Taglines: She’s an executive on the move. But her career is taking her a little farther than she expected.
New in Town movie storyline. Lucy Hill (Renée Zellweger) is an ambitious, up and coming executive living in Miami. She loves her shoes, she loves her cars and she loves climbing the corporate ladder. When she is offered a temporary assignment – in the middle of nowhere – to restructure a manufacturing plant, she jumps at the opportunity, knowing that a big promotion is close at hand. What begins as a straight forward job assignment becomes a life changing experience as Lucy discovers greater meaning in her life and most unexpectedly, the man of her dreams (Harry Connick, Jr.).
Lionsgate and Gold Circle’s New in Town comedy stars Renée Zellweger as Lucy Hill, a head-strong, materialistic career woman who must grapple with sub-zero temperatures, small town values and unexpected feelings for a man she doesn’t even like. Along the way, despite her most ardent intentions, Lucy discovers her better self and is faced with the challenge of making real, positive changes in her life.
“Lucy is a tenacious, determined, confident, accomplished player in corporate America,” explains Zellweger. “She lives in Miami and gets transferred to do a little reconfiguring of a plant that her company owns in Minnesota. She’s a fish out of water and she doesn’t expect to be taken by the charm of the place or to become attached to anyone in the town. She thought she was going to get in and get out with her lack of humanity intact.”
An Oscar-winner (Cold Mountain, Actress in a Supporting Role, 2003) widely regarded as one of the most versatile actresses of her generation, Zellweger was eager to try her hand at a traditional romantic comedy. “I was working on Leatherheads in the Carolinas,” she explains, “and we wrapped early one day, and I went to see Music and Lyrics because I love Hugh Grant. I loved it and it reminded me of the important place romantic comedies have in our pop culture lexicon. They make us laugh and help us escape real life. I read the script for New in Town shortly thereafter, and I was completely taken to another place and thought, `This is it.’”
“I thought the script was a refreshing romantic comedy set in a community with a lot of heart and old fashioned values,” says producer Paul Brooks. “Renée was absolutely our first choice for the role of Lucy Hill!”
Renee Zellweger relished the opportunity to demonstrate her skills as a physical comedian, taking full comic advantage of perfectionist Lucy Hill’s clash with the sub-zero weather and New Ulm’s quirky values. She was provided with a stuntwoman, but on the first day of filming, Zellweger realized that she wanted to perform her own stunts, even if it meant falling repeatedly on cold, hard ice.
“That’s the fun part, you know?” she says excitedly. “The fun part is making a jerk out of yourself in the snow and face planting and getting to be creative with it and ridiculous. And there’s no way I was going to miss out on that. No way! I laughed myself silly watching what an idiot I was. It’s so funny because Lucy is so determined to be perfect.”
“Whether she does a drama or a romantic comedy, Renée completely commits,” adds Brooks. “She’s a naturally very gifted comedian. If there’s a goofy moment, then it’s there for a reason and she’ll embrace it.”
Zellweger also made it a point not to shy away from Lucy’s less appealing qualities at the start of the story. Lucy begins as a materialistic corporate player, and gradually she learns, through her relationships with the citizens of New Ulm, to appreciate community, loyalty, real friendship, and a simpler, more grounded lifestyle. That Zellweger charts this journey without ever losing the audience’s sympathy is a testament to her particular brand of charisma. “Renée has this really endearing quality where you just root for her no matter what situation her character is put into,” says producer Tracey Edmonds. “Lucy’s trying to prove herself. She’s still got a lot of insecurities, and Renée has the ability to expose aspects of the character and make her likable despite her flaws.”
The most formidable challenge Lucy faces comes in the form of Ted, the union leader of the factory she has been sent to restructure. Played in the film by actor and musician, Harry Connick, Jr., Ted is a blue-collar guy who cares deeply about his community and the welfare of the employees whose jobs are under siege. Lucy and Ted are predisposed to disliking each other, resulting in a battle of wits that has been a staple of romantic comedies since heyday of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
“I’m in it for the workers,” says Connick, Jr. of his character. “And Lucy wants to not only disrupt the apple cart, but take everybody’s jobs as well. So I don’t take too kindly to that. I can see it a mile away, and I’m very prickly when she comes around.”
“The conflict is fun and it makes you interested in what’s going to happen when it’s not easy,” adds Zellweger. “When the guy that she meets is not interested or a little hard on her or when it really doesn’t seem likely that they’re going to become couple, it’s a fun ride to go on.”
“Harry is a great actor with loads of charisma,” says Edmonds. “He’s wonderfully Southern and really has that `regular guy’ charm necessary for the character of Ted, which creates the perfect chemistry with Renée’s uptight character.”
As with Zellweger, Connick, Jr. found New in Town’s light, comedic tone appealing, but the real draw was the opportunity to work with his co-star. “The first thing that really caught my attention was Renée,” he admits. “I’ve been a fan of hers for a long time and I was really looking forward to working with her.”
The resulting working relationship yielded palpable on-screen chemistry between the two stars as well as a lasting friendship off-screen. “The biggest difference between the movie characters and real life is that in real life I hit it off with Renée immediately,” avows Connick, Jr. “She’s just a unique personality. She’s brilliant. She’s magnetic. And when the cameras roll, her mastery of the art form is so clear. She understands what makes a scene work. Fortunately, we share the same sense of humor, so we really enjoyed our time together. I’m very proud to now call her one of my close friends.”
“Harry’s very generous and really good at what he does,” smiles Zellweger. “And he’s so nice to have around, so positive and supportive of everybody on the set. That man shows up and he makes it a better day. If there’s a guitar on set he’s going to pick it up and he’s gonna sing a song about every person in that crew.”
Following Zellweger’s commitment to play Lucy, producer Paul Brooks began the search for a director and chose up-and-coming Danish filmmaker Jonas Elmer after watching his debut film, NYNNE. “I really enjoyed his film and I thought he would be an interesting choice,” remembers Brooks. “The movie had wonderful energy, great characters and was funny as hell.”
Elmer immediately reacted to the depth of the characterizations in Kenneth Rance’s and C. Jay Cox’s script. “To be honest, character is really the only thing that matters to me,” he admits. “I thought that the characters were very three-dimensional and I completely fell in love with them. And the comedy in the script came out of the characters. There wasn’t a lot of comedy that was forced or pushed.”
Elmer and Zellweger quickly discovered they shared a similar sense of humor, and their preparation involved exploring comedic influences like Peter Sellers, Carol Burnett and Imogene Coco. “Jonas likes the unpredictable,” says Zellweger. “He’s not saccharin. And anything that feels disingenuous is eliminated. It made me trust him immediately. I sat down and had confidence in him just by listening to his references and what he thinks makes a film worthwhile.”
Jonas, in turn, was duly impressed by Zellweger’s professionalism and vast experience in front of the camera. “She’s so incredibly strong in a close-up, but she also knows exactly what to do when she does physical comedy in the medium shot and the wide shot. We got so many options in the editing room, which is such a gift from an actor. And in the scenes with physical comedy, it was just fantastic to watch her. She has no vanity. She just commits to the scene.”
Production took place in Miami, Florida and Winnipeg, Canada, which served as a stand-in for the town of New Ulm, MN. From the beginning of pre-production, Elmer wanted New Ulm to function as a character in the film, so he made a point of visiting the town itself in order to have a first hand experience of the remote Minnesota outpost. “My experience was just the same as Lucy Hill’s experience when she arrives New Ulm,” says the director. “I was completely a fish out of water. So it was very helpful for me to be there.”
Screenwriter Kenneth Rance’s decision to set his story in New Ulm was not simply a writer’s whim, but a nod to the true story that inspired the script. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Rance was out one night at a club in his hometown and met an attractive woman on the dance floor who was clearly not a local. After buying her a drink, he learned she was from North Carolina and living in New Ulm as an executive at a local food plant. She recounted to him the pressures of trying to climb the corporate ladder, dealing with the locals, trying to earn their respect, and the loneliness of being new in town.
One of Rance’s goals with the script involved accurately capturing the very friendly, warm and Christian-based community values of New Ulm, population: 13,593. With the majority of its residents of German and Swedish descent, it has become known as the most German town in America. “I wanted the story to be authentic and organic, complete with the town’s local accent, culture and language, so if a New Ulm resident were to see the film, they’d say I got it right,” he says.
Once he had completed the script, Rance partnered with producer Darryl Taja, who later brought on Tracey Edmonds to help produce the film. Edmonds particularly related to the female perspective of the story. “It’s about a young lady who’s trapped in an old boy’s network at the office and who’s trying to climb the corporate ladder and prove herself. And she ends up trying to prove herself by taking this assignment that no one wants. I thought it was a story that a lot of working women could relate to.”
Eventually, Paul Brooks of Gold Circle Films (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Wedding Date, Because I Said So) acquired the project and screenwriter C. Jay Cox came aboard to further develop the story. Like Rance, Cox mined the comic possibilities of Lucy clashing with the small town, rural lifestyle of New Ulm. “The drastic change she undergoes from Miami to New Ulm made the potential for comedy endless,” says Cox.
Hoping to capture the authentic spirit of New Ulm, the filmmakers worked hard to create a diverse, believable supporting cast, bringing J.K. Simmons, Frances Conroy and Siobhan Fallon Hogan aboard for major supporting characters. Simmons, widely known for his work as the father of a pregnant teen in the indie hit, JUNO, gained 35 pounds to play Stu Kopenhafer, a New Ulm local and no-nonsense, blue-collar guy who clashes with Lucy’s corporate values. Hogan plays the vital role of Blanche Gunderson, a character who reflects the town’s warmhearted community spirit and develops an unlikely friendship with Lucy.
One formidable challenge awaited the production when shooting began in Winnipeg: they found themselves in the midst of record-breaking winter temperatures of -47 °C (-52.6 °F). “It was like working on the moon,” recalls Zellweger. “Most people don’t even know what 57 below feels like. You freeze to death in two minutes. Anything that’s exposed to the elements you lose.” Equipment literally froze, halting all filming. When they worked, cameras couldn’t roll for longer than a minute, otherwise the heat they generated would fog up the lenses.
“We launched an entire new vocabulary,” says Zellweger. “Your face is so frozen that you’ll be filming and you don’t know that you’ve been tearing up until your eyelashes are frozen together. Those are lash-cicles. And then the guys had beard-cicles. My personal favorite is when your mouth gets numb and you can barely talk. So, you have no sensation at all and you get nostricles. Those are sexy.”
In one memorable scene, Zellweger had to brave the worst of the cold in the least amount of clothes, as Lucy arrives from Miami in Minnesota completely unprepared for the cold weather. “During Renée’s scenes, we had people standing just outside of the frame with warm jackets and warm tents,” said Elmer. “It was unbelievably cold for her and she didn’t complain once about anything. She was so fantastic to work with. And for about a week and a half she was very sick with a high fever and again without complaint.”
Not every scene, of course, was filmed outside. One of the most memorable moments during the shoot was the “Tapioca Fight” scene, in which six characters become embroiled in a passionate food fight involving gobs of sticky tapioca pudding. Since cleaning up splattered tapioca would prove too time-consuming, Elmer chose to run multiple cameras and shoot the scene only once. The cast seized the opportunity to improvise and a blizzard of tapioca followed. “Everyone had so much fun doing that scene because it was almost like an exorcism of all the cold,” explains Brooks. “Everything you see in that scene is spontaneous laughter and real fun.” “I also hope that in today’s rather troubled times the enduring optimism of this community shows the other side of the cultural coin.”
The filmmakers hope that audiences share in that same spirit of unbridled joy when New in Town opens in theaters. “I think everybody can relate to the basic needs and hopes of these characters, and hopefully in a very funny and entertaining way,” says Elmer.
“This is a story about people setting aside their differences and learning to love each other exactly for their differences,” adds Brooks. “I hope people will enjoy just seeing the sense of community that does exist in these lovely places in America, where people all pull together and really do want the best for everybody and want the best for the world.”
Zellweger simply smiles. “I hope at the end of it,” she says, “you’re gonna be glad you saw it. I hope you laugh.”
New in Town (2009)
Directed by: Jonas Elmer
Starring: Harry Connick Jr., Renée Zellweger, Nathan Fillon, Siobhan Fallon, Tracy McMahon, Kristen Harris, Jimena Hoyos, Barbara James Smith, Frances Conroy
Screenplay by: Ken Rance, C. Jay Cox
Production Design by: Dan Davis
Cinematography by: Chris Seager
Film Editing by: Troy Takaki
Costume Design by: Lee Harper, Darena Snowe
Set Decoration by: Stephen Arndt, Lia Thompson Roldan
Art Direction by: Edward Bonutto, Rosa Palomo
Music by: John Swihart
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language.
Distributed by: Lionsgate Films
Release Date: January 30, 2009
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