Tagline: He’ll do anything to get the groom out of the picture.
Made of Honor movie storyline. Tom is sexy, successful, has great luck with the ladies but he always can rely on Hannah, his best friend. Everything goes well until Hannah goes to Scotland. Tom realizes how much he misses Hannah and decides he will ask her to marry him when she returns. But Hannah comes home engaged to a wealthy Scotsman and plans to move oversea. She asks Tom to be her “maid” of honor.
For Tom (Patrick Dempsey), life is good: he’s sexy, successful, has great luck with the ladies, and knows he can always rely on Hannah (Michelle Monaghan), his delightful best friend and the one constant in his life. It’s the perfect setup until Hannah goes overseas to Scotland on a six-week business trip… and Tom is stunned to realize how empty his life is without her.
He resolves that when she gets back, he’ll ask Hannah to marry him — but is floored when he learns that she has become engaged to a handsome and wealthy Scotsman and plans to move overseas. When Hannah asks Tom to be her “maid” of honor, he reluctantly agrees to fill the role… but only so he can attempt to woo Hannah and stop the wedding before it’s too late.
Made of Honor (Made of Honour in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and Australia) is a 2008 American romantic comedy film directed by Paul Weiland and written by Adam Sztykiel, Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont. The film stars Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan and Sydney Pollack, in his final screen appearance prior to his death less than a month after the film’s release. The plot follows a lifelong playboy who falls in love with his best friend, only to have her get engaged and ask him to be her maid of honor. It was released by Columbia Pictures in United States on May 2, 2008.
About the Film
In Columbia Pictures’ romantic comedy Made of Honor, Tom (Patrick Dempsey) has finally realized that the woman of his dreams is the one who has been there all along: his best friend, Hannah (Michelle Monaghan). But just as he’s getting ready to pop the question, Hannah gets engaged to another man – Scotsman Colin (Kevin McKidd) – and throws Tom for a loop by asking him to be her maid of honor.
Tom accepts, seeing his opportunity to get close to the bride-to-be and woo her before it’s too late. As Hannah begins to realize that Tom may be marriage material after all, she will have to decide between marrying her best friend or the man who asked first.
“Hannah’s choice is not an easy one,” says Neal H. Moritz, producer of Made of Honor. “Both Tom and Colin are good guys, they both have merit.”
“At its heart, Made of Honor is the age-old idea that you don’t see love when it’s right in front of you,” says director Paul Weiland. “Tom is a very good-looking man who gets women easily, but won’t commit. When Hannah meets someone else, he realizes that not only is he going to lose his best friend, but he’s really in love with this girl and just hadn’t realized it. All along, he’s had his cake and been able to eat it too, and suddenly, someone has taken his cake away.”
“Unfortunately for Tom, he discovers too late that Hannah really is his true love,” says Dempsey. “Hannah believes in true love and marriage, while to this point, Tom has been a ladies man with serious issues about marriage. Tom has many opportunities, missed moments, but Hannah’s been there the entire time. Now she’s been taken away from him, and his only recourse is to go to Scotland as her maid of honor and try to win her over.”
Michelle Monaghan notes that “I really wanted to be a part of this project because I loved the story and everyone that was involved. The odd coincidence was it was a situation I had lived through: when I was married, my maid of honor was a man who is still my best friend.”
From the very beginning, Moritz wanted to make the film with Patrick Dempsey. “When this script came to us, we loved the concept,” recalls Moritz. “We thought it was a great idea for a romantic comedy. I had been a fan of Patrick Dempsey’s ever since Can’t Buy Me Love, and then he was in a film I made, Sweet Home Alabama. Since then, he’s come to represent something – not just anyone could play Dr. McDreamy. Patrick can play romance and he can play the rogue, and you still end up rooting for him. Of course, he was the first person we talked to about the role of Tom.”
“Patrick was absolutely perfect for this role,” says Weiland. “I’ve always been incredibly impressed by his ability to do so many different things. When he and Michelle are together, it’s an exciting combination. She’s so full of life and has a sense of humor equal to his.”
For his part, Dempsey was attracted to the role by the chance to bring the rogue around. “Tom has it all, right up until Hannah gets engaged – and then he realizes that his seemingly perfect life is nothing without her in it,” he says. “When it becomes apparent to him that he might lose her, it really throws him – he’s ready to change his entire life to make sure she stays in his life. I think that’s a satisfying story – I know that a lot of guys out there wish they’d been smart enough, and bold enough, to hold onto the one that they let get away.”
With Dempsey on board, Moritz set about looking for the perfect person to direct the film. A colleague suggested he see a movie called Sixty Six, directed by Paul Weiland. Moritz did, loved it, met and hired the director. “Paul has a great comedic sensibility and he also knows the subtlety of relationships and romance,” says the producer. “He is really able to bring a truthfulness to a story.”
“I’m a bit of a romantic at heart myself,” allows Weiland, “so making a romantic comedy is something I’ve always wanted to do. Tom is an emotional cripple in the beginning of the story but by the end he is able to confess his true love. I liked that this is from a male perspective, because most of the time in movies, it’s the girl getting her heart broken. It’s nice to see it happening to the opposite sex!”
Patrick Dempsey says, “One of the things that made this project so satisfying was working with Paul. Several times things have come up at the last minute that we’ve been able to flesh out with a little improvisation. It’s challenging and fun to go through that process and discover where the humor is, and at the same time, Paul always keeps it grounded.”
A perfect example of this is a scene where Tom, in his best “maid of honor” mode, accompanies Hannah to choose her china and silverware patterns. Remembers Weiland, “I read somewhere that Patrick knew how to juggle, so I suggested that he juggle the huge china plates. He was astonishing during several rehearsals. As luck would have it, he dropped all the plates on the first take – but he was perfect on the others.”
“That idea came up the morning we were filming that scene,” says Dempsey. “Paul asked if I juggled and when I said yes, he said, `Why don’t we try it with the plates?’ I told him that I hadn’t juggled in a while, but we just sort of built the scene around that notion. It changed the dynamic of the entire scene.”
Hannah, the woman Tom suddenly discovers is not only his best friend but the love of his life, is played by Michelle Monaghan. “Hannah doesn’t really take Tom seriously,” she says. “She has a sense of humor and gets a kick out all of his stories about his adventures. The truth is, she really does have a thing for Tom, but she never acts on it. She doesn’t see the potential for a long-term relationship because he doesn’t believe in marriage and she, with her whole heart, does. It’s the age-old experience of people not appreciating one another until they’re no longer a part of your life.”
According to executive producer Callum Greene, “Made of Honor is a very sweet, compelling story with two actors that really are enjoyable to watch. I think that’s key. Both Patrick and Michelle are such gifted actors and they bonded so well together. They make you laugh and they’re completely engaging.”
Monaghan says that Paul Weiland brought just the right mix of humor and emotion, slapstick and sophistication, to Made of Honor. “I absolutely adore Paul,” she says with an enormous smile. “He made me smile and giggle every single day – I just enjoyed being around him and being directed by him. He has a wonderful sensibility you don’t find in your typical romantic comedy director; he brings something unique, a European vision and tone to the film.”
Kevin McKidd, who played the lead role in HBO’s “Rome” and most recently starred on NBC’s “Journeyman,” takes on the third point in Made of Honor’s romantic triangle: the Scotsman Colin, who falls for Hannah and asks for her hand after a whirlwind six weeks. Weiland says, “I was looking for someone who wasn’t obvious for the role of Colin. I wanted a serious bloke – strong and passionate. It couldn’t be someone that the audience would immediately hate, because he needed to be an equal foe for Tom. Colin is also rich, but he has better manners, he’s more sincere. He seems to be the type of man that Hannah has been waiting for – strong, always there for her no matter what happens.”
McKidd says, “On first impression, Colin is the perfect man. He owns a fantastic castle. He’s the lord of a fantastic plot of land in Scotland. His family has owned a famous distillery of Scottish whiskey for generations and is very distinguished. He’s almost a nobleman – it’s a very posh, old-money family.”
The actor admits that the role represented a break from the types of roles he usually plays. “I was a little nervous at first, because I’ve always done serious, intense films,” he says. “In Made of Honor, I would be working opposite Patrick, a great actor who has been in lots of comedies and lots of romantic movies. He has such a wonderful gift for coming up with stuff on the spot and being funny. I was nervous, but he really made me feel very comfortable.
With these two co-stars, Monaghan says that falling into her role as Hannah was a piece of cake. “It was very easy to become besotted with these two men. Both Patrick Dempsey and Kevin McKidd are extremely, extremely charming. How bad could that be for an actress to play against?”
One memorable moment for McKidd came when the Scotsman learned to dunk a basketball. “In a early version of the script, my character played golf, which for a Scotsman felt natural. When they changed it to basketball, I thought, `Oh man, this is bad!’ The good news is I do have hand-eye coordination, so at least I could catch the ball. Fortunately, there also was quite a bit of basketball on television around the time I was going to shoot this scene. That, a great stunt coordinator, and movie magic turned me into a star.“
Another serendipitous moment came when Weiland discovered that McKidd had a wonderful, though untrained, singing voice. In a scene originally scripted to have Colin, during a grand dinner party at the family castle recite a Robert Burns poem to his bride to be, McKidd instead sang a traditional Scottish song, “Love is Like a Rose,” to nary a dry eye in the house – both cast and crew!
“Colin just really wows Hannah,” Monaghan notes. “She’s been waiting for her Prince Charming, and she thinks she’s found him in Colin. He’s new and fresh and unexpected and lovely. I swear, when Kevin sang `Love is Like a Rose,’ he melted my heart during each take. He is just so loving – and that accent! Cupid has caught her right between these two men.”
Around the three stars, the filmmakers cast a pair of veteran actors to play parents: Sydney Pollack plays Tom’s father and Kathleen Quinlan plays Hannah’s mother, Joan.
“Sydney and Kathleen are actors of such great caliber,” adds Moritz. “They both have several scenes with Patrick and Michelle that add a sense of weight and credibility to the story. It was a great decision on Paul’s part to cast actors who would be able to lift those scenes tremendously.”
“I’ve known Sydney for a while,” says Weiland, “and actually, I have another project that his company is producing. He’s very funny as Tom’s father, but I have to admit, having him in the film brought a lot of fear to the project because basically I had to direct one of the most famous directors in the world! But he was very, very supportive and incredible fun.
“I was honored that Kathleen Quinlan accepted the part of Hannah’s mother, Joan,” Weiland continues. “It’s not a very big role, but it is important, because she sees that maybe her daughter might be making a mistake marrying Colin. But she also isn’t sure about Tom – although Joan likes the raffish aspects of Patrick’s character, and has affection for him, I’m not sure she wants her daughter to marry him. Maybe it’s a case of no one being good enough for her daughter, but I think Joan always felt that Hannah could do better. Joan comes to realize that Tom is the most important part of Hannah’s life – and you can’t get a better match than that.”
Filming In Scotland
From the very beginning, says producer Neal H. Moritz, the filmmakers intended to film the climax of Made of Honor in Scotland, where it is set. “There is simply no way that you could build sets or find locations to match the reality of where we filmed on location,” he says. “Being in that beautiful environment tremendously helps the movie and also lets the characters really embrace who they are and what they’re supposed to be doing. It lends an air of credibility to it – and it makes the magic happen.”
“Scotland definitely becomes a character in the movie,” says Patrick Dempsey. “You can feel the difference when you’re there. The water, the countryside – it’s so beautiful and doesn’t look like anywhere else. And the local people were great – I couldn’t understand a word they said, but they’re very, very sweet.”
The company filmed at Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye for five days. Though there are only at most 12,000 people on Skye at any one time, the Made of Honor production rolled in with a crew of 250, a cast of 25, and 300 extras. “We were split up between over 50 different hotels and bed-and-breakfasts and inns. It was a staggering feat to pull off,” says executive producer Callum Greene.
Dunvegan Castle, a fortress stronghold in an idyllic loch-side setting, is said to be the oldest inhabited castle in northern Scotland and has been occupied continuously by the chiefs of MacLeod for over seven centuries. It is still the MacLeod ancestral home. It was on the extensive grounds of the castle that the Highland Games as well as a touching scene between Hannah and Tom were filmed.
Paul Weiland recalls, “You look behind you across the field at Dunvegan Castle and it’s like a fantasy, it’s a feast for your eyes. For me, the visual effect of the film needs to be part of the whole package. I think that many romantic comedies are filmed in a flat way that is boring. I wanted this to be textural. I wanted to create a world that everyone who saw it would think, `I wouldn’t mind living there.’”
Kevin McKidd, who was raised on the eastern side of Scotland, was happy to have an opportunity to work in the land of his birth. “When the sun shines in Scotland, it’s the most beautiful place in the world,” he remarks. “I think it’s great to show the audience that Scotland really is a romantic and magical country. You couldn’t cheat this anywhere else in the world.”
While on Skye, the company encountered a minor miracle. With huge exterior locations to be shot with hundreds of extras, there was not a drop of rain to be seen – despite shooting in an area that sees 60 to 80 inches of rain every year. None of the local citizens could believe it. And while it was dry on Skye, it was pouring and flooding across the border in England.
As for the Highland Games sequence, Moritz says, “It’s a Scottish tradition that when somebody is going off to be married, the groom has to win the Highland Games to earn the right to marry the bride. Tom is trying to prove his worth participating in games that no American man has ever done before, like the Caber toss and Braemar Stone throw, as well as a very mean tug-of-war.”
“I wanted to give the scene a real flavor,” says Weiland. “The Highland Games are supposed to be fun, with everyone dressed up in kilts and Renaissance costumes, but Tom takes it very seriously, believing that if he can beat Colin at some of the events and come out the victor of the games, he will have an opportunity to win Hannah. Of course, things don’t quite turn out that way for him.”
While shooting on Skye, the production also filmed on the tiny Glenachulish ferry that traverses the Sound of Sleat, connecting Kylerhea to Glenelg. The ferry is the earliest recorded service in Skye’s history, dating back at least to 1695.
About the Production
Helping Weiland bring Made of Honor to the screen are cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts, BSC and costume designers Penny Rose and Rebecca Hale, all of whom have previously collaborated with the director, as well as production designer Kalina Ivanov, who designed last year’s sleeper hit Little Miss Sunshine.
Ivanov says that the look of the film is defined by each individual character. “I lay a very specific color pallet, because I feel that color is emotion,” she says. “When I read a script, I have very distinct feelings about what the colors of the characters are. I try to lay that pallet throughout the entire film. Every character has its own narrative arc, and so do my colors. They tell a story, too.
When she was first approached about the film, Ivanov created a gallery of images on her website for Weiland to look at. In a subsequent meeting with the director and producer, they realized that they had very similar visions of the characters, the humor, and of the elegance of the script.
“One of the things that appealed to me,” says Ivanov, “was the opportunity to create two different worlds. One is Tom’s world, which is very contemporary. He’s a very wealthy, creative man. The other is the traditional Scottish world based on years of tradition and very old money. It was new money in New York which is hip, trendy and vibrant, versus old, rather staid, and old-fashioned money in Scotland.
“One of the things I’m most proud of is finding the loft in Los Angeles that we used for Tom’s home,” Ivanov continues. “We found a space that had the greatest bones you could imagine, with very high ceilings and on various levels. It was two lofts put together. I realized that by knocking out a wall we could easily connect the two spaces and have the most beautiful New York-like architecture.”
“It was an empty shell that allowed me to create a style for Tom’s character. I also wanted to create a fluidity in it. I built a lot of bookcases, an entire library that curved around the room. It made the room more inviting and warm and gave it a sense of creativity and heart. Because he’s a wealthy bachelor, I wanted to create the ultimate in technology, so I also designed a curved DVD library and metal library ladders. I also created the ultimate bachelor’s kitchen, a breathtaking and beautiful space that probably had never been used, and a huge wine rack.”
Luckily, after creating the space, Ivanov found a building in New York with exteriors that matched the interior windows of the loft space in L.A. When it came time to create the Scottish sets, Ivanov looked to history. “The inspiration for the pallet for the Scottish section of the film was the classical tartan of the Scottish family in the film,” he says. “The tartan has a very beautiful green, a little bit of blue, and a little bit of red running through it, so I reserved the color red until we got to Scotland. For the wedding in Scotland, we did most of the flowers with red roses, plus the traditional Scottish heather – which was our blue and green.”
Though Dunvegan Castle represents, in most shots, the exterior of Colin’s home, Ivanov notes that finding locations for the interiors was not so easy. “There was a lot of movie magic used in creating that castle. We used 4 or 5 structures to make the one,” she says.
“By scouting castles and reading books about Scottish architecture, one of the things I noticed was that every castle has many layers to it, added through history. If the original was built in the 13th century, a brand new Tudor ceiling might have been added in the 15th century, and then in the 18th century they might have remodeled and used the first wallpaper, then in the 19th century plumbing came in. So there are a tremendous number of looks in each castle. The ground floor might look like 13th century but the second floor might be completely 19th and 20th century.”
Among the English and Scottish castles that form the interior of the McMurray home are Broughton Castle, near Oxford, England, which has a great hall of stone, traditional in Scottish architecture.
However, the second floor of Broughton did not suit the filmmakers’ purposes. So it was on to a third castle, Dorney Court, for the more intimate rooms. Putting false stone over the wood-and-brick hallways to match the stone of Broughton Castle, the rooms were just what the filmmakers were looking for.
In a few exterior shots, Colin’s home is played by another Scottish castle, Eilan Donan, which stands on a rocky promontory in the waters of Lochalsh on Skye. “It became a little bit of a Rubik’s Cube, to put all the pieces together to make sure that they all kept the same Scottish feeling we had seen in our research,” notes Ivanov. “But that is the magic that production designers perform!”
Cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts, BSC, who has two Academy Award nominations to his credit, was charged with lighting Made of Honor. Unlike many romantic comedies, Made of Honor is being shot in a very lush, very beautiful way with a lot of depth to it.
“Paul was very keen that he didn’t want the film to look too bright. He didn’t want what he calls `comedy lighting,’” says Pierce-Roberts. “He wanted it to look real and believable.”
Finding and then lighting Tom’s loft was another challenge for the director of photography. “The loft that Kalina found for Tom was fabulous,” he explains. “It was huge, but was very difficult to light because it was 15 stories up. The windows were a lovely hemispherical shape that you find in a lot of older New York lofts, so that worked rather well.
For a wedding scene on a rooftop, Pierce-Roberts worked closely with the production designer to light the scene naturally. “Kalina had done a drawing to show how she was going to decorate and what kind of lights she was planning to use,” he notes. “I was able to use most of her practicals as a light source. It made it prettier and a lot more romantic, and in fact, they lit most all of the background action and the extras. It worked quite well.”
“We have three weddings in this movie,” explains Weiland. “Each wedding had to have its own theme. Obviously, the last one was the most important. We wanted it to feel free, so we shot it in the open air and we shot it at night. It takes place in New York with a beautiful skyline. It’s beautifully lit and there are great light effects – it’s incredibly romantic. You want people to leave feeling that the scene was not only a feast for the eyes, but a feast for the heart.”
A major collaboration on the film was that between the film’s two costume designers. Penny Rose was responsible for the American portion of the film, and Rebecca Hale took over once the company arrived in the United Kingdom.
Laughs Weiland, “When I think of it, I did some terrible things to Patrick: I had him naked and in a mini-kilt.”
“The truth is,” says Rose, “we’re just there to help the actor en route to the look they’ll have in the film. We don’t superimpose on them. An actor wraps himself in what we give him and then they become the character. It’s really all in the actor.
“Michelle’s character needed to have a progression from the beginning of the film until the end so that she became more glamorous,” she continues. “I think it’s also relevant that, as an art restorer, she probably doesn’t earn a lot of money, so we tried to avoid doing high, high fashion. In the beginning she’s quite `girl-next-doorish’ and then a little more chic as we went along.”
“For a wedding to a member of the Scottish aristocracy,” explains Rose, “you can assume that it will be a very fancy affair. The Scottish wedding would be almost royal in its glamour. We gave Hannah a very glamorous silk, taffeta, and organza gown. I saw a wedding dress in a magazine called Vogue Sposa. I contacted them in Italy and they put me in touch with Atelier Aimee, a shop that had just opened in New York. The bridesmaids’ dresses were from Vera Wang.”
Contrasting with the glamorous dress Hannah wears for the Scottish wedding is the simple, elegant dress she wears to marry Tom, designed by Selia Yang.
Rebecca Hale was charged with costuming the UK portion of Made of Honor. “For over a month, Penny and I talked about what she was doing,” she says. “We had to make the divide between Scotland and America very obvious.”
According to Hale, she and Rose initially discussed not having any tartans until the wedding. “Generally, Scottish people aren’t dressed head-to-toe in tartans or kilts. They’re used for weddings and ceremonials. But I spoke with Paul about it. He had always wanted the Scottish people to look almost `alien’ to the Americans, and to show the difference between the two cultures, we did it that way. We both felt that for the arrival of Hannah’s family and wedding party, we should put Colin’s entire family in the McMurray tartans, tweeds, and plus-twos, which are the britches they wear.”
What Hale discovered through her research was that during the day, the men would wear tweeds, rather than a tartan. One of the Scottish members of her team went up to the North and discovered an amazing little shop with hundreds of thick fabrics in the back. “You don’t find fabric like that anymore,” Hale says. “And for me it was the most fascinating. The Harris tweed is made up there and it is specially fabricated for each family.”
For the McMurray tartan, Hale and Ivanov looked at about 80 different Murray clan tartans before choosing a very subtle one that is predominantly green with a little bid of red and blue. “We went to the House of Bruar, an enormous mall-like place, where they make kilts. One of the women there was married to the butler of a local man. It’s in that type of small talk that you find out what people wear and how they wear it.”
The tartan selected for Patrick Dempsey’s character is called a Royal Stewart. Says Hale, “It’s a military tartan – it’s what the pipers wear. When people think of tartans, it’s the Royal Stewart that they generally are thinking of.”
For the Highland Games sequence, Hale says, “Paul said one word – medieval. Because I’ve worked with him a lot and know that he likes to play upon people’s sense of humor, I got it immediately. We rented a lot of the costumes from theaters, because it’s a more imaginative form of costuming. We found fabulous pig’s-head masks and cockrels and jester’s costumes at the Royal Shakespeare Company.” Her greatest challenge for the sequence turned out to be dressing the 250 extras in various types of renaissance dresses, pantaloons, and exotic headgear.
Adding to the merriment for the Americans was the terminology used on British film sets – not to mention the few Celtic words they picked up on Skye. Carpenters are chippies; electricians are sparks; bairn are children in Scotland; and detours are deviations throughout the British Isles.
Made of Honor (2008)
Directed by: Paul Weiland
Starring: Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan, Sydney Pollack, Kadeem Hardison, Beau Garrett, Richmond Arquette, Chris Messina, Busy Philipps, Kathleen Quinlan, Whitney Cummings, Emily Nelson
Screenplay by: Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont, Adam Sztykiel
Production Design by: Kalina Ivanov
Cinematography by: Tony Pierce-Roberts
Film Editing by: Richard Marks
Costume Design by: Rebecca Hale, Penny Rose
Set Decoration by: Melissa M. Levander
Art Direction by: Sue Chan, Phil Harvey, Mark Scruton
Music by: Rupert Gregson-Williams
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content and language.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: May 2, 2008
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