120 Degrees in the Shade: Filming Georgia
Georgia Rule was filmed on location throughout Southern California. From the foothills of Monrovia in the San Gabriel Valley and Santa Paula in Ventura County to Stage 7 at the Sunset and Gower Studios in Hollywood and the city of Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley outside of Los Angeles, key locales were selected to create the fictitious city of Hull.
While scheduling requirements for the actors necessitated that the shoot remain close to Los Angeles, Marshall and his production crew needed a place with lakes and mountains that could mirror the beauty of a simple hometown in the Midwest. They found that in Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Valley and Franklin Canyon Lake, in the heart of the city of Los Angeles.
Dermot Mulroney offers, “Once you’re an hour outside of the city, some of these countrysides are really rugged and remote. With the mountains in the background, they look as much like a country road as the country roads in Idaho do.”
Much of the action of the film takes place in Simon’s veterinary-human doctor’s office, where Rachel’s grandmother puts her to work. Country and simple in scope, Simon’s office reflects the types of patients he serves, with pictures of hunting dogs, children’s artwork and school trophies littered about.
Simon’s bachelor pad is as simple as his office, yet indicative of his life as a widower. With cheap impressionist reprints, unfinished jigsaw puzzles on the tables and well-worn remembrances of his dead wife and child allowing him to hold on to the past, the second-floor condo is lifeless…until Rachel arrives. Rachel and Lilly find themselves temporarily housed at 247 Hillview Street, Georgia Randall’s home that Lilly left 13 years earlier. Georgia’s well-tended garden, porch—complete with rustic swing—and lush ferns serve as exterior to her two-story bungalow.
As the younger women walk into the interior of Georgia’s house, they see little has changed in her world since the time Lilly left. Records from Glen Campbell to The Four Lads are played nightly. Georgia still showcases her vases and Bluebirds of Happiness collection, and the same mosaic-print table runners fill her living and dining rooms. The kitchen is simple and plain, complete with placards reminding us to “Count Your Blessings” and plants, including mother-in-law’s tongues (irony intended), lining the shelves.
Rachel will spend much of this summer of renewal in her mom’s room. Just as she has in the rest of her cottage, Georgia hasn’t changed much since Lilly left home all those years ago. From the Janis Joplin and Doors posters on the wall to the clown figurines Lilly collected as a girl, the room remains a quiet memorial to the child who once lived there.
Fonda remarks, “One of the stars of the show is small-town America. Some people might feel claustrophobic in it, but I think it works magic on this young girl who’s so lost.”
One unwelcome star was the overpowering heat that became another cast member during the shoot. Lindsay Lohan laughs of the scene that opens the film: “It was 120 degrees outside! I’m walking barefoot outside on really hot pavement in a desert, and Felicity is in the scene in a Mercedes with the air conditioning on.”
Felicity Huffman agrees with her on-screen daughter about the outrageous temperature. “It was 120 degrees! We were way up in the Sierras, and everyone was dying. Then there’s Garry, with his Popsicle, moving around for 15-hour days and directing brilliantly.”
The temperatures would prove unbearable at times, but the director felt it added to the camaraderie on set…though he drops the mercury by a few degrees. “A 110-degree heat! Even the most temperamental people tend to gather together in the shade. It was a shade-related melding of this cast, because they were so hot they would stand under anything that gave them relief.”
With no on-set casualties from a 2006 summer shoot in sunny Southern California, the production would wrap with crew and cast temperatures sufficiently cooled. Marshall took it all in stride. “I like to be the kind of person who stands at the edge of the cliff,” he comments, “and I let them all try things. If they’re going to fall off the cliff, then I say, ‘No, don’t go there.’”
Three generations of women came together to film this story, and it is fitting that the senior member of their group concludes our notes with her reflections on her character: “I’ve been around long enough so that I can see through the façade, and I can see in this wild granddaughter of mine something that’s worth saving,” Fonda says. “She’s basically a good girl, but she’s just lost it. And I feel the way her mother intuitively does.”
Casting the Film
“You don’t look evil.” — Rachel
“Makeup helps.” — Georgia
First attached to the project was Lindsay Lohan. The actor had made her mark in a string of successful comedies over the past decade, but she began widening her range with key roles in 2006’s Bobby and A Prairie Home Companion. Recalls Lohan of her attraction to the part of Rachel: “The script reminded me of Ann-Margret’s character in one of my favorite films, Kitten With a Whip. She was very Lolita-esque as well.”
Lohan was curious to understand Rachel’s choices and what landed her in Hull—friendless, desperately hurt and seething mad. “Rachel doesn’t understand the difference between love and sex in a lot of ways,” she reflects. “I think it’s important to play a character so any girl or boy that has ever gone through a situation like this can hopefully learn from.”
Lohan had actually worked on a Garry Marshall film before, but in the case of The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, she lent her vocal talents to the soundtrack, singing “I Decide” for the comedy. Of the chance to work with Oscar winner Fonda, Lohan was a bit starstruck. The actor laughs, “I dressed as her in Barbarella for Halloween one year…it’s a very small world. I just feel very lucky to work with people I’ve always admired.”
After Lohan signed on, Robinson convinced Marshall to become attached to Georgia Rule. Soon, the director, producers and the casting director would choose the other players, starting with Jane Fonda and Felicity Huffman. Robinson relates, “I feel that part of the reason the chemistry was right was because each of the three women understand and play their characters so well.”
Jane Fonda (oddly enough, a Georgia resident) chose the role of the title character as a chance to work with Marshall and bring writer Andrus’ words to the screen. With her hit Monster-in-Law recently under her belt, the actor was certainly back and at the top of her game. Producer Robinson believes, “Jane came onboard because she believed in the role, she liked Garry Marshall and she liked the challenge of working on this movie.”
Fonda notes, “Mark observes characters beautifully, and this is a character-driven story about three generations of women who are all multidimensional. They have humor as well as pathos and depth.”
She appreciated the fact that though Georgia “didn’t know how to be a mother to her daughter, she’s ready to be a better grandmother. I’m a grandmother now, and I know how very often as parents we can find it easier to be intimate with other people than with our own children. Sometimes grandchildren provide us with a second chance.
“Georgia’s been pretty happy for 13 years,” Fonda continues. “So there she is, quite happy with her rules and, suddenly everything falls apart. The two other generations of women intrude on her life, and the ghosts of the past come back to be healed.”
Fonda was also impressed by the caliber of talent that came with her on-screen granddaughter. She compliments, “Lindsay’s raw and has an ability to access her emotions that’s very beautiful. She’s made me cry several times when I gave her the offstage lines; she’s very moving.”
The role of Lilly, Rachel’s alcoholic mother and Georgia’s distant daughter, went to Felicity Huffman. It was a challenge for the actor, who was simultaneously filming her television show Desperate Housewives during the weekdays. Notes Huffman, “I thought the characters were rich and true and three-dimensional and funny and heartbreaking.”
She found working with the women who played her daughter and mother especially moving. Of Fonda’s acting camaraderie, Huffman commends, “Here’s a woman that has a resume as long as my body and two Academy Awards and she comes in and asks me, ‘What do you think?’”
Lindsay Lohan would also strike her as powerful. The actor remarks, “Lindsay moves from being dangerous to wounded. You’re always waiting to see where it’s going to come from. That’s a great game to play when it almost turns into emotional improv.”
The theater-trained performer had fans of her own on set. Cary Elwes, who plays Lilly’s odious husband and Rachel’s nemesis, Arnold, remembers, “Felicity is an extraordinary actor. She always manages to bring a wonderful level of strength and fragility to her roles. She is also fearless, and that is always fun to play off.”
For the character of Simon, the filmmakers cast actor Dermot Mulroney, (a fellow Northwestern University alum of director Marshall). The director notes, “We were looking for a Sam Shepard-type, and Dermot fell into this role. Simon becomes in Rachel’s life what her father who ran away didn’t become.”
Simon plays veterinarian to the wounded animals and family physician to the sick citizens of Hull, Idaho. To prepare for the part, Mulroney was actually given a brief tutoring lesson on basic medicine. The actor offers, “I received a ‘how to fake doing the stitches’ lesson, so I’m pretty good on that.”
Veteran actor Cary Elwes was brought in to play Arnold. Of casting a performer to play a distasteful character, Marshall admits, “It is a tough role, so a number of actors avoided it. And lo and behold, Cary Elwes came and was quite good. He wasn’t afraid of it. He said, ‘Let me try it,’ and he made contributions to the script I thought were excellent.”
Elwes was interested in the script because he felt the “main themes of this story are really secrets and lies. And it is common knowledge that families that harbor these inevitably provide a breeding ground for dysfunction. Arnold is a perfect example of someone who, being weak himself, exploits weakness in others.”
Finally, newcomer Garrett Hedlund was cast as Harlan, the naive boy who doesn’t know what to make of Rachel and her charms. Hedlund hails from the region of the country where George Rule is set and could easily relate to the farm boy. Of his character’s growing relationship with Rachel, Hedlund comments: “It’s the red zone for Harlan…he can’t go there. He’s got a girl, and he’s about to be married. This is out-ofbounds territory.”
Casting completed with such favorites as longtime Marshall friends Hector Elizondo and Laurie Metcalf in key supporting roles, it was time to start filming. Marshall dryly jokes, “When in doubt, you bring in friends and relatives; you can always pick on relatives. Nepotism is a part of my work.”
Jane Fonda best synopsizes the cast and crew’s strong draw to the story. She explains: “Imagine this quiet, sleepy town in Idaho—a town where everybody knows everybody. The boys are all virgins until they get married, and they go away to do their mission work for the Mormon Church. Suddenly, this creature from outer space appears. Nobody’s seen anything like her, and it’s hard to know what to make of her because she’s also smart and funny and provocative and outrageous.”
Georgia Rule (2007)
Directed by: Garry Marshall
Starring: Jane Fonda, Lindsay Lohan, Felicity Huffman, Dermot Mulroney, Cary Elwes, Garrett Hedlund, Hector Elizondo, Cynthia Ferrer, Tereza Stanislav, Destiney Sue Walker, Jennifer De Minco
Screenplay by: Mark Andrus
Production Design by: Albert Brenner
Cinematography by: Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Film Editing by: Bruce Green, Tara Timpone
Costume Design by: Gary Jones
Set Decoration by: Garrett Lewis
Art Direction by: Norman Newberry
Music by: John Debney
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content and some language.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: May 11, 2007
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