About the Film
To direct “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” Jerry Bruckheimer selected Australian-born, U.S.-based P.J. Hogan as the man for the job. “P.J.’s work has the kind of deft, light touch that we wanted for the movie,” notes the producer. “Both `Muriel’s Wedding’ and `My Best Friend’s Wedding’ were two pictures that I loved watching. He has such a wonderful sense of humor, and a delightful romantic touch.”
“Rebecca Bloomwood was a character I totally identified with,” says Hogan. “A shopaholic is somebody who believes heavily in retail therapy. Feel bad? Go into a store, you’re cheered up instantly. Everybody can understand that. When we’re down, we’ve all used retail as a way to cheer ourselves up, but Rebecca just can’t stop.”
Eventually, Alex confesses that she felt abandoned by Anna and was left alone to cope with Rachel. Says Arielle Kebbel, “Anna is trying to tell her how awful life was in the mental hospital, but Alex is saying that life at home was pretty terrible as well. It’s interesting, because you can tell how happy Alex is to have Anna back, but she doesn’t want to show it too much because she feels that she was deserted and left to deal with everything at home.”
For the film version of “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” both the setting and Rebecca’s nationality have emigrated westward across the pond to America. “In my head and in the books, of course, she will always be British,” says the author. “But I have met Becky Bloomwoods all over the world, of every nationality. What matters to me most is that in the film, we have her heart, her foibles and her comedy. The film uses elements from the first two `Shopaholic’ books, the second of which is in fact set in New York. Many of my favorite scenes are in the film, and watching them being shot was a huge treat. Becky’s story is really a parable for our times as she tries to cut back her spending, put away the credit cards and turn her life around.”
Shopping for the Perfect Cast
Filmmakers Call on Isla Fisher for Title Role
The filmmakers knew that the lead character in “Confessions of a Shopaholic” had to be portrayed by a special and spirited talent. So they tapped Isla Fisher for the role.
“She stole people’s hearts in `Wedding Crashers’ and `Definitely, Maybe,’” says producer Jerry Bruckheimer. “In `Confessions of a Shopaholic’ she carries the movie. It’s exciting to see her wit, intelligence and comedic timing in nearly every scene.”
“I thought that Isla would be perfect for the part,” adds director P.J. Hogan. “This role needed someone who was immensely likeable and also very gifted dramatically. And importantly, Isla is a physically gifted comedienne. She’s that rarity, a beautiful woman who isn’t afraid to make a total fool of herself. She’s fearless, which is what the character needed.”
Author and associate producer Sophie Kinsella agrees. “Isla’s fantastic. She’s funny, she’s warm, she’s appealing and she’s the kind of girl that you would just long to be your best friend.”
Likewise, Fisher was a fan of Kinsella’s “Shopaholic” series long before she was approached to play Rebecca Bloomwood. “I read all of the books when I was working in London,” she says. “People refer to the books as `Chick Lit,’ but I think the more appropriate term is `Wit Lit’ because they are genuinely funny. I felt that the book really spoke to me; I was truly blessed to get this role.
“Rebecca is such a great character,” Fisher continues. “She’s lovely, optimistic, happy, a good girl who is also an impulsive shopper who falls in love with shiny objects. She has this childlike lust for new things. Becky is so warm, loveable and deeply flawed, and she has tapped into the collective consumer consciousness.”
Fisher admits that she can relate to her character’s enthusiasm for shopping. “I’m a bags and shoe girl,” she says. “I have so many shoes, it’s terrifying.”
The filmmakers cast British actor Hugh Dancy in the role of Luke Brandon, the workaholic editor of the magazine where Rebecca lands a job as a financial columnist.
“Hugh Dancy is someone we’ve worked with in the past,” says Bruckheimer. “He played Schmid, the medic, in `Black Hawk Down,’ and then Galahad in `King Arthur.’ I think he’s a wonderful young actor, extremely handsome, very charming, and I think somebody who is going to be a major movie star.”
Adds P.J. Hogan, “Hugh is ice to Isla’s fire. They’re both what the other needs, and they were a perfect match. Hugh had to be just what he was in the books, a Brit. Hugh has that edge that the Luke Brandon in the books has. Luke grounds Becky and she breathes life into him-he was totally committed to his career and was just letting life pass him by.”
“On the surface, Luke appears to be the polar opposite of everything that Becky is attracted to,” says Dancy. “He’s utterly disinterested in clothes and shopping, and he’s in love with the world of finance, which she clearly has a bit of a problem with. But like all good matches, these initial differences end up being the very thing that draws the two characters together.”
“Hugh is so much fun,” says Fisher. “He’s down to earth, and has that typical British sensibility, very witty, dry and smart. I think he brought all those qualities to Luke, and the relationship between he and Rebecca is very sweet.”
Cast as Graham and Jane Bloomwood, Becky’s loving if slightly eccentric parents, were John Goodman and Joan Cusack, two of America’s most prolific actors. Unlike their daughter, Graham and Jane are thrifty and proud of it.
Says Cusack, “There’s a great fun in shopping, clothes and commercialism, but the passion turns out differently if you become controlled by it, as Becky does.”
Goodman credits his character for some of Rebecca’s flaws. “Graham is a `good old lunch pail Joe,’ a regular guy. He’s got a great daughter who’s inherited a little bit of her parents’ loopiness.”
The effervescent Krysten Ritter is an up-and-comer who was perfect for the role of Suze Cleath-Stuart, Becky’s upscale friend and roommate. “I read the first two `Shopaholic’ books and was amazed by what page-turners they were,” says Ritter. “I fell in love with Sophie Kinsella’s characters. Suze is the best friend you could ever hope for. She and Becky are like two peas in a pod as well as partners in crime. They both really like clothes and shopping, but Suze is coming from money, so it’s hard for her to understand Becky’s mounting problems at first.”
John Lithgow was cast as magazine magnate Edgar West. The actor says he was drawn to the film’s love story. “Isla and Hugh are young versions of Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, a throwback to a wonderful era with wonderful characters against a glamorous backdrop,” says Lithgow. “I liked the fact that in the story, Becky brings life, humor and spirit to the whole gray subject of finance, and that my character gradually discovers just who this woman is.”
British-born Kristin Scott Thomas portrays French fashion editor Alette Naylor. Fortunately, the actress has lived in placecountry-regionFrance for years. “I’m bilingual, and have made a lot of films in French, so speaking with a French accent comes quite naturally to me,” she says. “Alette doesn’t quite understand the real world, but she basically means well.”
Leslie Bibb plays scheming Alette magazine staffer Alicia Billington. “I like playing villains,” admits the actress. “I like playing girls who aren’t particularly nice. The relationship between Becky and Alicia reminded me of a sibling rivalry, which I felt deepened their interaction. I was also attracted by this amazing, stellar cast, and the fact that Jerry Bruckheimer was producing, P.J. Hogan was directing, I would be dressed by the awesome Patricia Field, which was a sexy idea.”
Robert Stanton admits that he was more suited for the role of debt-collector Derek Smeath than filmmakers realized. “The only other job I’ve ever had besides acting was as a skip tracer for a student-loan marketing association,” he says. “A skip tracer finds people who have defaulted on their debts. I had to get on the phone and harass people, and I couldn’t do it very well. I would always laugh-playing Smeath in `Confessions of a Shopaholic’ was my opportunity to get it right.”
New York Fits the Bill
NYC a Shoe-In for “Shopaholic” Setting
Once the decision had been made to shift the location of the story to the United States, it was clear that Rebecca Bloomwood’s tale of over-zealous shopping could be set in only one place. New York is a character in itself, an icon of all cities as well as the world capital of fashion,” says producer Jerry Bruckheimer. “It wasn’t that much of a challenge to change the location from London to New York, because both cities have the same kind of panache and design sense.”
Director P.J. Hogan adds, “The thrill is in the shops. In the book series, Becky Bloomwood heads toManhattan in the second book, and finds herself in absolute shopping heaven. And where better to put a shopaholic than in shopping heaven?”
The elaborate shoot, which kicked off in arctic 15-degree temperatures and wrapped at 90 degrees, presented the notable challenge of filming in the streets and stores of one of the busiest, if not outright chaotic, cities on earth.
“Filming on the streets of New York is like voluntarily admitting yourself to an asylum,” says Hugh Dancy. “You’re right there working in the middle of a very busy city. It’s crowded and hectic, but that’s the point. That’s why you do it. Because scenes in New York are grounded in acting. I think it adds something to the character of the movie.”
Filmmakers called on Kristi Zea as production designer. “Kristi is the premier New York production designer,” says Bruckheimer. “She understands the city and the kind of melting pot that it is, the texture that it needs, and with her design and fashion sense created wonderful sets, whether for the Successful Saving or Alette magazine offices, or her re-design of the famous stores and their window displays.”
Says Zea, “I immediately realized that the film would have great visual potential. It’s fun to dabble in high fashion and trends, and since I come from a costume background, I recognized that this was going to be one of those films where you can just let it all hang out…and you could also set trends. The film goes from one end of the spectrum to the other in terms of economic views and areas. You have the super-high fashion of Madison Avenue, Fifth Avenue, the Meatpacking District, Tribeca, SoHo and the Lower East Side, and you have Becky’s Mom and Dad, who live in a nice, middle-class world. I liked being able to find the iconographic element of New York and boost that, but also to find a new way of showing New York.”
Besides NYC, the film shot in Miami and in Connecticut. In fact, the “Shopaholic” odyssey began its first week of shooting in Connecticut, where Zea and her team created myriad locations, including the very first day’s shoot inside the offices in a nondescript building, resulting in a coincidence which amazed author Sophie Kinsella. “Considering what I’ve recently learned about the random order in which movies are made, as it happens the first scene we filmed was also the very first scene I ever wrote of Rebecca Bloomwood for the first book. It was like a psychic moment!”
The interior set of Becky and roommate Suze’s fun, kicky and colorful apartment, which is meant to be in the fast-rising and terminally hip NoLita (North of Little Italy) neighborhood in lower CityManhattan, was shot on a Norwalk soundstage. Says Zea, “It was absolutely essential to me that the inside of the apartment be small to realistically match the 100-year-old building we found on Mott Street Manhattan as the exterior. Suze lives in the bedroom, and Rebecca in the living room, practically on top of each other. The two women also have very distinct styles, but the idea was to wrap up the differences between the two characters and go a little crazy with color, cool fabrics, mosaic mirrors in the tub, multicolored glass bottles, a fun, exuberant environment.”
Over the next four months, the production hit several New York City historic locations, including St. James Church, St. Anthony of Padua, the elegant Grand Salon of the Jumeirah Essex House hotel on Central Park South, the majestic former Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in the Wall Street district, Lord Norman Foster’s Hearst Tower, and the exterior of Rockefeller Center. A nighttime interlude with Rebecca and Luke was shot on a landscaped Rockefeller Center terrace with the landmark St. Patrick’s Cathedral and (perhaps more importantly for Rebecca Bloomwood) the equally churchlike edifice of Fifth Avenue, directly across the street.
It was up to director of photography Jo Willems to take one of the most oft-filmed cities on the planet and look at it with new eyes. “Our goal was to make the girls, the clothes and the city look as gorgeous as possible,” says Willems. “This isn’t a down-and-gritty movie; it’s fun, big and upbeat. The style of the movie is dictated by the story and main character, and I tried to elevate it as much as possible. These days, a lot of movies are desaturated, but we tried to saturate the frame with as much color as we could.”
Filmmakers selected a number of shops and boutiques as locations, including Catherine Malandrino (in the Meatpacking District), the elaborate Kleinfeld bridal store, as well as a chic stretch of Madison Avenue featuring Yves St. Laurent, Sonia Rykiel and Asprey stores. Key scenes also took place at the Barneys New York store on Madison Avenue and Henri Bendel on Fifth Avenue.
For the scene inside of Barneys-one of America’s most heralded shopping destinations-Rebecca is taken shopping by fashion editor Alette Naylor as a test, which she passes with flying colors to the consternation of arch-rival Alicia Billington.
Rebecca, who pens her financial column as “The Girl in the Green Scarf,” actually finds the all-important billowing “Denny & George” green scarf in a scene shot in New York’s famed Henri Bendel store. The signature fashion locale is a shopping space created from three adjoining townhouses on Fifth Avenue, including the landmark Coty and Rizzoli buildings. It features an extraordinary three-story atrium entrance, fronted by the jewel-like Art Nouveau windows created by Rene Lalique in 1913 and only discovered after Bendel renovated the building. For the atrium, production designer Zea and supervising art director Paul Kelly joined creative forces with Bendel’s own in-house designers and created a “Midsummer Night’s Dream”-themed display. They also created an aviation-themed window display in which Rebecca first sees the green scarf.
“It was a military maneuver for us to install the displays,” explains Kelly, “because we could only have Henri Bendel for eight hours to dress it. We planned it down to the last minute.” New Yorkers were transfixed by the film company’s alterations to the store. “The reaction has been fantastic,” said Bendel’s CEO, Ed Bucciarelli. “We do an elaborate window like this only once a year at holiday time, so to see something like this so early in the year has been quite a treat. What they’ve created is really magical.”
Dressing Shopaholic
Award-Winning Costume Designer Patricia Field Sizes Up the Film
Filmmakers knew that a film like “Confessions of a Shopaholic” required brilliant costuming. Enter Patricia Field. “Patricia Field is one of the great costume designers,” says producer Jerry Bruckheimer. “She’s always been ahead of the curve, finding new designers and dressing our characters in ways that are unique, interesting, colorful and stylish.”
Field has been at it for more than 40 years, since opening her first boutique in 1966. Field is responsible for the noteworthy fashions behind HBO’s “Sex and the City” (including the smash-hit feature version released in 2008) and “The Devil Wears Prada.”
“The story of `Shopaholic’ really appealed to me,” says Field. “It seemed like a fun, positive and entertaining project, which is my kind of movie. I love to entertain…it’s my approach to this business. I had never worked before with Jerry Bruckheimer, and that was a big draw. Jerry and P.J. Hogan were very positive about me working for them, which is very important.
“I’m a stylist,” continues Field, “even though in the world of costume design that’s kind of a dirty word. I create fashion as art, and I do that by means of collage. I mix old pieces, new pieces, dressy pieces with jeans, all kinds of mixtures. The world of costume design in the orthodox sense is about making the garment from scratch. But I feel that if we’re doing something contemporary, you’re at a disadvantage in trying to make garments when you’ve got the world of designers to choose from. Our film is about a shopaholic who goes around shopping all day.”
Field says she was inspired by the film’s colorful cast. “I always get my main inspirations from the actors and what they bring to their characters. I work with the actor to bring out what they want the character to be. Of course, I have my own ideas, and I share those, but in the end, it’s the actor who’s in front of the camera. I found Isla to be very flirty and fetching, with a twinkle in her eye. She’s petite and cute, but has a sexy Cheshire cat quality that inspired me to dress her in the way I did for the film.”
Isla Fisher enjoyed the costuming process as much as Field did. “It was so much fun creating Rebecca Bloomwood with Patricia Field,” says Fisher. “She’s such an amazing stylist with a unique vision. I wanted Becky to be adventurous and eclectic in her style, and also be the `Everygirl’ that we all relate to. It was a fun balance finding and keeping her young, bright and colorful, but at the same time high fashion.
“Becky is much more adventurous-stylewise-than I am and far more image conscious,” continues Fisher. “I’m much more of a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl.”
“Becky is a happy girl,” says Field. “Although she has a conflict with debt, she’s essentially a positive person. Isla is very animated, funny, sexy, pretty and young, so it was an ideal situation for me. Also, I knew that Jerry Bruckheimer wanted to use a lot of color in the movie, which was fine with me, because I love color. So the costumes for Isla as Becky reflect those qualities.”
Ironically for a story set in New York, Field got several ideas for dressing Isla while on a business trip in placeCityTokyo before the start of production. “While I was there, I shopped for Isla,” Field says. “Her petite size is perfect for the Japanese size range, and young fashion there is extremely animated and colorful. It was an opportunity for me to dress Isla in clothes that we haven’t seen before. The influence isn’t reflected in the fact that she wears clothes designed by the Japanese, but rather in the mix. It reflects the edge that you see in the placeCityTokyo fashion scene.”
Reflecting her “collage” technique, Field adorned Fisher in fashion-forward and often startling combinations of clothing and accessories from some of the world’s most internationally renowned designers, including Balenciaga, Marc Jacobs, Christian Louboutin, Zac Posen, Miu Miu, Salvatore Ferragamo, Prada, Todd Oldham, Gucci, Christian Dior and Alexander McQueen.
The other characters also received the full Patricia Field treatment, including Rebecca’s roommate Suze (Krysten Ritter). “In the story, Suze tries to tame Becky’s shopaholic tendencies, so it would have been easy to just make her plain,” says Field. “So I conjured up the idea of Suze being like a Williamsburg Girl-the neighborhood across the river in placeBrooklyn which has attracted a colony of young people. It’s young, artistic, a little bohemian and a little rock. I dressed Krysten in a mix of color and neutral-very eclectic-whereas Becky is just color, color, color.”
Having costumed actresses portraying fashion editors in “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Sex and the City,” Field was determined to give Kristin Scott Thomas’ character of Alette Naylor her personal fashion stamp. “A woman like Alette is number one-she’s achieved her position after many years and has developed her own sense of personal style. Kristin’s wardrobe is very fashion acute. In one scene, she wears an elegant, neutral gown with this gorgeous necklace made of handmade wood beads, a one-of-a-kind accessory. We were trying to show that Alette had her 360-degree choices of what she would and could wear.
As Alicia Billington, Leslie Bibb is physically the opposite of Isla Fisher’s Rebecca. Field chose a lot of black and neutral, “a kind of Cruella DeVille inspiration,” says the costume designer. Bibb says the wardrobe choice fit her character perfectly. “Alicia is a controlled, driven person, so nothing is left to chance. She works her ass off and everything is calculated, particularly her clothes. I put on Alicia’s outfits and was immediately in character. There’s an attitude that comes with wearing a four- to five-inch heel.”
The men received equal treatment from Field, although the lack of interest that Hugh Dancy’s character Luke Brandon shows in what he wears presented the costume designer with interesting challenges. “It’s much easier to do head-to-toe gorgeousness than it is to do `I don’t care,’” says Field. “For the first part of the movie, Luke feels that there are bigger things in his life that he’s interested in, and through the course of his relationship with Rebecca, he undergoes a little bit of a transformation, which has to be believable.”
For her more proletarian characters, John Goodman and Joan Cusack’s Graham and Jane Bloomwood, Field still found a way to dress them interestingly. “I went to the costume fitting with thoughts of being slightly eccentric,” says Cusack. “Patricia was so brilliant in making that eccentricity attractive and dignified in the way that she makes clothing art. She sees great dignity in clothes and style.”
Miami: The Hot Zone
Hugh Dancy’s Character Loosens Up
Having completed their expansive work in New York City and Connecticut, the “Shopaholic” company, including Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy and Leslie Bibb, flew south for two final but eventful weeks of shooting in the tropical, sensual Babylon by the sea: Miami, Florida. “Jerry Bruckheimer suggested that for the scenes in which the buttoned-up Luke finally gets some fun out of life, it had to be somewhere that forces him out of his routine,” notes P.J. Hogan. “It made perfect sense for that to be in Miami, where everybody loosens their ties. There’s a freedom about Miami, the sense you can be anything you want to be there.”
Again, one of the world’s most famed and influential stores swung wide its doors to the “Shopaholic” company when Prada permitted the shooting of a scene inside their gorgeous store in the Bal Harbour Shops in which Becky tries to educate Luke on the finer points of fashion. “It was very difficult to get Prada to allow us to film inside their store,” says Hogan, “because they’re obviously very conscious of their image. But I think that the names of Jerry Bruckheimer and Patricia Field had a lot to do with getting us access. The Prada store in Bal Harbour was just beautiful, stunning, and it was a real pleasure to shoot there.”
This was followed by scenes inside the atmospheric Art Deco-style lobby (including its distinctive tank full of almost iridescent jellyfish) of the Hotel Victor on Ocean Drive.
The production arranged its biggest set piece in Miami: a Latino street festival which revels in the city’s heady cultural stew. “I love the multicultural aspect of Miami, so I wanted to make sure we got some Cuban influence into the movie,” says Hogan.
The location selected was Espanola Way, built in the 1920s as a quaint, mini-Spanish village for artists and bohemians, replete with brightly colored colonial style edifices and plazas. With multi-hued lanterns hanging overhead and Latino music and food spicing the air, it’s on this location that choreographer JoAnn Jansen created a Cuban folk dance called the “danzon” for a sequence in which Luke surprises Becky by loosening up and literally taking the lead.
* * *
Everybody had a great time making the movie. The stars and filmmakers especially appreciated Kinsella’s presence on the set. She served as an associate producer, consulting and watching her character come to life and helping to make sure that Rebecca Bloomwood manifested herself on screen in a way that would be pleasing to her character’s millions of fans. When it was discovered that Sophie Kinsella was on set, the response from some members of the public was as though a movie superstar rather than a literary figure was present, with the “Shopaholic” creator happily signing autographs or chatting with her fans.
“It’s great to have Sophie on the set,” Hogan says, “because as I said to her many times, she’s the Rosetta Stone. She gives me insight into the shopaholic, even beyond the books.”
“It’s an amazing asset to have the author there with the director and the rest of us explaining the core principles of the characters,” adds executive producer Mike Stenson. “Having the point of view available to you of the person who actually created those characters was enormously helpful.”
With the rigorous shoot behind them, Jerry Bruckheimer, P.J. Hogan and their team now faced the equally arduous task of post-production. Jerry Bruckheimer, one of whose trademarks dating back to “Flashdance,” “Top Gun” and “Dangerous Minds” has been featuring cutting edge soundtracks, was determined to bring the best of today’s artists to the aural landscape of the film. And so, working with music supervisor Kathy Nelson, the producer invited the current crème de la crème to record new songs for “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” including Pussycat Dolls (“Bad Girl”), Shontelle featuring Akon (“Stuck With Each Other”), Trey Songz (“Takes Time to Love”), Jordyn Taylor (“Accessory”) and Adrienne Bailon (“Uncontrollable” and “Big Spender”).
Other recording artists heard in “Confessions of a Shopaholic” include Jessie James (“Blue Jeans”), Kat DeLuna (“Unstoppable” and, featuring Frankie Storm, “Calling You”), Lady GaGa (“Fashion”), Natasha Bedingfield (“Again”), Greg Laswell (“Girls Just Want to Have Fun”) and Amy Winehouse (“Rehab [Hot Chip Remix]”). Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me,” was recorded by Macy Gray and produced by Trevor Horn especially for “Confessions of a Shopaholic.”
Meanwhile, the richly toned orchestral score was composed by seven-time Oscar nominee James Newton Howard, a longtime associate of P.J. Hogan who previously scored the director’s “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” “Unconditional Love” and “Peter Pan,” as well as a long list of credits that also includes “The Dark Knight” (with Hans Zimmer), “Michael Clayton” and “King Kong.”
Jerry Bruckheimer has spent his entire career breaking molds and reinventing genres, and although romance and comedy are elements which have appeared several times throughout his 35 feature films, “Confessions of a Shopaholic” represents the producer’s first foray into romantic comedy as a cinematic form. And as usual, the approach is to give audiences something fresh. “I think we’re all looking for humor and romance in our lives,” concludes Bruckheimer, “and that’s what `Shopaholic’ is all about. It’s funny, it’s smart, and it’s going to touch you a little bit when you walk out of the theater. I love to entertain people, and when you can make them laugh, that’s a real gift to the filmmakers.”
Production notes provided by Touchstone Pictures
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Starring: Isla Fisher, Joan Cusack, John Goodman, Hugh Dancy, Krysten Ritter, John Lithgow, Kristin Scott Thomas, Leslie Bibb, Lynn Redgrave, Julie Hagerty
Directed by: P.J. Hogan
Screenplay by: Tim Firth, Tracey Jackson
Release Date: February 13, 2009
MPAA Rating: PG for some mild language and thematic elements.
Studio: Touchstone Pictures
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $44,277,350 (40.9%)
Foreign: $64,055,872 (59.1%)
Total: $108,333,222 (Worldwide)