The inspiration for screenwriter Anya Kochoff's Monster-in-Law script - her feature film debut - originally came from years of conversations the writer had with her girlfriends. They would compare notes with other newly-married couples, and Kochoff discovered a treasure trove of funny and sometimes heart-breaking incidents at her fingertips. After thinking about a story for almost a year, she eventually sat down at her computer and wrote the first draft of the script in just a month.
In writing the script, Kochoff realized that in the telling of these family squabbles, listeners appeared more sympathetic to the mother. But she wanted to tell her story from the girl's point of view.
"I wanted the audience to experience what it is like to adopt a mother, to adopt a family," Kochoff explains. "I wanted people to appreciate how difficult it can be for the women marrying the sons of their soon to be mother-in-laws."
"There's an old saying, when you marry the guy, you marry the family," she continues. "I never believed that until I got married myself. It's hard enough to deal with the idiosyncrasies of your own relatives without taking on the problems of a whole new family. That's what this movie is really about - it's about being so excited to meet the man of your dreams and then realizing that there's an entirely separate set of issues that come with it because even perfect love has its drawbacks. This is a story of overcoming those drawbacks; it's the bride-underdog story."
The story captured the interest of producers Chris Bender and JC Spink, who from their first read of the script knew they wanted to make the film.
"The title alone had me interested," says Spink. "Some of the best movies seem to work when you know what to expect just from the title. Of course it works best if the audience has a strong connection through a universal theme, like Meet The Parents, for example. There is a great deal of commonality in the title. In the same vein, the script for Monster-in-Law delivers the title's promise because it's a funny and compelling story at its core."
"Finding a great script is like the feeling you had in high school when, in the middle of reading something really fascinating, you suddenly realized it was an assignment, not a comic book or magazine article - 'Oh my God, is this homework!?' It's the same with a good script, you forget you're reading, and you forget it's your job."
When the producers brought the project to New Line Cinema, the studio then turned to former-agent-turned-producer Paula Weinstein for yet another perspective and tapped her to join the production team already in place. Weinstein was thrilled to come aboard.
"You say Monster-in-Law and people go, 'Oh my God, do I have a story for you!'" says Weinstein. "It doesn't matter whether you are talking about the mother-in-law or the daughter-in-law; it all depends on your point of view."
New Line Cinema co-chairman and CEO Bob Shaye also believed that Weinstein's good friend and former client, Jane Fonda (who initially introduced Weinstein and Shaye), might find the material captivating enough to return to the big screen. Fonda had been sent many scripts throughout the years, but was too busy with other pursuits to even contemplate returning to Hollywood. Whether it was kismet or the planets aligning just right, Fonda felt the time had come to try her hand at acting again.
At the same time the producers sent Fonda the first draft of the script, they were wooing Jennifer Lopez, who eventually committed to the project in early May 2003. She then became an integral part of the production team and worked with filmmakers throughout the pre-production and production process.
"It's hard to find a romantic comedy with a fresh premise," says Lopez, who has made her mark in the genre. "The audience already knows the ending, so it's really got to be about the journey. This is a story about a free-spirited girl who hasn't tied herself down to anything because of her own fears about life and commitment, but the movie also looks at today's mores juxtaposed with those of from Viola's generation. Women like Viola were very focused and driven. Things were supposed to be done in a certain way, at a certain time in your life. The comedy comes from watching these two generations relate in a setting where they are pitted as rivals; it lent for funny situations, especially when the mother behaves against type and becomes totally out of control."
While the mother may be the character in the title role, the story is actually driven by the would-be daughter-in-law.
"Charlie is actually the key to the story," explains screenwriter Anya Kochoff. "Her character must be sympathetic and Jennifer fits the role perfectly as this beautiful, sweet girl who is very innocent and is so in love with Kevin."
"Charlie is a 2005 woman," continues the writer. "She's not sure what she wants to do with her life, and the last thing she's looking to do is get married, which of course, makes her a better catch. She's also used to running when relationships get too close or too hot or complicated. So one of the bigger hurdles she has to overcome is learning how to stick it out and deal with problems. She decides she's going to make it work because she really loves the guy. She's going to have to beat Viola at her own game, which for me was the most fun."
Shortly after both leading ladies signed on, the production team found its director in Robert Luketic. A true collaborative spirit, Luketic proved to be the glue that kept everyone together on the same page.
To round out the main cast, the filmmakers needed to find just the right actor to play the character of Kevin Fields.
"The whole point of Kevin is that he is the perfect guy," says Anya Kochoff. "He's a great guy and a super-good catch. He's good looking, funny, successful and a caring doctor. He possesses all the personality traits most women look for in a husband. The only thing wrong with him is his mother."
Vartan was thrilled to have the opportunity to take on the role and particularly enjoyed cutting loose during everyone's favorite fantasy sequence.
"I do play the straight guy, so I didn't really have the opportunity to be funny," he says. "But the cake scene where Kevin proposes to Charlie in front of his mother and she imagines shoving Charlie's face in the cake, allowed me to cut loose. I could do all this weird stuff and be out of my mind. My best moments will probably be in the outtakes."

Falling in Love: The Characters
A veteran of the genre, Jennifer Lopez found herself drawn to the role in Monster-in-Law because of the character she would get to portray.
"Charlie is a genuinely sweet person, one of those people that you meet and you can't imagine they really are as kind and nice as they seem," says Lopez. "She doesn't wish anyone harm, she just wants to go about her life and then she meets Kevin and nothing is simple or safe anymore."
Lopez was also intrigued by her character's back-story. "Charlie has been alone most of her life because she lost her parents at a young age, so she's someone who marches to the beat of her own drum," she says. "Those two conditions cause her to be wary and to avoid putting down roots. Once you've been hurt in a love, whether it's a family situation or a relationship, you don't want to put yourself at risk again. Charlie keeps everything very transient and seems spiritual and fun as opposed to being a focused, ambitious career woman who wants the whole package - the kids, the perfect home, the social standing. That's not Charlie."
Despite Charlie's avoidance of the trappings of permanence, she still finds herself cultivating a family of sorts among her friends, something that Lopez herself went through when she first arrived in Los Angeles from New York.
"Los Angeles is not like New York where you run into the same people all the time and can strike up a conversation with someone at a bus stop or on the street," she says. "In Los Angeles, it's not as easy to make new friends. When I first moved here, I found that, like Charlie, you meet little clusters of people who live right next to you or that you know from work to form a surrogate family. And that's what Charlie has done. Remy seems to live in Charlie's apartment instead of his own half the time, and Morgan is her girlfriend who also lives in the same complex."
"But none of them have their lives figured out," Lopez continues. "They're all approaching 30 and they support one another's endeavors. Morgan is trying to be a caterer, and Charlie is dabbling in design but not really focusing on it, and Remy, well, we decided that Remy lives off of an inheritance. He doesn't really have a job; it's a mystery. But these people are her family now that her parents are gone."
Charlie and Viola might appear to be very different people on the surface, but deep down they are more similar than they at first realize.
"They are alike in that they are both smart," says producer Paula Weinstein. "They're both wily and they fight for what they want. Each has a huge need when it comes to Kevin, which brings them together so they are combative and won't give up."
Screenwriter Anya Kochoff sums it up by saying, "These two characters are a lot more similar than they would like to be or would hope to be."
Charlie is a young woman who cannot seem to find her path in life or focus to any one goal in particular. But suddenly fighting with Viola becomes her main purpose.
"Charlie's insecurities are at play," says Lopez. "She just wants Kevin's mother to like her and she's willing to go to any lengths to get her approval. But then Charlie starts to believe that maybe she really doesn't belong, maybe it is her fault. But Charlie pushes past the doubt because she loves Kevin so much. She is determined to form some type of connection with Viola."
"Charlie trusts Kevin," Lopez continues. "That's a very important aspect of the movie. She knows that she and Kevin truly love each other and want to be together. It's that bond that gives her the strength to go beyond the call to make things work with his mother."
Lopez was not the only actor enamoured of their character. Fonda also found herself excited to take on a character so different from anything she had done in the past.
"I've never played a character like Viola," says Fonda. "I'm just glad that after 15 years, my first character isn't dour or serious, but outrageously over-the-top. In the 50 films I've done, I don't think I've ever had so much fun. I didn't expect it."
Fonda loved the idea that Viola was a Barbara Walters-type. "Viola is a major television personality, a serious journalist who interviews heads of state, but the network wants fluff and she doesn't do fluff," says Fonda. "She's considered old so they fire her in a horrible way and she has a breakdown. Then she comes back from a retreat and discovers that she's going to lose her son, too."
The setup adds to the tension of the plot.
"Viola's son chooses to marry at the moment when she's lost all identity in the world," says Paula Weinstein. "Kevin is her only anchor; the only thing she has left is being a mother, and it frightens her that she could lose him."
The resulting conflict is one in which Fonda is painted as an "antagonist with shades of gray," according to Robert Luketic.
"Viola is very isolated and that informs her behavior in order to allow the audience some sympathy and understanding," the director continues. "When we meet her, she is in a crisis moment and goes completely over the edge."
Nuts or not, the fun begins when Viola determines that no matter how in love Kevin and Charlie may appear, she knows what is best for her son, and Charlie does not fit the bill.
"While Viola's behavior is completely inexcusable, she's so outrageous that you forgive her," says Fonda. "You go along with her because she's just so terrible. She's like a volcano or an animal that pees everywhere to mark its territory; she just can't help herself. That's what I love about her."
Fonda's motivation for the grand dame was culled from a wide combination of personalities including Mae West, Ted Turner and her grandson, Malcolm, to name a few.
"Viola is dramatic and over-the-top, but she's also courageous, and she stands by her convictions," Fonda says. "She couldn't have gotten as far as she did in her career if she didn't also possess those qualities, for better or worse."
Because the two female leads are such strong opposing personas, it was important that the character of Kevin not get lost in the mix.
"We didn't want Kevin to be this forgettable nobody because it's important the audience respects him and respects that he's in a difficult situation between two women that he loves," says producer Chris Bender. "He can't take a side; he has to be very diplomatic regardless of the pressure. We had to be very delicate in how we chose to handle his obliviousness."
Bender said he and his fellow producers spent time on the set observing Vartan and playing junior psychologist for clues into Kevin's psyche.
"We had to figure out how to give Kevin a little edge, so we watched Michael for ideas and found that he has this smart, natural sarcasm that works for him, so we worked his own mannerisms into the script," says Bender. "It's not easy to be the straight man, but the sarcasm keeps him real so he doesn't seem overly emotional or too sensitive, which wouldn't feel real. When the tension finally hits the boiling point and Kevin's forced to take a stand, you find out who he really is."
Despite the obvious brainpower and facility for coping with high-stress predicaments as typifies a successful surgeon, Kevin is blind to the trouble brewing between his soul mate and his mother for much of the story.
"Kevin is like a lot of men - he believes what he's told," jokes Paula Weinstein. "Since both of these women act the part in front of him, it's easy to ignore the signs of problems. Even when Charlie tells him that his mother is crazy, for Kevin, it's just another difficult episode."
Fonda's explanation is less gender specific. "Hey, everybody knows what it means to be in denial," she says.
Weinstein adds, "We live in a world where people act out in the worst kind of way, or they hold back their real feelings. These women would never behave the way they do in their fantasies, although Viola comes close."
But Viola's true motivations are revealed thanks in large part to the character of Ruby.
"Ruby provided a way for the audience to see Viola outside of her craziness," says Chris Bender. "She gives you insight into why Viola is the way she is. Through Ruby we understand that Viola is feeling left out and scared."
Ruby also acts as Charlie's secret consigliore.
"Charlie goes to Ruby for advice for obvious reasons," says Lopez. "Ruby is not just Viola's assistant, she is her best friend. She tells Charlie to stand up to Viola and Ruby sheds some light on Viola's behavior."
In Luketic's mind, Ruby is Viola's younger sister. "She's got this great conscience that dogs her throughout the movie; she's conflicted," he says. "And the fun comes from watching that conflict unfold."
Life On The Set
When it came time to start production, Monster-in-Law could not have chosen a more beautiful setting to start things off as they set up to shoot a scene at the historic Huntington Gardens & Museum. In the scene, Viola invites Charlie to lunch at her exclusive country club for what Charlie believes is a chance to get to know her prospective daughter-in-law. But as writer Anya Kochoff puts it, "it's just the beginning of the territorial dance."
As the production got underway, Kochoff was in a state of quiet awe, watching her five-page scene unfold before her with none other than Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda reciting her lines. For the writer, being on set throughout production was a dream come true.
"It was so satisfying because, as a writer, I spend most of my days shut off in a room, alone," says Kochoff. "Watching these actresses bring the characters to life from the written page and behave in ways, or roll their eyes, make faces, or do something I never thought of was the most amazing experience. It was so much better than what I conjured in my head. Jennifer and Jane took the story and made it better."
Once filming began, Kochoff deferred to the actors when it came to understanding their psyches. Lopez was always open to feedback about the scenes, and to the filmmakers delight, she was very definite about ways in which Charlie would or would not behave.
"She knew the character better than I did!" states Kochoff.

The Look Of Monster-in-Law
As a veteran of the genre, Jennifer Lopez knows that the way a film is shot, its locations, and its production design can be crucial to a film's success.
"Comedies can be bland if you don't embellish the way they are shot and staged, or if you don't use every tool available to you, the sets, the locations; all of that becomes important in this type of movie," she says.
For this very reason, Robert Luketic chose Academy Award-winning (Titanic) cinematographer Russell Carpenter, ASC.
"I wanted someone who would make women look very beautiful and who had an artistic sense and flair," says Luketic. "Russell's work is incredibly versatile. In looking at his films, I was struck by the poetry in each scene. Each exists as a painting, yet every movie has its own tone and texture. It's that sort of pallet of skill that I find exciting because he can light a formal scene just as brilliantly as he can something with an edgier, more frenetic, contemporary feel. He is able to create different moods throughout each film and he has a great aesthetic eye. If I could book Russell for every movie for the rest of my career, I would do it."
For Carpenter, Monster-in-Law is a definite departure from the large-scale action pictures he generally works on. But the director of photography felt it was time for a change and was looking forward to doing something where he could spend more time focused on actors and story.
"It's a definite departure in terms of style," says Carpenter. "I'm finding more and more that I am very much an old-school Hollywood cameraman, that I adore movies in which the actors are icons, where a great close-up is worth the price of admission. The opportunity to work with Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda was just an opportunity I couldn't miss."
"Cameramen have a gene that says, 'make everybody look as stellar as you possible can,'" says Carpenter. "But Jane Fonda first saw her camera tests and said, 'please don't go too far with all this cosmetic stuff and the filters. I want to look my age; this is not about trying to make me look 25. I want to be a woman of my age, proud of who she is.' So that was a wakeup call to me to not go overboard with everything."