Beautiful Girls (film) - Origins

Origins

Screenwriter Scott Rosenberg was living in Boston, waiting to see if Disney would use his script for Con Air. He said in an interview, "It was the worst winter ever in this small hometown. Snow plows were coming by, and I was just tired of writing these movies with people getting shot and killed. So I said, 'There is more action going on in my hometown with my friends dealing with the fact that they can't deal with turning 30 or with commitment' - all that became Beautiful Girls". Originally, James L. Brooks was interested in directing the film according to actress Leslie Mann who auditioned for a role but was not cast.

Ted Demme had the entire cast come to Minneapolis and live together for two to three weeks so that they could bond. He also made sure that the setting is a character unto itself. He "wanted to make it look like it's Anytown USA, primarily East Coast. And I also wanted it to feel like a real working class town". To this end, Demme drew inspiration from Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978). "The first third of the film is really an amazing buddy movie with those five actors. You could tell they were best friends, but they all had stuff amongst them that was personal to each one of them". He screened the movie for the cast and crew.

Scott Rosenberg also writes for the show October Road. The show is loosely based on what happened after Beautiful Girls came out and how his friends reacted to a movie about their lives. Both Beautiful Girls and October Road take place in the fictional Massachusetts town of Knights Ridge, and have similar characters, jobs, plot lines.

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