“Sweet Home Alabama” turns 20 this year. And no, we don’t mean the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic, although it does play pivotal role in the Reese Witherspoon rom-com that opened in the fall of 2002.
The Oscar-winner and New Orleans native stars as Melanie Carmichael, a young woman who has reinvented herself as a New York City socialite and must return to her hometown to Alabama to obtain a divorce from her husband after seven years of separation.
The film opened in Sept. 27, 2002. It received mixed reviews from critics, with a 39 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and consensus reading, “Reese Witherspoon is charming enough, but the road to Alabama is well-traveled.” But it had a $30 million budget and earned $180 million worldwide, solidifying it as a hit and Witherspoon as a bankable movie star.
To celebrate 20 years, we listened to the DVD commentary with director Andy Tennant (”Ever After,” “Hitch”) to learn more behind-the-scenes stories and tidbits about the production, Witherspoon and more, including whether or not the movie was actually shot in Alabama.
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- Tennant opens the commentary revealing a key production location, when young Melanie and Jake play on a Gulf beach. “So here we are watching Sweet Home Alabama, when in fact, the first scene here was actually shot on Captiva Island in Florida.” But most of the movie was shot in Atlanta, Ga., even the scenes set in New York, though some exterior shots were shot in Manhattan.
- The film was partially filmed in Alabama. When Witherspoon drives home to the fictional hometown of Pigeon Creek, she passes several houses in an affluent neighborhood in “Greenville, Alabama” where the director said they filmed in Eufaula. A small-town called Crawfordville in Georgia doubled as Pigeon Creek’s downtown area.
- The production was scouting locations in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. Tennant said the film was the first to shoot in the city after the terrorist attacks.
- Th director said Witherspoon and her co-star Patrick Dempsey “got on like a house on fire.” He said both were married and either had children or were expecting at the time, giving them a lot to discuss on set. “They were very relaxed around each other. Really good mates.”
- Dempsey’s proposal to Witherspoon inside Tiffany & Co. was shot in the actual store, with its staff and armed guards on hand, while most of the crew had to wait outside due to lack of places for them to hide in the shots.
- Tennant said Witherspoon and co-star Josh Lucas had completely different approaches to the work. “Josh is a very serious guy. He takes it very seriously. Not to say Reese doesn’t, but Josh really likes to struggle, plan and think.” Whenever Lucas’ performances got too serious, Tennant would call him “Ralph” referencing actor Ralph Fiennes, “and he’d lighten up.”
- Jake’s bloodhound was played by Baron. “This dog, I swear to God, would not sit and would not bark. I don’t know any dog in the world that doesn’t bark, but we couldn’t pay this dog enough to do those barks.” The barks in the scene “were a miracle of production” and were probably the only eight barks the dog ever did. Later, when the dog is lying on the couch, Tennant said it could barely even do that. “Worst actor in the film.”
- The director said the mother/daughter angle between Witherspoon and Mary Kay Place was tricky because they didn’t want her mom to be a villain, nor did they want simplicity in their relationship. They had to convey that her mom was one of the reasons she ran away from home.
- Melanie’s father has Confederate flag pillows on his couch. “We had a lot of discussions about how far we were going to go with the South and the re-enactments, the whole thing,” Tennant said. “It was a bit touch-and-go there for a while. After having spent a whole lot of time in the South, there’s just such a tremendous pride about their culture and their heritage, their history, that to not have it in the movie felt to us like a bit of a whitewash. We decided to sort of embrace it.”
- When Melanie reveals to her parents she’s engaged, her dad tells her mom to fetch the leftover bologna cake, something Tennant said his writing partner’s wife makes. “It’s quite a delicacy. If you’ve never tried it, don’t. It’s bologna with cream cheese between each layer of bologna. Then you top if off like an angel food cake, and you put olives on top. It’s absolutely disgusting.”
- The crew had to transport a water tower to the town in which they shot the film, because it didn’t have one. “You always think of water towers as probably the most recognized icon of small-town America, and this small town didn’t have one, so we had to bring one in.”
- Melanie orders a martini at the roadhouse, and later you see her eat the olives. Tennant said Witherspoon hated olives so much that she needed a spit bucket for whenever they called cut. He decided to torture her by shooting about 15 takes to force her to eat as many olives as possible, rolling longer and longer on each take.
- For the anvil-tossing scene, Tennant said he and his writing partner learned during a research trip in Alabama. He said they learned the Union army had tried to destroy the South by blowing up anvils, but couldn’t blow them up because they were solid steel. Tennant said they read about it in a tourist manual. The practice was used late in the American Civil War, notably by a local citizen in Iowa.
- When the band covers Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” during the catfish festival, the actors hit the dance floor. Tennant said not a single one of them could dance, especially Josh Lucas, even with three weeks of rehearsal. “I’ve actually never worked with a clumsier bunch.”
- Witherspoon delivers an emotional monologue in the local “coon dog cemetery,” which Tennant insisted was “a real place in Alabama.” Tennant said the set was a way to give the actress a monologue to her dead dog but really to the child she lost, also planting the seed for Melanie and Jake’s reunion.
- Tennant and his writing partner Rick Parks knew the movie needed a Civil War re-enactment sequence. He said he attended a real one in Alabama during research, which he called “unbelievable.” They shot a re-enactment, which you see in the film. They always knew the gag where Witherspoon asked the “dead” soldiers for help finding her father would get a big laugh, and it even ended up in the trailer.
- When Dempsey pays a visit to Witherspoon’s home, her mom says, “If I’d known we’d have company, I would have put on the dog.” Tennant explains the phrase was created during the 1800s. It means “to splurge.” It became fashionable for people to walk a certain type of “fancy” dog in streets, calling it “putting on the dog.”
- During the wedding planning montage, Witherspoon attempts to call Lucas to apologize for leading him on. Tennant said the use of the phone ringing over and over was basically a ripoff from a similar effect in Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America.”
- Tennant said “the raciest little moment” in the movie involved Witherspoon’s friend Frederick (actor Nathan Lee Graham), who his Black and gay, visiting her childhood home and admiring her mom’s silverware collection, to the slight chagrin of her father. “We can’t completely ignore the racism that has pervaded the South in the past, so we added this,” Tennant said.
- They cut a rehearsal dinner scene during which Witherspoon’s dad teaches Candice Bergen, the mayor of New York, how to stuff a can of beer up a chicken’s rear, a specialty at Stella’s Roadhouse. “It was just a couple of other tidbits that were quite funny as the North meets the South,” Tennant said. It’s a wonder that didn’t make the final cut.
- At the last second, Witherspoon refuses to sign the divorce papers and calls off her wedding. Before they released the film, the studio screened it for focus groups. Tennant said several male audience members wondered by Patrick Dempsey didn’t get the girl when “he didn’t anything do wrong.” Tennant said “Guys were more upset by it than women.”
- They always wanted to end the movie with the song “Sweet Home Alabama,” but Tennant said they wanted a female singer’s rendition, so they hired Jewel to perform it over a montage of Melanie and Jake’s married life during the credits.
