Background ,
Robert Luketic and
Kirsten Smith pose with a fan at a screening of
Legally Blonde in 2016.
Amanda Brown published
Legally Blonde in 2001, basing it upon her real life experiences as a blonde attending
Stanford Law School, while being obsessed with fashion and beauty, reading
Elle magazine, and frequently clashing with the personalities of her peers. Brown said that when she first arrived at Stanford, she discovered she had made a big mistake. "I was in my first week of law school, in 1993, and I saw this flyer for "The Women of Stanford Law," so I was like, 'I'll go and meet some nice girls. Whatever.' I went to the meeting, and these were not women. These were really angry people. The woman who was leading it spent three years at Stanford trying to change the name '
semester' to 'ovester.' I started laughing and I realized everyone in the room took it very seriously. So I didn't make any friends there." Brown took a community college writing class, put together a manuscript, and shopped the book around but was unsuccessful. "What I loved about this story is that it's hilarious, it's sexy and, at the same time, it's empowering," says Platt. "The world looks at Elle and sees someone who is blonde and beautiful but nothing more. Elle, on the other hand, doesn't judge herself or anybody else. She thinks the world's great, she's great, everyone's great and nothing can change that. She's truly an irrepressible modern heroine." Director
Robert Luketic, an Australian newcomer who came to Hollywood on the success of his quirky debut short film
Titsiana Booberini, was drawn to the project while looking for a breakthrough film. "I had been reading scripts for two years, not finding anything I could put my own personal mark on, until
Legally Blonde came around," Luketic said.
Development Luketic explained that when the studio first green-lit the project, they were not aware that the film would be structured as a progressively feel-good,
women's empowerment movie. "Initially, they thought it was going to be much more wet T-shirts and boobs than it actually turned out to be", said Luketic.
Charlize Theron,
Gwyneth Paltrow,
Alicia Silverstone,
Katherine Heigl,
Christina Applegate,
Milla Jovovich and
Jennifer Love Hewitt were all considered for the lead role Despite Luketic's enthusiasm for Witherspoon to be cast as the lead,
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) was not convinced. Witherspoon's performance as
Tracy Flick in
Election put her at risk of being
typecast by the studio heads. Middleton desired to cast
Paul Bettany as Emmett, but the crew felt that the character should be American whereas Bettany is British. "I could have gone into this and been really ditsy and played what I would have thought this character was, and I would have missed a whole other side of her," Witherspoon added. "But by going down to Beverly Hills, hanging out in
Neiman Marcus, eating in their cafe and seeing how these women walk and speak, I got into the reality of the character. I saw how polite these women are, and I saw how much they value their female friendships and how important it is to support each other". The dominant color palette for Elle's outfits in the film is pink. "The backstory is, Reese and I, and maybe the production designers, went to visit some sororities [in downtown Los Angeles]. We knew that she needed a signature color, and we were like, 'Do we really want it to be pink? It's so on the nose. It's so feminine. Could we do lavender? Could we do light blue? Is there another color that we could do?' When we met all the sorority girls, it had to be pink." Witherspoon sported 40 different hairstyles in the film. "Oh my God, it became known as 'The Hair That Ate Hollywood,'" Luketic said. "It became all about the hair. I have this obsession with flyaways. It would annoy Reese a little bit because I would always have hairdressers in her face. But really the most time and research and testing on the set went into getting the color right, because 'blonde' is subject to interpretation, I found." "[The producers of the film] asked if they could set the film at USC, but the images of her as an undergraduate and being in a sorority ... we felt there was too much stereotyping going on," says Elijah May, campus filming coordinator at USC. The production settled on having Elle go to a fictional college called CULA.
University of California, Los Angeles,
California Institute of Technology, and Rose City High School in
Pasadena, California. Production initially lasted from October to December 2000. The "bend and snap" scene – where Elle explains to Paulette how to get her crush's attention – almost did not make it into the movie. "[Producer] Marc Platt wanted a B plot for Paulette (Jennifer Coolidge)," McCullah Lutz told
Entertainment Weekly. "At first we were like, 'Should the store be robbed?'" Co-writer Kirsten Smith observed, "I think we spent a week or two trying to figure out what the B plot and this big set piece should be. There were crime plots. We were
pitching scene after scene and it all felt very tonally weird". "I remember just reading it and thinking it was the most hysterical thing ever," she added. "That is still the most asked request I get from people. Even this past year, when I have been giving speeches or talking about whatever, they always ask me, 'Will you do the bend and snap?' I have a feeling I will be doing the bend and snap until I am 95". Ubach and
Jessica Cauffiel claim that the original ending also included Elle and Vivian drinking
margaritas in Hawaii, with the implication that they were either now best friends or involved romantically although Smith and McCullah never wrote such ending. Other endings proposed for the film included a
musical number in which Elle, the judge, the jury and everyone in the courthouse broke into singing and dancing. ==Reception==