. Like if you cross your eyes a little bit, you see the boat that’s hiding in there or whatever.”

Robbie added, “I don’t think you’re appreciated enough as the comedic actor that you are. Everyone thinks of you, I think, as such a good dramatic actor and then they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, he is funny. He was funny in that movie, that movie,’ and then this is a whole different level of-“

“The Ken in me can’t stand for this to be about Ken anymore. We’re here talking about Barbie.” Gosling interrupted.  You can watch the video at the top of the page. 

Barbie is now playing in theaters.