Sweet Home Alabama
Short description
Melanie Carmichael has built a life far from her Alabama roots as a fashion designer in New York, and she is now engaged to Andrew Hennings, the son of the city's mayor. There is a complication: she is still married to Jake Perry, the husband she wed back in high school, and he has no intention of granting her a divorce. Determined to settle things, Melanie travels home to Alabama to confront him and close that chapter, only to find her past and her Southern upbringing difficult to leave behind.
Andy Tennant directed the film, which followed EverAfter and Anna and the King in his filmography. C. Jay Cox wrote the screenplay, and Neal H. Moritz and Stokely Chaffin produced. Reese Witherspoon plays Melanie, with Josh Lucas as Jake, Patrick Dempsey as Andrew, Candice Bergen as Mayor Kate Hennings, and Mary Kay Place and Fred Ward as Melanie's parents. The film was released in 2002 and runs 108 minutes.
Made for a budget of 30 million dollars, it earned 181 million dollars worldwide, a strong return for a romantic comedy of its era. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.2 from around 134,000 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 6.4 from about 1,800 votes. A critics' rating of 5.3 from 161 reviews places it below both audience scores. The large gap in vote counts between the two audience platforms reflects a broad popular viewership.
What's left behind the scenes
- The first film after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, for which the New York City authorities gave permission to film.
- Jake's plane lands on Lake Peachtree near Peachtree City, Georgia. This is prohibited by law, and the filmmakers were fined $300.
- No animals were harmed during the filming. Activists from animal rights organizations specifically monitored this.
- The first film shot in Tiffany & Co. since the filming of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (Blake Edwards, 1961).
- Charlize Theron was initially cast in the role of Melanie, but she left the project to star in Louis Mandoki's "24 Hours" (2002) due to the actors' strike.
- The cemetery shown in the film was filmed in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. This is the hometown of Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968), a writer and political activist whose image was popularized in mass culture by William Gibson in the play "The Miracle Worker" (1959) and in the eponymous film by Arthur Penn (1962).
- The film's tagline is "Sweet Home Alabama," but Melanie's house was filmed in Georgia. Scenes in the city's business district were filmed in Crawfordville, the least populated county in Georgia.
- The film mentions the nicknames of two dogs – Bear and Bryant. Thus, the filmmakers honored the memory of Paul "Bear" Bryant (1913-1983), the football coach of the University of Alabama.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
