Screenwriter Mark Andrus wanted to craft a script that told the tale of a place and a people he knew intimately: rural Idaho. The co-writer of James Brooks' As Good as It Gets, Andrus grew up in a Mormon family, and he hoped to realistically portray that world of deep spiritual devotion, hard work and close family…and the humor that comes from the interplay. Georgia Rule was that story.
Morgan Creek CEO and one of the film's producers, James G. Robinson, was interested in developing a project that wasn't cookie cutter in its approach; he responded to the dynamics among the strong personalities of Andrus' screenplay. "Anyone who's been married or raised daughters understands what goes on between these women, particularly if the girl is a teenager. I thought it would be a lot of fun to produce this, and everything fell into place. Mark wrote a great script. We had Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman and Lindsay Lohan to star, and Garry Marshall to direct. All three bases were covered: good story, good director, good cast."
Garry Marshall recalls that he was curious to work on a movie that explored forgiveness and "trusting what your child says." Marshall says, "Usually, I do comedy/drama. Georgia Rule is drama/comedy, so it was a new switch for me." His interest in the material was not selfless, however. As he admits, "It's nice to work with beautiful women who can act and have talent."
Marshall says that he has always felt a knack at eliciting solid performances from actors of a younger generation, and he felt this project would be no exception. "From Julia who was 22 in Pretty Woman to Anne who was 18 in Princess Diaries--and here's Lindsay, 20, right in the middle of my picture--I seem to understand them."
The story arc of the main protagonist, Rachel Wilcox, intrigued the director. Andrus had written a hot-headed wild child who was out of control in her San Francisco home. Her disruptions had finally led her mother to drag her kicking and screaming to a tiny, boring town in Idaho for some much needed grandmotherly discipline. Marshall liked the fact that this 18-year-old granddaughter would test everyone.
"Rachel goes to this small town in Idaho called Hull," the director notes. "I made up the town name, because Hull rhymes with dull, and that's what she's looking forward to in this place."
Fictional town, shooting script and financing in place, it was time to cast three women who could give performances that would draw laughs and tears from the audience. Enter Jane Fonda, Lindsay Lohan and Felicity Huffman.

Casting the Film
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-of-bounds 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."

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."
Of his hopes for his picture, director Marshall concludes: "I did a picture years ago called Nothing in Common, with Jackie Gleason and Tom Hanks; it was about a father-son relationship. And wherever I traveled people said, 'You know, after I saw that, I called my father. I haven't talked to him in 10 years, but I called up my father.' I hope Georgia Rule will bring families a little closer together. Call the grandma. Call the mother. Call the daughter. She's not really the worst child in the history of the world."

Director Garry Marshall
Since his career began in the late 1950s, GARRY MARSHALL (Directed by) has established himself as one of Hollywood's most respected writers, producers and directors of television, film and theater and is still going strong today.
Among his many film directing credits, Marshall directed the box-office hit Pretty Woman, with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere; Frankie & Johnny, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino; Beaches, with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey; Overboard, with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell; Nothing in Common, with Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason; The Flamingo Kid, with Matt Dillon; The Other Sister, with Diane Keaton; Runaway Bride, the box-office hit that reunited Marshall with two old friends, Richard Gere and Julia Roberts; and The Princess Diaries, which was a box-office success and his first "G" picture, starring Julie Andrews and Anne Hathaway. In addition, he directed two movies in 2004: Raising Helen, starring Kate Hudson and Joan Cusack, and another box-office success, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, with the same wonderful cast as before.
Marshall has helped launch the careers of such well-known Hollywood personalities as Julia Roberts, Robin Williams, Pam Dawber, Matt Dillon, his sister Penny Marshall, Jason Alexander, Henry Winkler, Mayim Bialik, Crystal Bernard, Anne Hathaway, Heather Matarazzo, and, most recently, Chris Pine from The Princess Diaries 2.
A Bronx native and a Northwestern University journalism graduate, Marshall has created and executive produced some of the longest-running and most celebrated sitcoms in American television history. Among these are Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Odd Couple and Mork & Mindy.
In 1983, he received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is the recipient of many prestigious awards such as the American Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement Award and Publicists Guild Motion Picture Showmanship Award for Film and Television. In 1995, he was voted the Valentine Davies Award winner by his fellow writers of the Writers Guild of America. In November 1997, Marshall was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Television Academy Hall of Fame. He was honored by Washington, D.C.'s National Italian American Foundation in 2002.
As an actor, Marshall has played many notable roles, including the casino owner in Lost in America; head of the network in Soapdish; team owner Mr. Harvey in A League of Their Own; Mr. Gold in The Twilight of the Golds, with Faye Dunaway; the network head and Candice Bergen's boss on TV's Murphy Brown; and, most recently, Irwin in his son's directorial debut, Keeping up With the Steins.
In 2005, Marshall took a turn and directed his first opera, Jacques Offenbach's Grand Duchess, starring Frederica von Stade, which opened the season for the Los Angeles Opera. He will direct a second, Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore (The Elixir of Love) for the San Antonio Opera in January 2008.
Adams Publishing released Marshall's autobiography Wake Me When It's Funny, which he wrote with his daughter Lori in 1995. Newmarket Press released it in paperback version in 1997.
Also, in 1997, Marshall followed his dream by building a 130-seat live theater space with his daughter Kathleen in Burbank, California. The Falcon Theatre has flourished since its opening

Screenwriter Mark Andrus
Prior to Georgia Rule, screenwriter MARK ANDRUS (Written by) adapted 2002's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood for the screen. Previous credits for Andrus include 2001's critically acclaimed Life as a House, 1997's As Good as It Gets (with writer/director James L. Brooks) and 1991's Late for Dinner.

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