Miss Congeniality
Unpolished. Unkempt. Unleashed. Undercover.
Miss Congeniality (2000)
Budget
$45 000 000
Revenue
$212 742 720
Director
Scenario
Composer
Producer
Actors
Sandra Bullock
Gracie Hart
Michael Caine
Victor Melling
Benjamin Bratt
Eric Matthews
Candice Bergen
Kathy Morningside
William Shatner
Stan Fields
Ernie Hudson
McDonald
John DiResta
Agent Clonsky
Heather Burns
Cheryl 'New York'
Short description
Gracie Hart is an FBI agent who is more comfortable in a brawl than in a dress. When the bureau learns that a bomber calling himself The Citizen intends to strike at the Miss America pageant, she is the only female agent available to go undercover. Posing as a contestant from New Jersey, Gracie must pass as a beauty queen while trying to identify the threat from inside the competition. A seasoned pageant consultant, Victor Melling, is brought in to turn the rough-edged agent into a presentable contender, and her transformation becomes as much a part of the story as the investigation itself.
Donald Petrie directed the film, which sits between My Favorite Martian (1999) and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) in the chronological list of his features. Sandra Bullock plays Gracie and also produced, with Michael Caine as Victor, Benjamin Bratt as her fellow agent Eric Matthews, Candice Bergen as pageant official Kathy Morningside, William Shatner as host Stan Fields and Ernie Hudson as McDonald. Marc Lawrence, Katie Ford and Caryn Lucas wrote the screenplay.
Made for about 45 million dollars, the film took in roughly 212 million worldwide, a strong return for a comedy of its scale. Audiences rate it modestly: 6.4 out of 10 on IMDb from around 247,000 votes and 6.5 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller pool of voters. A critics' score of 5.7 out of 10 from 116 reviews places it close to those audience figures.
What's left behind the scenes
- The song from the film that plays during the Miss USA contest was written by screenwriter Mark Lawrence and his 7-year-old son Clyde. Mark wrote the lyrics, and Clyde composed the music.
- There was a scene in the trailer that didn't make it into the final cut of the film: a father asks her if she's a lesbian. She laughs and replies, 'Oh, if only.'
- Cheryl's answer to the question 'What is your idea of a perfect date?' was used as a response in an actual beauty pageant.
- One of the contest judges looked so much like wrestler Jesse Ventura that director Donald Petrie jokingly referred to him as such during filming.
- Sandra Bullock owns a house in Austin, Texas, where some scenes were filmed.
- Filming in Austin took place in May/June 2000. Many Austin establishments were used in the film, including “Dog and Duck Pub” (where Gracie eats ice cream), “Cue Lounge” (shown during the failed mission at the beginning of the film), and others. The scene at “Starbucks” was filmed in downtown Austin's business district. To make the streets of Austin more like New York, brown trash bags were placed around the buildings, while fake New York taxis drove around the streets. Although a stunt driver primarily drove during the scene where Gracie speeds through the intersection and brazenly parks in front of “Starbucks”, Sandra Bullock drove herself in several takes, drawing on her experience from filming “Speed” (1994). These scenes were filmed at the “Starbucks” located near the “One American Center” skyscraper at the intersection of 6th Street and Congress Avenue. The “Starbucks” scene took an entire day to film. The car scene alone required at least 5-7 takes and most of the day under the scorching Texas summer sun. To shield Bullock from the heat, an assistant held an umbrella over her between takes. The interior scenes took only a few hours to film at the end of the day, closer to evening.
- Screenwriter Mark Lawrence named the main character Gracie after his daughter Grace.
- Originally, there was supposed to be a storyline involving Gracie’s mother. In the first scene, after young Gracie beats up two boys, her mother is called to school to scold her. The story with her mother was supposed to reveal that she was one of the best FBI agents and was killed in the line of duty, and after that, Gracie became an agent to make her mother proud. All of this was cut because director Donald Petrie felt it was unnecessary to tell the whole story, as he believed Sandra Bullock evoked enough sympathy for her character without the additional storyline.
- Jennifer Gareis, who played Tina, the girlfriend of Miss New York who sat among the audience at the pageant, was actually supposed to play the role of the real Miss New Jersey. Originally, there was a scene planned where Gracie and Eric ask her at the gym to give up her title. Director Donald Petrie cut this scene to speed up the plot. When he decided to cut her role entirely, he felt guilty and offered her the role of Tina.
- Heather Burns (Miss Rhode Island) had to learn to twirl a baton for her role, with the limit being twirling a flaming baton. The film crew brought in a professional for the talent show performance scene.
- Heather Burns arrived at the audition with long chestnut hair. Director Donald Petrie liked her, but deciding she looked too much like Sandra Bullock, he asked her to cut her hair and dye it dark blonde.
- Sandra Bullock and Benjamin Bratt performed all of their fight scenes themselves. Stunt doubles were on set, but only to monitor that they were doing everything correctly. In one moment, Bullock accidentally injured Bratt when she was supposed to kick him in the legs after he says, 'Yes, you're going to have to wear a bathing suit.'
- After the morning briefing ends, Gracie and the Captain walk past a photograph of Gracie's mother hanging on the wall.
- The people working at 'Starbucks' are its real employees.
- Many members of the film crew appeared in cameo roles.
- The scene of Gracie returning home after the restaurant assignment was written in the script as 'Gracie comes home and starts boxing.' Everything else (the falls, hitting the bed, the microwave) was improvised by Sandra Bullock.
- The television channel that shows Gracie, 'KSAT 12,' is a real local news channel in San Antonio.
- William Shatner (playing Stan Fields) is a nod to Canada's acting heritage. 'Stanfields' is a very well-known brand of underwear (known for its warm underwear) sold in Canada. Also, Stan Fields’ voice is remarkably similar to that of former Miss America pageant host, Bert Parks.
- Matt Dillon was originally planned for the role of Eric Matthews.
- Edward Herrmann had an episodic role in which he played Gracie's father, but this scene was cut.
- While Fran Tobin (Steve Monroe) is preparing an explosive crown in the dressing room to kill someone for his mother, Cathy Morningside (Candice Bergen), the Queen of the Night's aria is performed on stage. When this aria is performed in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 'The Magic Flute,' the Queen of the Night demands that her daughter kill someone for her.
- The actress playing the role of young Gracie still has baby teeth at the beginning of the film, meaning she is between 6 and 8 years old. It is shown that the year is 1982. Later in the film, when Agent Matthews is trying to find a female agent for an undercover operation, and they choose Hart, her date of birth is visible – November 2, 1969. This means the child's age at the beginning of the film is 13 years old.
- When Gracie gives her final interview, the phrase “I will take them out” is heard. However, it is clearly visible on her lips that she says: “I will take them down.”
- When Eric tries to convince Gracie to participate in the gym contest, he says: “It won't be like that. Forget it, you’ll join the operatives.” She replies: “Yeah, right, in a bikini.” After this phrase, it is visible in the next shot, when she hits the mannequin on the head, that she pronounces the last word again.
- In a scene showing a man making a bomb, small printed circuit boards, designed specifically for easier soldering of integrated circuits, lie on his table. However, he is then shown doing it in a more complicated way under a magnifying glass with bare wires. It's unclear why he doesn't use the boards that are right in front of him.
- During the swimsuit competition, when Stan says Rhode Island, California is visibly preparing to walk out, but Stan immediately moves on to New Jersey.
- Throughout the film, Miss California is known as Leslie Davids, but when she becomes one of the top five finalists, Stan refers to her as Leslie Williams.
- When the Russian is choking, Gracie says twice, “he’s turning blue,” implying he can’t breathe. However, at that time, he’s making sounds that a person with no air entering their lungs couldn’t make. (The Heimlich maneuver is only used when a person cannot make any sound at all.) In any case, an adult’s airway is too large to be completely blocked by a peanut. Perhaps the filmmakers intended that the Russian is pretending, and Gracie is mistaken about everything, not just her subsequent actions, but the reason for them.
- When the top ten finalists are announced, only seven names are called.
- When Miss Rhode Island performs her baton twirling routine, the batons are clearly blackened, but when the performance ends, they look completely unburnt.
- Before going on stage to announce the top ten finalists, one of the girls curls Gracie's hair in rollers, but when she walks on stage, her hair is perfectly straight.
- When Victor says he's leaving (with Gracie in his room), he takes toilet paper from the bathroom, initially holding it in one hand, and then pressing it to his chest with the other in the next shot.
- In the club, when Gracie tries to get Cheryl to admit to doing something illegal, paint stains on Cheryl's right cheek appear and disappear.
- At the beginning of the surveillance operation on the Russian, during the first close-up of the book Gracie is reading, a spyhole from a hidden camera is visible in the middle of the spine. In all subsequent shots, this spyhole is no longer present.
- During the finale, the camera operator behind the stage intermittently appears and disappears.
- Cheryl hits Gracie with a bouquet of roses, and all the petals fall off. Later, Cheryl is again with a bouquet, but the petals are back in place.
- Gracie's slice of pizza randomly changes size from frame to frame.
- When Gracie answers the question about what our society needs, Stan is to her right. But when she leaves the stage, he is on her left.
- When Gracie and Eric first meet Victor at the restaurant, Victor's arm jumps: it's sometimes on Eric's shoulder, and sometimes just stretched downward.
- When Gracie enters the dressing room in a swimsuit, she is completely wrapped in a towel, and although the camera she is wearing is covered by this towel, the operatives see the dressing room on their monitor.
- When Gracie stumbles and falls on stage, her hair is pinned up as if she were the Statue of Liberty. In the next shot, her hair is perfectly styled again.
- When Gracie tackles a man with a gun at the talent show, she doesn't knock over the table with glasses of water, but the news report shows her pushing the table before running to jump on the cowboy who just wanted to light a cigarette.
- When Victor and Eric discuss Gracie having no talent, Eric is drinking from a mug. In the next shot, the mug disappears.
- When Gracie practices going down the stairs in her dress in the middle of the night, she pulls all the weapons from under her dress. As she does so, her shawl slips off her shoulder, and in the next shot, the shawl is back on her shoulder.
- When Gracie and Eric meet with the competition representatives, Mrs. Morningside stands up, expressing her protest against their program being called a beauty pageant. In the reflection in a photograph of the contestants behind her, Gracie and Eric are also seen standing up at that moment, but in the next frame they are only just beginning to rise from their seats.
- When Gracie exits the hangar after her 'makeover,' Eric is standing leaning against the car. When the camera shows him from behind, he is seen pushing off the vehicle to stand up. This moment is repeated in the next scene.
- After Gracie and Cheryl have finished their hot cocoa, Gracie is standing in the doorway with a mug in her hands, but when she walks back, the mug is on the bedside table.
- When Gracie walks across the stage during the swimsuit competition, it is visible that she starts walking a couple of seconds earlier than she should. In the next frame, she begins walking from the same spot.
- While Gracie waits to be announced as a top-5 finalist, the camera shows her three times. Miss Rhode Island, who has already been announced, appears and disappears within the line of contestants.
- During the first meeting with Cathy and Stan, the amount of water in Eric's glass constantly changes.
- After Gracie kicks the bed in her apartment in a fit of anger, the blanket is arranged differently in the next shot.
- In the scene where Eric and Gracie fight in the gym, towards the end, Eric throws Gracie to the floor, and she should clearly fall on her left shoulder, but in the next shot she falls on her back.
- The clock in the background at the police station jumps forward 15 minutes when Eric says, “Who’s buying lunch?”
- When Miss Rhode Island approaches Gracie’s door with hot chocolate, at the moment Gracie opens the door, the thermos lid is clearly not screwed on tightly. While they are talking in the doorway, the lid is tightly closed and remains that way.
- After Frank is told to polish the Miss USA crown, he throws the old one into a sink full of rags and takes out a new one. After he throws the old one in, its edge is barely visible in the left corner of the sink, but it’s not the same place it landed in the previous shot.
- When Gracie brings everything she bought at Starbucks to work, Eric asks, “Where’s my iced coffee?” But what he takes after that is clearly not iced coffee.
- As Gracie and Victor leave a restaurant in New York, a bus with a large “UT longhorn” banner (the logo of the University of Texas at Austin’s football team) drives by.
- When Gracie jumps on the man with a gun at the competition, Katie Morningside says, “Well, of course. It’s Texas, everyone has a gun…” In fact, the way that man is carrying the weapon is considered “open carry” and is illegal in Texas.
- When Gracie meets Eric by the pool, the depth indicators may appear to show incorrect information. In the first shot, we see “3 FT = 9 M,” but if you look closely in subsequent shots, you can see the decimal point “3 FT = .9 M,” which is correct (3 feet = 0.9144 meters).
- After Gracie returns from the bar, she is unexpectedly wearing a corsage. This corsage is a leftover from deleted scenes of her father's wedding.
- On the surveillance monitors in the van outside the Russian restaurant, the timecode begins with the letters “TCR,” indicating playback rather than recording. If it were a recording, the timecode would begin with “TCG.”
- Gracie, Victor, and the FBI all have the same room number at the hotel (103).
- When Morningside tries to open a bottle of aspirin, her “assistant” Frank Tobin approaches her, and she almost calls him by the actor’s name (Steve Monroe). You can hear her say “Ste-Frank…”
- On all the FBI agent files viewed on the computer, their badges all have the same signature: “Gracie Hart.”
- In the final scene, the back of the crowd is obviously cut out of cardboard.
- After Victor leaves and Gracie has to do her makeup herself, Miss Rhode Island and the other girls start helping her. Miss Rhode Island picks up a lipstick, and as she brings it to Gracie's lips, the tip breaks off, but she reacts quickly, twists it up, and continues as if nothing happened.
- When Cheryle performs the baton twirling routine, in one shot right before Victor and Eric try to reach Gracie, it's clearly visible that a stunt double is used instead of her.
- When Gracie practices the 'slide' on the street, a large crowd watching the film shoot can be seen across the road.
- When Stan announces the contest winner: “The new Miss America is Miss Rhode Island,” it's visible on his lips that he's actually saying something else.
- Over breakfast with all the contestants, Cathy Morningside says she has been running the pageant for 21 years, but later in the film, when she is arrested, she says it's 25.
- During Miss Congeniality's final speech, Cheryl is seen to flinch, jumping with her whole body in the background.
- When Cheryl is crowned 'Miss USA', after the sash passes over her head, the next shot repeats it, but from a different angle.
- When Gracie says she wants world peace while receiving the 'Miss Congeniality' award, a shot from behind shows her wiping away tears with a handkerchief. In the next shot, the handkerchief is no longer visible.
- In the scene where Gracie receives the 'Miss Congeniality' award, after Miss Texas performs, she goes on stage to congratulate Gracie. But in the next shot with Victor and Eric, she is still in the crowd, noticeable by her broken nose.
- When Gracie throws Sheryl's crown towards the Statue of Liberty, a hand reaching from the crowd in an attempt to grab the crown is visible.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
