Several years ago, screenwriting partners Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal (Jewel of the Nile, Planet of the Apes) read an article about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s years at Wellesley College in the 1960s. “By the 60s the Wellesley curriculum had already been modernized and the students took their choices for granted,” says Rosenthal. “But we wondered what it would be like if we went back a generation, before the vocabulary of feminism was handed to women on a silver platter.”
In that prior generation, the writers learned that the curriculum was very different.”They were doing French literature and physics in the morning and how to serve tea to your husband’s boss in the afternoon” says Konner.
The writers did further research on women’s colleges in the years following World War II. Even the progressive educational institutions were not exempt from the conservative swing that overtook the nation after the upheaval of the war, they discovered. Women, who had contributed to the war effort, taking physically demanding jobs, while their husbands, fathers and brothers were off defending the country, were expected to give up their jobs, return home and raise families.
Konner and Rosenthal also visited Wellesley, considered one of the most academically rigorous and prestigious of the female-only colleges referred to collectively as “The Seven Sisters.” Besides Rodham Clinton, the school’s alumnae include Madeleine Albright, Diane Sawyer, Ali McGraw, Cokie Roberts and Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
At the Wellesley library, Rosenthal and Konner unearthed a photo from a 1956 issue of The Wellesley News that seemed to encapsulate the dilemma facing women of the era. It was a snapshot of a young woman in a smart dress and pearls with a frying pan in one hand and a book in the other. “The headline was something like ‘Survey Shows Married Women Make the Best Students,’” laughs Rosenthal. “What a mixed message. On the one hand, the school boasted that its academic standards for women were on a par with male institutions like Harvard. But there was a P.S.: ‘A woman’s main purpose in life is still to get married.’”
The dramatic tension between what was expected of women in that era and the dreams and yearnings that were simmering underneath was too strong a premise for Konner and Rosenthal to resist. Wellesley College was an ideal setting, especially during the Eisenhower era when the first sparks of what would later be known as the feminist revolution were being kindled. The focus of their story would be Katherine Watson, a young woman who comes to Wellesley with idealistic notions of what it will be like to teach some of the smartest women in America.
Katherine herself is from a modest background and attended the more progressive UCLA. “As recently as 50 years ago, New England was still an extension of the Old World, while California really was the New World,” says Konner. “So we thought that would be the perfect place for Katherine to have grown up both in terms of its less rigid class distinctions and more permissive social attitudes.”
The title Mona Lisa Smile derived from the fact that Katherine teaches art history and Leonardo’s masterpiece is one of the most fascinating – and enigmatic – works of art ever created. As one of the characters in the film remarks about the Gioconda’s legendary grin, “But is she really happy?”
“Thematically that’s really the heart of the movie. It’s about what we see on the surface – of society, of these women’s lives – and what’s really going on underneath,” says Rosenthal. “Each of the female characters presents a façade, but as soon as we think we have them pegged, they surprise us, even Katherine.”
In addition, Rosenthal continues, “We think the Mona Lisa works as an icon for women. Most people giggle when they see it. They know it’s very expensive and valuable, more something to own than to understand. And that’s exactly what Katherine is trying to warn her students against – being turned into a ‘pretty, valuable object’ on some corporate executive’s arm, an expensive piece of property.”
To portray Katherine, the writers wanted an actress who was charismatic, smart and vulnerable. “So we thought of the best actress of our era,” says Konner, “Julia Roberts, who has both the intelligence and high-spiritedness the role demands.”
The writers related the story of Mona Lisa Smile to Deborah Schindler, president of Roberts’ Red Om Films and her producing partner Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas of Revolution Studios (who had previously represented Roberts when she was an agent at ICM). “”After working with Julia Roberts for 15 years, I thought I’d heard every good idea, but this was truly special,” says Thomas. “I was fascinated by the early 1950s and how it evolved out of World War II. The war had been the first time in history women were told they could do a man’s job. They took off their corsets and took over the factories. Then, after the war, they were re-corseted with clear roles as housewives who supported their husbands and raised their children. On the surface it all seemed fine, but underneath the seeds were planted for the next generation.”
“Katherine Watson is a good example of a woman caught between the outbreak of war and the change that happened as a result,” Thomas continues. “After considering her options, Katherine realized that she could do more. It’s that realization that inspires her to teach these young women. She believes if anyone is going to make a difference in the world, it will be one of them.”
Over the next year, Thomas and Schindler worked closely with Konner and Rosenthal in developing the script for Mona Lisa Smile. “Elaine was our guiding light, ” admits Konner. “Without her enthusiasm, input and support this movie would not have been possible.”
“We had an immediate connection with her,” adds Rosenthal. “She had an instantaneous understanding of what we were trying to say, and that kept the film true to its theme all along.”
“Revolution Studios’ chairman Joe Roth immediately saw the story’s potential,” says Thomas. “I think when he heard the idea, he realized everything it could be. That’s what’s so great about Joe. He just lets you jump into the pool. If you need help, he’s there. Otherwise he just pretty much let’s you swim on your own.”
At the top of everyone’s list for potential directors for Mona Lisa Smile was British director Mike Newell who has, over the years, demonstrated a deftness and versatility with a wide variety of subjects from the gritty drama Donnie Brasco to the wonderfully romantic and funny Four Weddings and a Funeral. “What’s really special about Mike’s movies is his fresh, unorthodox approach to characters. All the people in his movies are interesting, iconoclastic and complex,” says Thomas. “Even in his comedies there are no stock characters. They’re all highly individualized.”
Newell was intrigued by the story’s exploration of a time and place where rebellion and individuality were very much frowned upon, yet the seeds of change have already taken root. “There was a great deal of debate in the story about what women should and shouldn’t do with their lives, most of which had never been publicly discussed before,” he says. “Once the subject had been broached, it would eventually lead to a seismic societal shift. I really wanted to look at the moment when that change began.”
Newell agreed that Roberts was the perfect choice for Katherine Watson because “she has an intimate connection to audiences. They feel, very strongly, that they know her, and they like her. I knew it would be interesting for her to try like Katherine, a teacher and a woman with a life of the mind.”
Roberts signed on to the project soon after Newell was hired. She was a big fan of his work, particularly Four Weddings and a Funeral and another romance, Enchanted April. In addition to being intrigued by Katherine because she was a teacher, Roberts also saw her as someone who would stand out at the staid Wellesley of the 1950s. “For the 50s, her ideas were way ahead of their time,” says Roberts, who had contemplated becoming a teacher before turning to acting. “And she embodied the best kind of spirit for a teacher, one that allows for individuality and to explore our personal strengths.”
Though her students at first regard her a spinster for being over the age of 30 and unmarried, Katherine feels comfortable with her decision, says Roberts, which some of the young women find intimidating and others, empowering. “That’s what so fascinating about the period,” she says. “It is right on the cusp of the revolution of the woman’s voice in society.”
The film’s validation of women, however, is applicable to the present as well, and not just for females, Roberts insists. “At its core, the movie is about the struggle of the individual – male or female. Everyone is looking to find their proper place in life, where they can serve the most and be at their best.”
Beyond the central figure of Katherine, Mona Lisa Smile boasted several substantial roles for young actresses. “It’s so rare to find so many good parts for women in one film, particularly for young women,” says Newell. “Each of these roles was a gem. They contained comedy, struggle and even great sadness. And they all interwove with one another to create a wonderful tapestry of womanhood in that era.”
To get a fuller picture of the period, Konner and Rosenthal had interviewed alumnae who had gone on to career prominence as well as women who had dropped out to get married. They combed through the Wellesley archives. In one publication they found photos of several young students who so impressed them, that they made a copy of their portraits and pinned them to the wall for creative inspiration during the writing process. “We made up stories to go with each of the photos,” says Rosenthal, “beginning with Betty Warren (Dunst), the editor of the school paper who leaves school in order to get married, the first step to the perfect life she had been promised by her mother.”
The daughter of a Wellesley alumna who is as involved in the college as she is in her daughter’s life, Betty regards Katherine’s challenge to the status quo almost as a personal affront. “At the start, Betty is a bitch and just horrible and condescending to everyone,” says Newell. “Then you meet her mother, a formidable and intimidating woman, and you see why Betty turned out that way. Little by little, however, cracks start to appear in Betty’s façade and, eventually, her whole exterior crumbles. It’s a wonderful and completely credible evolution.”
Kirsten Dunst, who was 20 – the same age as Betty – when she took on the role, is already a Hollywood veteran, having starred in such films as the recent Columbia Pictures blockbuster Spider-Man® and its highly anticipated sequel.
“Betty was the kind of role I’d never played before,” says Dunst. “It was so much fun to play the bitch. Betty is so uptight, so narrow-minded. She doesn’t question anything. And as soon as anyone challenges her, she shuts them right down.”
What really appealed to Dunst, however, was the multi-dimensionality of the character. “She’s mean to people, especially Katherine, but it’s because she’s so unhappy,” she says. “She so desperately wants to be loved.”
When Betty’s illusions are shattered and her ‘perfect’ marriage is threatened, however, her cold exterior quickly thaws. “All her life has been shaped by her mother. She’s almost like a mini-clone,” Dunst continues. “And she believes that once she gets married everything will be perfect. But she doesn’t love her husband and he doesn’t love her. It’s just a planned thing. She pretends to be happy and puts on a smile. Finally, you see her break down. Ultimately, it’s Katherine who gives her the courage to be herself. That’s essentially what the movie is about, being true to yourself and becoming the person you want to be.”
“Betty’s journey is her inner battle between image and truth,” says Goldsmith-Thomas. “She fights Katherine’s lessons and her presence because, if Katherine is right, then her life is a sham.”
While she hails from the same social background as Betty, her roommate and class valedictorian Joan Brandwyn has a completely different reaction to intellectual challenges presented by her art history teacher. She is about to become engaged, but with Katherine’s encouragement, she decides to apply to law school anyway. “Joan is the woman Katherine decides has the most potential for change,” says Thomas. “So she devotes her energies to making sure that Joan recognizes that she has a choice. Once Joan chooses, Katherine needs to learn the lesson of respecting Joan’s choice.”
In addition, Stiles was taken with her character’s underlying intellectual curiosity and hunger for experience, desires that Katherine senses and taps into. “Joan is the school valedictorian and very traditional. She’s a great student, but she’s a textbook great student,” says Stiles. “Like the other girls at Wellesley she knows how to recite and regurgitate information. Then Katherine comes along and tells her to think for herself and that’s really seductive to Joan.”
There was also a wonderful element of surprise in Joan’s character, Stiles adds. Though she’s not showy and demonstrative like the other girls, she has a solid core. Stiles compares her to “the slow turtle who wins the race. No one knows what to make of her because she seems so obedient. But she proves to be strong and independent minded in surprising ways.”
The filmmakers cast Maggie Gyllenhaal, acclaimed for her role in the recent film Secretary, to play Giselle Levy, a sophisticated student who shocks her fellow students by having numerous affairs at a time when such behavior was considered scandalous. When Katherine comes to teach at Wellesley, Giselle is fascinated. “She has been desperate for some kind of validation for her unorthodox feelings and here is Katherine who acknowledges her difference and says it’s OK,” observes Gyllenhaal.
Giselle’s essential problem, as Gyllenhaal sees it, is not her behavior, but the judgment that’s placed on it by her peers and society at large. “Giselle is pretty in-your-face and she doesn’t know why everybody is making such a big fuss that she sleeps with more than one man. All she’s saying is that you should eat food if it tastes good, dance if you like the beat and have sex if you want to have sex. Now, some people might say Giselle’s broken or unhappy, or that she’s overcompensating for something, but I tried not to judge her.”
If there is one dilemma that plagues Giselle, it’s one that applies as much to contemporary women as those in the 50s. “She’s dealing with something that affects a lot of women my age today, which is how to be sexy and also be intellectual. We’re still expected to be one or the other. Why can’t we be both?”
In casting the role of Connie Baker, a Midwesterner on a scholarship at Wellesley, the filmmakers were bowled over by Ginnifer Goodwin, who appears on the television series Ed. “Just look at her face,” says producer Deborah Schindler. “She looks like she stepped out of the 50s. Her whole persona is magical.”
Through Katherine, Connie gains confidence and opens herself up, for the first time, to the possibility of romance. “Suddenly love becomes an option for her and not just a dream. And that sort of power enables her to put herself first for once. Like the other girls, she undergoes a real change. What I love is that some of the women in the film will eventually go out and change the system and others will choose to find strength in raising their own families. Connie realizes she doesn’t have to go out and become Joan of Arc in order to be important in her life. That’s what Katherine and love give her permission to do.”
Not long after winning an Oscar® for her role as Lee Krasner in Ed Harris’s Pollock, Marcia Gay Harden signed on to Mona Lisa Smile to play a very different type of woman from the 1950s. Nancy Abbey teaches speech, elocution and poise at Wellesley. The filmmakers were so taken with Harden’s interpretation of the character “we moved our schedule around to get her,” remembers Goldsmith-Thomas.
In some ways, Nancy reminds me of my mother,” says Harden. “My mom is a true Dallas lady and was brought up with the mores, values and etiquette taught to young women of the 50’s. Yet she has a great deal of grit and tenacity. Nancy is trying very hard to be representative of what she thinks a woman should be, which is ‘simply lovely.’ There is a gentleness and grace about her manners and it’s a shame we’ve lost that sense of poise. But Nancy also has a turbulent underbelly caused by the repression of the times. It’s poignant that Nancy chooses to remain at home, a spinster, because society’s judgment about her age makes her feel it’s too late for her to go out and risk something different.”
For Harden, Mona Lisa Smile is a real mirror of the period and a tribute to the Wellesley women “who were the pioneers in terms of going out and forging paths and shoving their way into businesses that didn’t want them. They were the generation who went out into the world and made a change.”
As part of the rehearsal process for Mona Lisa Smile, the cast spent several weeks learning the etiquette, elocution and dance styles of the early 1950s. Producers Goldsmith-Thomas, Schindler and Paul Schiff hired etiquette expert Lily Lodge to train the actors to carry themselves as women did half a century ago.
“We had to learn things like when you shake hands, how to light a cigarette properly, how to cross and uncross your legs, what silverware to use at the dinner table,” explains Ginnifer Goodwin, “stuff I’d never thought of before.”
“It was impressive,” smiles Julia Stiles, who took time out of her studies at Columbia University to appear in Mona Lisa Smile. ‘”I started the rehearsal period saying to my mother, ‘I don’t know how they’re going to do this because I’m such a tomboy,” Stiles continues. “But now I know how to sit like a proper young lady.”
Yvonne Marceau provided the young women with tango, waltz, swing and rumba lessons, which proved to be quite a valuable learning experience in terms of the characters the young women were playing. “Ballroom dancing is so dependent on the guy, because he leads,” explains Stiles. “When we started the lessons we behaved like very modern girls and tried to push the guys around and lead them. Finally, we had to remember that they were supposed to lead us and we had to be much less aggressive. That turned out to be very applicable to the time period and our characters.”
The lessons also helped the actors bond. “I was pretty intimidated at first about working with Julia Roberts,” laughs Dominic West, who plays a fellow teacher at Wellesley. “But once you’ve danced a few fox trots with her, then it’s a lot easier.”
In fact, Roberts instilled a tremendous sense of camaraderie in the cast and crew throughout the filmmaking process. “Julia became such a natural teacher, leader and big sister to these young actors,” says producer Paul Schiff. “She provided that leadership with tenderness, grace and charm, and did it in such an open way. She invited everyone in so that it really became an ensemble.”
Like the character of Katherine, Roberts proved to be an inspiration for the young actresses working with her for the first time. “I never pretended I wasn’t working with Julia Roberts,” says Gyllenhaal. “I was fascinated by her, the way she moved, the way she walked, the way she connected with people. She’s a focused, clear, strong woman, which is key to her appeal around the world. At the same time, there’s a vulnerability. She can get so emotional that you think she could crack at any moment. That’s why her characters seem like real people, women who are strong, complicated, overwhelming and sometimes overwhelmed.”
“I’m floored at what a good actress she is,” adds Stiles. “I’ve been watching her very closely take after take and every time she does everything with a new slant so that it seems like she’s doing it for the first time.”
Roberts’ inclusiveness proved to be essential for Dunst, whose character’s antagonistic behavior distances her from the other characters. “You sometimes take on the feelings of the character you’re playing and I would get really sad at times,” explains Dunst. “Everyone was so communal and I was on the outside of it all. But Julia was such a doll. She would hang around out on the set even when she wasn’t working and just come up and give me a hug sometimes.”
The inspiration that Roberts engendered in her fellow actors aptly paralleled that of her character’s effect on her students. “In general, I’d say this movie is about people who affect each other’s lives,” says Thomas. “Specifically, it’s about one woman who changes the lives of her students and is changed by them. When Bill Dunbar says, “You think you came to Wellesley to help the girls find their way. I think you came to help the girls find your way,” Katherine realizes her own hypocrisy. Just as the institution has no right to tell the girls how to live, neither does she. In the end, this movie is about finding and living your own truth.”
In the 21st century, Wellesley College is still dedicated to educating women and was very welcoming to the cast and crew of Mona Lisa Smile. “They loved the script,” Schiff points out, “and they appreciated that it depicted a specific time and place, and that the Wellesley of Mona Lisa Smile is not the Wellesley of today.”
While much of the campus has remained unchanged since the 1950s, the student body has not. “Wellesley was a very white place in the 50s,” screenwriter Rosenthal points out. “And it has made great strides at diversity.”
The filmmakers were given ample access to Wellesley’s archives and allowed to shoot on the picturesque Massachusetts campus, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect responsible for New York’s Central Park.
“You walk onto this campus and it’s almost like an advertisement for the perfect college,” says Roberts. “It’s a pretty remarkable environment.”
The film began principal photography at Wellesley in early fall. Filming was limited to six days in order not to disrupt campus life. Central locations at Wellesley included Tower Court, Severance Green, Founders and Houghton Memorial Chapel.
During his time off from filming at Wellesley, Dominic West sat in on some language classes and did some extra-curricular research for his role. “They had a bar on campus and I was pretty much the only man there,” he recalls. “The girls were incredibly bright and interesting. They escorted me around and looked after me. I learned a lot from them.”
One actor who was well versed in Wellesley’s traditions was Laura Allen, who plays Susan Delacorte, a close friend of Betty’s. A recent graduate of Wellesley, Allen reveled in recreating some of the traditions that the school still holds dear. “The women who attend Wellesley have such pride about the college, and in the women who proceeded them that they carry on traditions,” Allen says. “Some of those traditions include hoop rolling. Originally, the winner of the hoop rolling race (which is recreated in Mona Lisa Smile) was said to be the first to marry. That changed in the 1980s. The winner was deemed to become the first CEO of a major corporation. Today she is said to be the first to realize her dreams – whatever they may be.”
The responsibility of recreating the Wellesley of 1953 was primarily the responsibility of production designer Jane Musky. “Jane is just a genius, she’s incredibly detail-oriented,” says Goldsmith-Thomas, who previously worked with her on Maid in Manhattan.
In her search for the best locations, Musky cast a wide net and recommended a diverse range of spots in and around the New York area. “What’s great about shooting a period piece in New York is that there are more choices than if you just went to Wellesley and were married to Boston for all of your interiors and college scenes,” she says.
Musky also preferred to film on location rather than building sets in a studio. “What I like about locations for period films is that they bring it down a notch,” Musky explains, “so everything isn’t so crisp and clean. It feels more real, more lived in.”
While visiting Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of the their research, the filmmakers discovered a grand stairway in the university’s art gallery, which later became the location for Katherine and Bill’s first meeting at Wellesley. The film also shot at Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library and Silliman College, which ironically stood in for the university’s longtime rival, Harvard.
Other college locations included New York’s Columbia University, where a lecture room in Havemeyer Hall served as Katherine’s classroom, and the nearby Union Theological Seminary, where a neo-Gothic space served as the practice room for Ginnifer Goodwin’s cello playing.
Tarrytown, New York, stood in for the village of Wellesley because the original town had become much too contemporary. “Tarrytown hadn’t changed that much,” says Musky. “An intimate, village quality still existed.”
The production also shot inside Tarrytown’s Set Back Inn, which became the story’s Blue Ship Inn where Katherine bonds with Bill while escaping the lectures on how to be a proper wife, which are given by Nancy, Katherine’s housemate and etiquette teacher, played by Marcia Gay Harden.
Nancy’s home was filmed at a Victorian house on Shonnard Terrace in Yonkers, New York. Musky and her team transformed the bottom part of the house into Nancy’s idea of perfection — chintz and more chintz. “What’s funny about Nancy’s house is that when you read the script, it says she loves chintz and pattern, so every room is just covered with pattern and chintz,” says Musky. It was one of the hardest exercises I ever had in filmmaking. I had to go through hundreds of fabrics for weeks and try to make some visual sense of it all.”
For a production designer, such challenges are not atypical in a detailed period film. Musky pored through the Wellesley archives. She and her team visited other women’s colleges and made use of books and advertisements from the period of the early 50s.
“The costumes in this movie are a metaphor for the story,” asserts Thomas. “The foundations and the corsets dictate the feminine ideal that defined the 1950s.”
With that in mind, costume designer Michael Dennison did extensive research into the period. In addition to about 350 costumes for the principal actors, Dennison also had to dress approximately 7,000 extras over the course of the film.
“What’s different about a period movie, very specifically a period movie from the 40s and 50s, is that everyone is dressed from the skin out,” Dennison explains. “All the ladies had to wear the real foundation of the period or else they wouldn’t look the way they do.”
Even young women of the time wore girdles or waist cinches to create an hourglass figure, which was considered the ideal. Dennison recalls telling the actors, “You’re going to hate me. You’re going to be uncomfortable. But at the same time, you’re going to feel it. The clothes will continue to remind you who you are and where you are.”
For Roberts’ character, Dennison’s research took him to California to study the fashion styles in progressive towns like Berkeley and Long Beach – the areas from which Katherine originates. “A lot of free thinkers were hanging out there,” he relates. “The peasant blouses Katherine wears, for example, were just coming into fashion in 1953. “Katherine was ahead of her time in some instances, with very eclectic taste. She gleans her style knowledge from the fact that she has such an incredible overview of culture and art.”
Among Dennison’s more notable creations was a bridal gown for Kirsten Dunst’s Betty, which was based on photos of such famous events from the period as the weddings of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Grace Kelly.
Mixing vintage clothing with his own creations, Dennison’s costumes spanned the weather changes that transpired over almost an entire school year. The film begins with the fall ceremony marking the beginning of the school year, in which the students wear the traditional white blazers and beanies of their particular class, through the winter and into spring graduation.
“With the palate that he created for the various scenes and seasons, Michael did an amazing job,” says Schindler. “His designs created texture and added dimension to the film.”
The music in Mona Lisa Smile is thematically in harmony with the movie, according to soundtrack producer Trevor Horn. Like the early 50s period in which the film is set, the music maintains the traditions of 30s and 40s pop tunes, but also demonstrates the first stirrings of “the modern era,” according to Horn, in the days just before popular music was about to be taken over by rock ‘n roll.
For instance, the song “Secret Love,” a ballad made popular by Doris Day (and sung on the soundtrack by Mandy Moore), starts out as a demure admission of a hidden crush that leads to the singer shouting about her romance from “the highest hill” and ends up with her secret love being “no secret anymore.”
Similarly, “Bewitched,” (sung by Celine Dion) “works on so many levels,” says Horn. “It’s about a woman who is confused because she’s physically turned on. She’d never considered a sexual relationship before, but now she’s definitely ready for action.”
The same goes for “I’m Beginning to See the Light” (sung by Kelly Rowland), another tune about sexual awakening, says Horn. Other period tunes such as “Besame Mucho” (sung by Chris Isaak) and the coy “Santa Baby” (sung by Macy Gray) are even more provocative.
Rather than use recordings from the era, the filmmakers decided to use contemporary artists, which is again in keeping with the tone of Mona Lisa Smile, says Horn. “The film takes place in the 50s, so if it was done just as it would have been then, it would be in black and white. But this is a look at the period from the distance of 50 years later, and using today’s singers fits perfectly within that perspective.”
There was also a freshness to the new renditions, like Barbra Streisand’s interpretation of “Smile”(produced by Streisand), Lisa Stansfield’s “I’ve Got the World on a String,” and Alison Kraus’ plaintive version of “What’ll I Do,” that re-imagined the material giving the singers a chance to bring their own interpretation to the period tunes. Whereas Eartha Kitt’s original recording of “Santa Baby,” is sly and kittenish, Horn points out, which was right for the 50s, Gray’s updating is more forthright and direct.
“By using singers from this generation, it brings the songs to life in a way that using the originals would not,” Horn continues. “I know it sounds like an odd thing to say, but these songs liked being sung again. And it was a challenge to the people who sang them, so outside of the norm of what they normally do, that they really enjoyed singing them. At times it was hard to get them to stop, they were having such a good time.”
Directed by: Mike Newell
Starring: Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dominic West, Juliet Stevenson, Marcia Gay Harden
Screenplay by: Larry Konner, Mark Rosenthal
Production Design by: Jane Musky
Cinematography by: Anastas N. Michos
Film Editing by: Mick Audsley
Costume Design by: Michael Dennison
Set Decoration by: Susan Bode, Chris Nickerson
Music by: Rachel Portman
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content and thematic issues.
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: December 19, 2003
