Legally Blonde: Everything You Didn't Know

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history and little loan facts behind your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and more. We're two guys with too much free time in our hands. My name is Jordan run Tug and I'm Alex Hegel. Jordan, what are we talking about today? Today we are taking a look at Legally Blonde, and there's a sequel in the works that's been rumored to be out at some point during this spring, but alas it's been held up due to countless production delays, many of them COVID related. First it was gonna be out on Valentine's Day, and then it was at some point this May, and now unfortunately it's delayed indefinitely while writers Mindy Kaling and Dan Gore work on the script. So we hope that this episode will make up a little bit for that, for the missing piece of millennial blonde nostalgia in all of our hearts. What are they calling it? Does it have a working title? I think Legally Blonde three? The Secret of the Use Famous Blonde had Electric Boogaloo, A Good Day to Blonde, Hard um, live Free your blonte heart. Like forty five minutes later, we're here just pitching Mindy Kaling. Can we get Mindy on Jamie? Can we get Mindy on the phone? Thank you? That's our producing Early Blonde three back in the heat. All right, well, Jordan, what do you What do you think about Legally Blonde? I just I think it's a great movie. It's just a smart satire about self acceptance and challenging stereotypes. I mean, what's not to love. L Woods is smart, she's kind, and she's unapologetically who she is. I think it's great. What do you think about this movie? I think it's great. I agree. I was a little upset to see that number of the people who worked on this went into just make some absolute crap after words. Um, but that is no fault of Legally Blonds. You can't reheat a sue fla. I'm told so. All the former Beatles said after they bummer, weird bummer. Uh, Jordan's going through some stuff, folks. Uh. Okay, so we've already compared this to the die Hard franchise and the breakup of the Beatles. Oh boy, anyway, we're gonna talk about the hilarious true story that inspired the film. Reese Witherspoon's nature documentary style trips to southern California, sororities, Bruiser, the dog's connection with the Taco Bell Dog, I know it's a personal favorite of year, Ohigo, the drunken origin of the Bendon snap, the long lost musical number, what happened to all of L's sixty outfits from the film, And finally, how this movie is actually indirectly responsible for saving someone's life. So, without further ado, here's everything you didn't know about Legally Blonde. So, for many reasons, the producers of Legally Blond couldn't have picked a better performer to play the part of l Woods, because not only is Reese Witherspoon supremely talented, but her background makes her uniquely qualified for this part. Because she's an Ivy League educated debutante, she's from an old family. She claims that she's descended from a man named John Witherspoon who signed the Declaration of Independence. And though this hasn't been verified by the Society of the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, which is a whole thing, fairly certain that she definitely comes from some kind of like fresh off the Mayflower background because she's like a full blown Southern bell debutante who actually have a society coming out party, which is this whole Are you familiar with the whole coming out party phenomena? I mean, I I went to school in Virginia, but it was northern Virginia, so we we sort of got all of the debutants who made it that far north. Um, that's such a fascinating subculture. Yeah, run us down with a debutantas Jordan's well, the whole coming out party is is something that's done when women in that socio economic strata reach a certain age I think seventeen whether basically old enough to start dating. And um, yeah, the more I talk about it and think about it, the more it kind of I'm reminded of, like how it's weird. Yeah, So, I mean it definitely seems like some kind of old medieval like bonding family ties with other strong families in the community sort of thing. Does the word debutante have a literal definition of like just is a woman of a certain social status or oh boy, it means from the French to mean female beginner, the age that they were old enough to be married, essentially, and the whole purpose of a coming out is to display them to bachelor's from other families. Yes, it's like a bidding. It's like they're on the auction floor. It's weird, And thankfully I'm okay with saying that it's weird because recent Greece. She has a quote where she said, it's a bizarre subculture. I can't even really tell you what it's about, but I do think it's really similar to the sorority culture, which again kind of a funny way, sort of prepared her for for playing the part of l Was. She later goes on to say, in hindsight, it isn't really indicative of who I am, and it isn't really representative of me. But you do a lot of things in high school that you don't really understand why you're doing them. And she's also said that she's considered going back someday and making a documentary about that whole debutante social scene, which I would be super interested in saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I you know, I generally, I'm realizing that I generally like everything that she's involved in. I have no I have no quarrel with Reese Weatherspoon. I'm just coming around to that right now anyway. So, in addition to having this kind of very storied family history, much like l Woods, she's also extremely smart. She comes from an extremely highly educated family. Both of her parents or physicians, and Rees herself went to Stand to study English literature. But during her years there she started getting more and more acting jobs, and she found herself being called away from class on a regular basis, which caused some stress with her parents. And as she later say in an interview, it wasn't easy. I had to make a choice between Psycho one oh one and starring in a film opposite Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon, and James Garner. My parents didn't quite understand my decision, but to me, it was a no brainer. She's talking about movie Twilight, which is not to be confused with the Twilight. The Twilight, Yeah, well said, yeah, I mean starring opposite any one of those people she named, But all of them. What an incredible cast for a movie that I have no recollection of. YEP, does not exist for me. So she said, I never finished college, but I finished legally Blonde, which is great. And you said that Olivia Newton said something similar about Greece, right, yeah, yeah. Olivia Newton John later said that she spent all of the year that you be in, you know, high school, doing high school dances and proms and stuff. Uh, working in show biz in Australia and England later on. And so Greece was her way of kind of having a little piece of that which I always thought was cute. It's the next best thing. So, speaking of another college person, we have to talk about Legally Blonde. The book. I thought this was an original screenplay. It was a book written by one Amanda Brown published in two thousand one, inspired by her real life experience at Stanford Law, which she did not enjoy. Her dad. This is funny. Her dad was named Jack E. Brown. He was a very prominent attorney. UM. He specialized in high technology litigation and was once listed by the National Law Journal is one of the most hundred one of the hundred most influential lawyers in the US. UM. Yeah, and his most prominent case was he represented Apple when they sued Microsoft over Windows. Uh. It's called the Look and Fuel case because they sued them over the icons and the The judge ended up ruling against Apple holding that visual element of an interface, for example, the recycle bin on the Windows screen. It only would infringe on a copyright if it looked exactly the same as another interface, i e. Apple's trash basket. So you have a trash basket on Maps and you have a recycle bit on Windows and Apple suit over that and lost. So but the dad of the author of Legally Blonde, who did he represent on it? I represented Apple was a successful side. Well, you win some, you lose something. But I mean to all sorts of purposes, the wo would have wrote this book. Amanda Brown basically was l Woods. Her experience at Stanford Law was, as you said, not good. Yeah, she said, I wanted to go to Stanford when I saw the mall again is incredible. It did again. It's l Yeah. So when I went for my interview, she said, I checked out the Polo store, I checked out Neimons. So I became myopically focused. Um. You know, she's very sharp, but UH still kind of stuck out for a number of reasons. One she wrote letters to her friends on pink paper with a pink furry pen kind of mocking her other classmates. Like she wrote, she basically wrote the burn Book from being girls. She was really really mean to her because she was so she was like l she had this big, you know, pink everything in this fluffy pen and everything. So she was just kind of like then she gave. She gave as good as she got. She called one of them a horrible trekky. But this is after the guy who just said go home. This is the person said go home and get married. So yeah, like I said, she gave as good as she got. But three hundred pages of these letters in her notes became the basis of the book, which she turned into a manuscript and submitted to litt agencies. And the pink paper one out in the end because her agent pulled this manuscript out of a slush pile of you know, unsolicited submissions, stuff that gets sent in, and it caught her eye because it was written on pink paper. Be yourself, d thing. It will get seen by the right people for exactly what it is and who you are. I think that's great. Yeah, And and she eventually left law school because she realized her true ambitions as a novelist, and she told the Stanford Alumni magazine. At one point, law school helped me decide what I wanted to do right. But there is a darker side to this I was reading. I was reading about this at the authorship of Legally Blonde and a few other Brown's works, another one called Family Trust are murky Um. When the initial copyrights were filed for Legally Blonde and Family Trust, there's another woman's name listed, Bridget Kerrigan Thomas. This woman's dad, I believe, was also at the firm that Amanda Brown's dad was at, so they knew each other and they have they co wrote apparently some of this stuff. But in this article that I was reading, there was some kind of a falling out, presumably over money. Once this was optioned into a movie, and start talking about points, you start talking about all this other stuff, and the presupposition in the pieces that Brown paid off Carrigan to kind of stop making noise about it. Um twenty grand was a figure I heard floating around and N D A s were apparently signed, so like nobody actually can talk about it. But it was a fascinating little slice of Arizona life. Um. She may not have graduated from Stafford law. But it sounds like she got some good Yeah, exactly. Wow, that is interesting. I didn't realize that. Wow. I wonder, you know what it was. I wonder if they were friends and she was the person that Amanda Brown was writing these letters too, and their correspondence. It was like the back and fourth that became the basis for this book. And then the friends she was writing to, this Bridget person was like, well wait a minute, half of these letters are mine. It's a back and forth and that's why I got messy. Yeah, I don't know, that's interesting onto happier pastors. Jordan's Yes, Amanda Brown, as I said earlier, she created the character of l Woods basically as a cartoon version of herself, and she named her L after L magazine, of course, but many of the incidents in the book and later the movie were taken from real life. Case in point, the scene where the character Enid says she's a liberal feminist who believes that the university is trying to oppress its female students with its subliminal messages of patriarchy with the words semester um. Instead, she believes the words should be changed to theo vester in order to be more inclusive and respectful to women. That was based on a real incident when I guess Amanda Brown at Stanford was trying to make friends and she went to a meeting of the women of Stanford Law and she heard this whole ovester thing and she started laughing because she thought they were just joking, and she realized that this is a quote from her. I realized everyone in the room took it very seriously, so I didn't make any friends there. And also a scene in El's Harvard admission video when she demonstrates how she incorporates law and do her everyday life by holding a vote over which toilet paper brand for her sorority to get. This vote was actually based on a true story with the film's screenwriter, woman by name of Karen McCullough, and she said this happened in her own sorority. They had votes for Brandon toilet paper to get. I guess they The other thing was that they like didn't supply them with enough toilet paper, and so they basically would like give the sorority sisters activity points for going out and like scavenging roles from like other office buildings on campus. God with a weird culture. I never got near to those people at all. Really, where'd you go again? Jam You, George Mason George. Actually it's funny because McCullough went to James Madison also in Virginia, but now I went to jam you. Um, we didn't have much in the way of Greek life. I was busy. I was listening to jazz, I was practicing jazz base Jordan's I was so super cool. Now I was smoking weed in the woods. Um. I was an m y e where we didn't even have I mean we we, I mean there were obviously no fraternity houses. There are a couple of fraternity we don't even have a football team. And they used to sell sweatshirts that said m y U Football Undefeated, which it's pretty good. That makes me like school kids. Yeah, yeah, that makes me like m YU little bit more. But so unlike Reheese, McCullough was actually in a sorority. She was an Alpha Gamma Delta at Delta Alpha Gamma Delta. Uh, that's my call sign in my homer. I'm surprised you haven't gotten my hick accent yet. She also wrote Ten Things I Hate About You About also from a similar epistolary source. That movie was not actually pitched as a direct Shakespeare thing. It was based on her like diary and stuff that she had written in high school. And uh, the Lily Blood screen writer, I didn't know that, and her co writer Kirsten Smith and m Yeah, so Ten Things I Hate About You is based on I think it was McCullough's high school diary where she was writing, and it was actually the title comes from I think the diary or the book that she had was called ten Things I Hate About Tom And then they turned it into screenplay and then they realized, oh, we can hang this on the plot of the Taming of the show. Yeah, and beloved School based taking directly from really knocked it out of the part. Yeah. And so you just mentioned she said she told the James Medicine University magazine that her sorority was denied our toilet paper. So I offered my sorority sisters activity points for stealing replacement roles from the administration building. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages. So the manuscript for Legally Blonde, this is really interesting. It was sent out to both book publishing houses and film studios on the same day's according new author Amanda Brown, and it was rejected as a book at first, but it sparked a bidding war for the movie rights and MGM ended up coming out on top. And I think you mentioned this earlier. The sounds like the book was self published initially and then after the movie came out and it became a huge deal, then it got picked up by a publisher and became, you know, a bigger deal. Um. And for the director, MGM hired the first time twenty five year old Australian filmmaker named Robert Lucatic. Please tell us about the film that got him hired on this. Yeah, it's interesting because again he had never made a feature film before. The only thing that was on his resume was this twelve minute musical comedy short called I Have to Say This Carefully Titsiana Boberini, about a supermarket checkout girl whose coworkers bully her because of her hairy upper lip. And this was a short that was screened at the Colorado Teleride Film Festival and it was so well received that he had an agent, a manager and a studio deal. Within forty minutes of the screening, Isn't that that's good? Lord? Yeah, I went to film school, and that's like the kind of thing that you just yeah, that's that's nuts. I was just a little bit about this guy. Yeah, oh well, boy downward spiral. I mean, maybe not. He's probably made He's probably made more money than God doing this kind of stuff. But he had just became a complete yeoman um doing the sort of ditch digging work of the odds era Romcom glut Win a date with Tad Hamilton's monster in law starting Jane Fonda and and Jennifer Lopez the Ugly truth Killers, you know, Drek. Yeah, so checkered past from the heights of Titsiana Bouberini to the low's of Gerard Butler Romcoms. Whither Robert Ludicick. But we do have him to thank for getting Reese Witherspoon in the role as l Woods, because initially the studio wanted Tori Spelling, which I can actually totally see, but she declined. And this is all really ironic because according to the script, Tori Spelling's house was across the street from Elwood's childhood home, and I don't know if this was added in afterwards as like a joke, or if it was a reference to Aaron's Spelling's gargantuan house, which is the largest house in Los Angeles County and we talked about this on the Full House episode. It's set the record for the most expensive home ever after being sold to petrol eras Petra ecclestone in for a hundred and twenty million dollars. Yeah, so I don't know if that was just like a joke about the almost casting or just Elwoods is the neighbor to the biggest house in Los Angeles and just the way to telegraph that she comes from obscene wealth. Maybe a little bit about who knows uh, next in line after Tori Spelling Christina Applegate, which I can also totally see. But she also turned it down, uh and said she would explain to entertainment tonight. She was really where you're playing another stereotypical dizzy blonde character after all her years on Fox, is married with children, basically playing that same role. And she later regretted it. She said, what a stupid move that was, right, But then again Reese deserved that. She said she did a much better job than I ever could. So that's her life, that's her path. The alternate casting for this also just goes down the list of who's who. Female actress isn't the in the late nineties of Charlie's Thern Gwyneth Paltrow. I mean she has Silverstone, Katherine Heigel, no relation, Djoviovic, Jennifer Love, Hewitt another brunette. I had an enormous crush on as a child. Um. And the producer for this movie, Mark Platt, who there's a funny anecdote about him later he pitched Britney Spears at one point. I guess his kids were into her and uh, but McCullough shot that one down. I love this. Jennifer Coolidge said she'd heard rumors that um Courtney Love was up for the role that she plays in the movie, which seems wildly mismatched. But Kathey Nejimie as well, which would have been great. Kathey and Jamie is hilarious. Courtney Love apparently, and we'll get to this a little bit later. I guess. An early version of the script was a lot different and was a lot more. It was described as basically being in the like gross out American pie, old school type realm. So with Courtney Love in that version of this movie, I could almost see that. Sure, yeah, yeah, I'll buy that. But yeah, as if that laundry list of actresses were was not enough to convince you. Turns out the studio did not want re and Reese also didn't want Legally Blonde. Yeah. It was this director who before he was put out to pasture making mid two thousand's romcom drec H, he pressed for Reese Weatherspoon to play l after having watched her act in the movie Election, which I just saw recently for the first time in a long time as a great movie. He said, I wanted someone with gravitas and brains, but the studio MGM really didn't want her, actually because of the movie Election, because she played a character that was pretty much the opposite of l Woods, which seems weird to me because she had also done Cruel Intentions, and she had also done Pleasantville, which seemed perfectly in line with Legally Blonde in L Woods, and you know, in addition to the fact that she's an actress and conceivably could play different personality types. But uh, yeah, it's just weird to me. That they really were resistant to her. But in Reese's words, the studio thought she was a quote shrew. And this is in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter in she said, my and it you're finally called and said, you've got to go meet the studio head. I was told to dress sexy, so she adopted a fake valley girl accent and answered questions about her life in a sorority, which never happened. But she made up stories about a wild youth involving mixers and formals and clam bakes and all those other like southern sorority stuff that is a complete fiction. But she convinced the studio head that she had sufficient experience to pull this all off, which I just find all of this so deeply offensive. But at the end of it, she goes acting. She later said, oh, I've heard it all. I've been told that I'm not sexy enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, and even that I'm not tall enough to get a specific role. And yes, I've been told that I was two blonde, which essentially means all of those things rolled into one. So making legally blonde was my own private campaign against a lot of prejudices and stereotypes. But as you said, she actually initially didn't want to do this because this was just a few years after Clueless, and she was worried that it would come across as like a lame knockoff of that movie. But the producers eventually convinced her by telling her that they envisioned l as a role model for little girls to watch and think I can do anything. And reesea just given birth to her daughter, Ava around this time, so that was a very powerful motivator. She wanted to be both a role model for her daughter and many other daughters too. But it's kind of sad because this shoot was actually kind of a slog for Reese because Ava apparently kept her up all night screaming and throwing up and stuff, and so she had to be on the set at like seven am. And she would later say, You're supposed to be this bubbly, energetic California preppy who's smiling all the time. And I kept thinking I'm gonna kill myself, I'm gonna kill myself. I'm never gonna make it. But she did and we were all the better for it. Yes, But she also she really went beyond the pail for this role, she she basically approached it as you said earlier, like a nature documentary and propological study. Yeah, she spent a lot of time in Beverly Hills watching women eating and shopping to get a better idea of how to act in the role. She sat in on classes at Loyola, and she hung out with sorority girls at the University of Southern California. So she and Jessica Coffeel, who plays Margot, took out an entire sorority and bought them all Margarita's for the entire night while the two actresses only drank water and took notes. And Coffeel tells the story that the drinks started to come over for the table and and she reaches for one and re scrabs her hand and he's like, no, we're only drinking water. We're here to observe. She feels the dad creepy to me, But yeah, she got she picked up stuff from the sorority people. Yeah, it's like like Jane Goodall being like absorbed into into this community of Ah. They taught her a little phrases and mannerisms, and one of them was that instead of saying what's up? You apparently have to say was sabi because they identify as the quote sushi crowd, and Reese told him Entertainment Weekly in two thousand one. I went to dinner with them, and she said, it's sort of like an anthropological study. You learn what they eat, how they behave, how they take care of their young, that sort of thing. Seriously, though, I've learned that people don't know what their worst characteristics are. It's inherent in our nature that we don't know what in ourselves is abhorrent to other people. So it's really easy to infiltrate people's lives. They showed all sides of themselves this Hannibal lecture talking to Clarice. Good Lord Reese, my god, very very seriously, I'm frightened by her. Now, Um, Harvard wasn't even els intended school. This is funny the number of schools that refused to participated in this. Yeah, and it kind of makes sense. Yeah. ELL's big goal in the movie is famously to go to Harvard Law after she's dumped by her scumbag boyfriend who doesn't take her seriously, and in the original version of the script, l wanted to go to Stanford, like her creator Amanda Brown, but Stanford's admission disapproved of the ripped and how they were worried they'd come off in the film, which makes sense. So then they were going to go to the University of Chicago, but they also refused, specifically because of the scene where els professor makes advances towards her, which again makes a lot of sense. I can see why your school would be associated with that, but Harvard was apparently fine with all this. Uh. And what makes this really interesting about l going to Harvard is that Mark Zuckerberg started his freshman year at Harvard in two thousand two at the same time l was starting her second year of law school. She was the class of two thousand and four, which means that she's conceivably one of the very first Facebook users back when it was just restricted to Harvard emails. So that's that's interesting something. Yeah, that's somewhere were getting that we're getting somewhere. Um. Harvard allowed their name to be used, but they did not allow production to shoot in their hallowed halls, which they kind of famously don't like to do. So instead, all of the campus filming took place at Rose High School. The University of Southern California and cal Tech. Yeah, this is one of my favorite bits. I will take this one. Cal Tech supplied some very important ingredients of this movie. Y the frat side of things. Jordan has this caption with a very excellent beat on the frat um. To heighten the reality of this film, the producers hired real life frat brows to be a part of it. In the opening credit sequence, you see a blonde woman ride her bike past a bunch of these frat guys out of the lawn. And these were real cal Tech frat brothers who were basically a last minute addition to the scene in the film. They were in the middle of an initiation right referred to as grease frosh, which consists of dousing each other in shortening oil lard and oil olive oil, presumably both. I don't know, I don't know how slicky, I don't know how oily. You gotta get to play grease frost and Okay, so they get all greased. That word is just so funny to me. They get all greased up, just real greasy boys, and then they have a race to see who can carry a freshman successfully from one end of a field or this lawn to another in the fastest time. I don't know if prizes are rewarded. I don't know if it's just for bragging rights. But these guys just wondered onto the set. Imagine your director, Robert Looted, whatever you've come off your weird boob movie. Your career is laid out in front of you like the yellow Brick Road. This is your first feature film. You've got the world as your oyster, and a bunch of greasy frat guys wonder into your shot. What do you do? You make it work? And that's why he's making the big money. For Gerard Butler, rom Coms, no one remembers, Uh, he just brought him into the shot. Um. He just said, do you guys want to be in the movie? He literally said, do you guys want to be in the movie? Uh. Karen McCullough said, they were really there, They were really drunk. They kept trying to ruined the shot, so the easy solution was to invite them into it. Um. I was captivated by the phrase grease frosh, so I did a little googling that is specific to the page house at Caltech But there's another famous greasy freshman tradition belonging to our neighbors from the north. At Queen's University in Ontario, there is a tradition of making freshman climate greased goal post supposedly stolen from the University of Toronto while your perspective brothers pelt you with stuff like trash and fruit and so forth. Uh. This started in the late fifties and reached its inevitable conclusion when several students broke ribs and came down with hypothermia as a result of falling off of this pole and being outside in freaking Ontario doing this. Presumably they were also naked to some extent. All these shenanigans, I think the hashtag for this episode should be greasy freshman, grease frost. Yeah, that's grease frosh. Anyway, more onto college. And while we're talking about college, like campus life, Jordan's yes, so shooting on a real college campus was definitely easier than doing it on a backlock, despite your errant drunk racing men wandering into your shot. But the film is supposed to take place in early fall in Boston where it's nice and cool. This was Los Angeles, it was hot, and Reese later said that she was sweating buckets in her belted sweater with the shirt buttoned all the way up. And then she had the opposite problem when they were filming the scene where l gets dumped by her boyfriend Warner. Uh, it was unusually cold that night in Los Angeles, and they had the c G I out the air coming out of her mouth, which is up there with like rotoscoping. Neil Young's like, yeah, that sounds really tedious and really awful. I loved when they have to fake stuff that's shot in California in other places because what it usually entails is people carrying bags of leaves around. In Halloween, which is set in Illinois but shot and I think Pasadena, they literally had like a few garbage bags of leaves that they would scatter into shots because there's but there's also like palm trees and the shots too, and then they had to go around and gather them back up and probably so they also had to do this and for for legally blond like, they had to paint the tree like leaves brown and they would have people up in the trees and dropping them as as those people passed into the shot. I love it the movie business, folks, where dreams Come true? That being on your IMDb wrangler? Is that a union gig um? Okay, let's get into Warner Huntington the Third, played by Matthew Davis. Yes, we mentioned the really quite brutal breakup scene a moment ago man Morner hunting to the Third. What a great millennial villain, Spineless, arrogant. He dumps l because she's too much like Marilyn Monroe and not enough like Jackie Kennedy, which is offensive for so many reasons, not least of which Marilyn Monroe was a brilliant, well read woman and the whole dumb blonde thing was a character much like Jane Mansfield and Diana Doris and all these famous blondes in cinema also premely intelligent women. Um. I love Mary Marilyn Roe so much. Have you ever heard that story? One of my favorite Marilyn Monroe stories. Little tangent, but I just love the story so much. She was out walking early one morning. Have you ever heard this with a friend? It was early one morning, like people were just leaving to go to work, and she was out walking with a friend of hers, and no one noticed. It was Marilyn walka down the street. It was the strangest thing. It was just like she could kind of move around. And her friend commented on this, and Marilyn said, do you do you want to see her? Do you want to see Marilyn? Her friends said yeah, And she just completely just with minute body movements and just slightly just slight changes in the way she carried herself all of a sudden. It was just absolutely she was just electric. Everybody noticed her all of a sudden, all the heads turned. She didn't do anything, you know, very visible or obvious. It was just the slightly different way she carried herself in a slightly different energy. I always love I just thought that was so incredible. That shows her brilliance that she could just turn it on like that. I just think that's so interesting. Um, really interesting. One. There was a new documentary on Netflix called I think of something like the Merrilyman Road Tapes or something, and just about her inner life. It's very interesting. I always liked her. Anyway, I want to clear that up. I hate I said that to her. We appreciate the advocacy, yes, um, but yes, the character of Warner Huntington. The third was played by actor Matthew Davis, who says he based his performance on then presidential candidate George W. Bush. Actually, this movie was filmed in the midst of the whole voter recount crisis. So fun times, yeah, great, moving right along, Yeah. Matthew Davis had something of a rough time on the set because he apparently had a huge, long standing crush on Reese Witherspoon, like dating back to when he was a teenager and he'd senior act in one of her very first roles a movie called A Far Off Place, and so this was like a deep seated thing, and he was extremely nervous, and in his own words, he was just a bumbling idiot on the set, to the degree that the producers had the pull him aside and asked him if he was all right, and they told him to get it together, and so eventually he could bear it no longer, and he confessed his crush to Reese, who at the time was married to Ryan Philippi, and according to Matthew Davis, her reaction to him coming clean was cordial but professional. She was like, that's so sweet, Okay, let's work on the scene, which I mean, I guess, I don't really know what I expected to say, but yeah, we call that down bad this guy. And then what he just he immediately redirects all of his attention to Selma Blair. Yeah, I guess he he immediately I guess his his rebound crush was on his co star Selma Blair. And he said in seventeen I developed a crush on her at the time, but she was with someone else too. I think she was dating the guy from Rushmore after Jason Schwartzman, but he was coming around and I was kind of like, who's this guy? So, yeah, Matthew Davis striking out left and right on the set of Legally Blonde. Damn you mentioned Ryan Phillippi. I think this is so funny. Atlanta Ubach, who plays Serena, says that she pitched Reese the idea of having Ryan Phillippi in the movie as a like a Judge Judy style celebrity joke, and and she was like, yeah, we can have him on billboards and you can just kind of be like an Easter Areia in the film. To have your husband be this celebrity judge in the world of the movie, and wither Spoon replied, Alana, no one's going to believe that my husband's a judge? Are you hitting me? Reese Witherspoon just murdering people left and right then and there. You could tell we're gonna last. Uh, speaking of some of Blair, Some of Blair played the role of Vivian El's rival for Warner's affections, but they come around and end up as friends. The role was originally offered to Chloe Savini, New York Girl Cloe Sevini. She told The Daily Beast in that she turned down the part to do a thriller called Demon Lover, which was shooting at the same time. Folks Demon Lover Anyone. She later admitted that she regretted the decision, obviously, saying that she didn't realize the potential of Legally Blonde at the time. I saw that you wrote this, and I went to my Demon Lover the internet and this movie sounds batshit. A French corporation goes head to head with an American web media company for the rights to a three D manga pornography studio, resulting in a power struggle that culminates in violence and espionage. Also stars Gina Ger Shawn. So that's Demon Lover two thousand two, the movie that klos Amini turned down legally blonde for anyway, Reese, Witherspoon, and some of Blair were friends after doing Cruel Intentions together a few years back. And Rees told Entertainment Tonight while on the set in two thousand that she lived across the street from Blair. During filming, she said she'd come over when I'd get locked out of the house. She'd have my key and stuff. So we're really close and it's been great because we get to hang out. She's been my friend since Cruel Intentions. I would act with her any day. I love that. I love stars being friends in real life. That's my little movie treat, just for me and many others. Speaking of movie stars, finally we get to talk about Bruiser. Yes, you know, I know you love movie starts being friends in real life. But there's something that I know you love even more than that, and that's Taco Bell. But yes, speaking of els nearest and Dearest, we've got to give a shout out to her chihuahua. Bruiser, whose real name was Mooney, and Mooney was kind of a star. He started in a music video with Share, as well as in episodes of the TV show Three Sisters and Providence. But he lived with the Taco bell dog whose name was gidgett and he died in sixteen at the really very old age of eighteen. I thought that those small dogs tend to not big dogs, the ones like great dans, so they live like eight years. Uh. Gidget voiced by Carlos ALA's Rocky Apologies. He also voiced spyro the Dragon and Roco in Rocco's Modern Life. The voice of the Taco, yes is the voice of Rocko. Yes? What yep? I didn't know that until this very moment. And Deputy car Yeah, and Deputy Carlos from Mr Weed from Family Guy. So yeah, man, I love doing this voice actor stuff because then you just find out that this person has been in like ten thousand different things. Yeah. So we mentioned a little we nodded a little bit earlier about this film was kind of made in Greenlit, sort of in the gross out comedy era. I don't know how is that era viewed today? Poorly? Memory hold? I would say, yeah, I feel like people well, I don't know, maybe people talk about it. Maybe people remember it, but yeah, it was just that rare. Just it's a beautiful moment in time when you could just let terrible scatological stuff. Do you're writing for you? Yeah? So, Jessica Coffeel told The New York Post what we now know is Legally Blonde and what it began as are two completely different films. It transformed from NonStop zingers that were very adult in nature to this universal story of overcoming adversity by being oneself. There's something for Coffeel, we'll get it. We'll touch on this later. Is that she remembers there being a totally different ending of the movie that was originally written that the screens claimed never happen, And so I tend to take her stories with a little bit of grain as salt. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. Time to talk about it. Probably the most iconic part of the film, which is the bend and snap. Yes, and you know, as with the best things in the in the world, came about one night in a bar after work. Uh. Screenwriters Kara McCullough and Kirsten Smith, we're trying to work out a b plot for the movie. They were pitching all sorts of other crimes. You know, it's a legal movie. Another crime would be a good idea, like Jennifer Coolidge just store being robbed, and nothing felt right totally. It all just felt too dark for a movie that was, you know, really pretty light. But producers really wanted to give Jennifer Coolidge more to do. And she's Jennifer Coolide. Why wouldn't you want her to do more? And that's when mccull opposed the immortal question. What if l shows Paul at a move she can do to get the ups guy and suddenly they're both on their feet at this l a bar, demonstrating what would become known far and wide as the bend and Snap. And as Christen Smith put it, it was a spontaneous invention. It was a completely drunken moment in a bar, and it's, as you said, it's gone on to become one of the most beloved scenes in the movie. But what we now know is actually an abbreviated version of what was supposed to be a full musical number, which I've really fascinated by. The cast apparently spent a month working on a whole song and dance version of this nail salon scene. And Heigel who is a choreographed by Tony Bazel Mickey Uh, all these sorts of movies in the sixties. But I think she Tony Bezel is amazing. She Um, she's a legend. I love her. She's she's known widely for Mickey as like a kind of one hit wonder. But first of all, she's in Philly. Um. Yeah, and she just did everything. She did the Monkeys film head. She's in that, She's in uh writer, she's an easy rider. Yeah. She choreographed the Once in a Lifetime video for Talking Heads. So she's worked with David Byrne, David's Burne and Bowie. She choreographed a music video and two tours from The Dog to Right, Diamond Dogs and Glass Spider. In eight seven, she worked with Bette Midler. She worked with Turner. Yeah, it's nuts, dude, American Graffiti. Peggy Sue got married that thing you do my best friend's wedding legally blonde too, It's upon a time in Hollywood. I think she did the like hullabalue cutaway thing with Leo. Wow, she's so cool. She's awesome. You got a Google Um, there's like a clip of her. I think it's still comes up if you look up, Like Tony Basil dance studio. She's like a hundred years old and still can like do all the like rerun pop and lock and moves, and she's like doing it in her dance studio surrounded by a bunch of twenty somethings. She's like, I think it has a legit claim to being one of the pioneers of breakdancing, right, Like, I think she worked with I forget the troop of the organization. Was that. Okay, Yeah, she's a whole that. She's a podcast in herself. I just think she's got the most interesting life story. She's amazing. Yeah, we should do that. She's one of the seven original lockers. Wow rules Um, all right, I love that. Love that. So somewhere there's a musical. There's a musical version of this scene that she choreographed, and they cut it with her. Spoon said it just felt odd because there was just one musical sequence. But when the Legally Blonde musical came out in two thousands seven, that number was included. So you can see it in some form if you're going to see that musical. Uh, Jennifer Coolidge has dis ribbed herself as a bad dancer, and uh yeah, she had trouble with the dance, with this dance routine that they were learning, and um, Tony Basil got brutally honest with her at one point she said, Jennifer, you need to learn this dance number and do your very best, because even if you're trying to do your very best, you will still be the worst. Oh, I love it so much. Yeah, there's the notion that this movie was like semi musical is kind of interesting to me because the other thing that this producer had done right around this time, he's gone on to do a boatload of stuff, guy named Mark Platt. Uh, he had done Josie and the Pussycats. And there's a line in Legally Blonde that people have interpreted as a wink to Josie and the Pussycats because she says, whoever would say in Legally Blonde, she says the line is, whoever would think orange is the new pink must be seriously disturbed. And that is the nefarious plot at the heart of Josie and the Pussycats. That the corporation is trying to brainwash teenager into thinking that orange is the new pink. So, but speaking of Jennifer Coolidge, Yeah, my favorite part of all the Jennifer Coolidge stuff is that she apparently loved the UPS guy for real, which is adorable. She told The New York Post, I had a crush on Bruce Thomas, who played the UPS man, but he was married and had a beautiful wife and children, so I had to shut that off. I didn't have to act or get excited when he walked in. It was all true to life. That is a horrible one. Picturing her character on White Lotus, Yeah, she's really the best. You know who's also the best. Raquel Welch higel laya Riquel well Ch anecdote on Us So. Raquel Welch plays the ex wife of Brooks dead husband, and Anthony Richmond, who was the cinematographer on this film, basically said that she came in knowing how she wanted to be lit. She was just giving directions on how she was to be lit in this scene. Apparently she came in with a hat, this big black straw hat that she was like, I need to wear this uh, And the inside of the hat on the brim had a second layer of white straw, so it was a two tone hat, so that being lit from the bottom, it would reflect off of the underside of this brim and light her face better. She basically created what's called a bounce board to move lighting around. You do it in professional photo shoots and films. So if you take nothing else from Raquel Welch being amazing the fact that she jury rigged a hat to give her better lightning and came in and started telling the lighting director on this film about her specific needs. Um, we love Raquel Welch on this podcast. Continuing on, now we are onto Jordan's favorite bit of the podcast, which is pedantic pointing out of inaccuracies. Say that with love, least favorite part of the show where I poke holes in the script and talk all about the ways that it stretches reality just a little bit too far. There's a great article on insider dot com. It talks about all the things that Legally Blonde got wrong about law school and here are some of them. Now. Uh the admissions video l famously records a video that she submits to Harvard for their application process. Unfortunately, Harvard expects a written personal statement and not a video. Apparently the real Harvard Law actually plays this clip of her admissions video at their orientation and says, you know, it's f y, I this is not how we make our decisions. So that's fun. Um the internship that l get. She gets an internship from Professor Callahan as a freshman law student. This is extremely unlikely. Most law schools restrict how many hours that their first year students can work, so as a result, there are very few first year of students that can have an internship or an extern ship. I've never heard of an extern ship, but I guess they can't have one, so it doesn't matter. Uh. And then finally the courtroom scene, actual law students say that there is no way a first year law student would be allowed to defend someone in a courtroom. So you know, they said that about Joe Pesci too, and uh, he triumphed. So it's just if you believe, if you believe enough. I want to know. I want to know. I want to see like a grim cinema verite study of like a Joker style mentally deranged person who is like trying to defend themselves in a lawsuit having only seen Legally Blonde, and because any but they're like fixated, They're like, no, I can do this. Um anyway, I own that idea. UM, this is a verbal copyright. If anyone wants to produce that, you have my Twitter handle. Uh So we talked about this movie kind of getting chopped up um or changed in the in the making. But um, the ending originally was completely different. Um. Originally it ended on the steps of the courthouse just after L won her case and she and her love interest in the movie, Luke Wilson's Emmett. They share a big old kiss on the steps, big old romantic moment, and then they cut to L and Vivian starting their own blonde legal defense club at Harvard. But they cut the kiss because they felt an admir I like this. They felt it undercut the whole point of the movie. Um McCullough said at Vulture Festival in it was just kind of a weak ending because the movie isn't a rom com, it wasn't about their relationship. And test audiences and laudably, test audience is usually everything out but these, uh, these test audiences were like, hey, no, we want to see her grow professionally and succeed on her own terms, so they rewrote the ending to end with the graduation scene where she's giving the keynote at the subtitles. I love that. I love that so much. One of the rare instances in which test audiences improved something. I guess there was recess. Some onset photos from this lost ending on the steps of the courthouse the kiss that she posted on social media for one of the anniversaries of Legally Blonde recently, so you can see glimpses of it. But unless it's a special feature on one of the DVDs or something, yeah, I think it's a a lost scene. But we alluded to this earlier. There was rumored to be another ending in this movie, that is, if you believe the tale told by two actresses and not the screenwriters. The actress Jessica Caufield, who plays authority sister Margot in the film. She gave interview to The New York Times one for their extremely thorough anniversary piece, and in this story, she described an alternate ending to the movie that suggested that l and Vivian were more than friends. Uh. To quote cawfeel, the first ending was Ell and Vivian in Hawaii in beach chairs, drinking Margarita's and holding hands. The insinuation was either they were best friends or they'd gotten together romantically. And another actress, Allana Ubak, who you mentioned earlier plays Serena, claims we have seen the same ending, but the screenwriters say that the scene never existed. Karen McCullough told Entertainment Weekly, it made me sad to see people mourning something that never existed and being sad that it was taken from them. So I want to clear it up. Don't be sad never existed. Speaking of stuff that didn't make it into the film, apparently they wanted to have Judge Judy in here, which is when the aforementioned attempt to get Ryan Phillippy and as the Judge failed. Um and yeah. So there's some funny things that have trickled out about the like sort of originally raunchier cut of this movie. Jessica Coffeel says she remembers one line that got cut as Serena saying, what's the one thing that always makes us feel better no matter what? And the answer is kna lingus. So that feels out of place in the finished product. But so this is wild. A lot of this material that was actually cut was from the actress Tane McClure, who plays El's mom, and it's funny that all the raunchy stuff that was cut came from her. Considering how she got the part. The casting director for Legally Blonde is a guy named Joseph Middleton, and he had cast her as a stripper in the movie Go. So she said that when she went to the Legally Blonde audition, he was like, hey, I recognize you. I don't know where it's from. Oh, and she says, I'll tell you after the audition. So she auditions, and she subsequently she tells him you cast me as a stripper in this movie. And he said, oh, good thing you told me. Afterwards, I would not have cast you. Getting back to the original point about the end of the movie test out, he says didn't like the original ending, so producers had to film a new one at the very last minute, and I mean very last minute because the cast had already moved on to new projects. And so this new graduation scene where else giving the keynote address was shot in England, where she was filming the Importance of being Earnest and Funny left. Both Reese and Luke Wilson were wigs in the scene because Reese had cut her hair shorter to be in the movie the ports of being Earnest, and Luke had shaved his head for the Royal ten embombs. We previously discussed. Yeah, the line that he says, how do you think I look with blonde hair? Has been interpreted as a nod to Owen Wilson brother who is blonde? Actually did I never put that together? Um? And so you know the opening sequence of the movie when you see l brushing her hair from the back, that woman is a stand in because it was shot after they shot the movie and Reese had already moved on. But Reese had forty different hairstyles throughout the movie, which is a new one, and almost every scene. Director Robert Luketick referred to her ever changing hair as the hair that eight Hollywood. She also had thirty scarves and apparently sixty outfits, and Reese got to keep every damn one of them. Good for her, she made out, Yes, she had it written into her contract that she got to keep all sixty of El's outfits. Now, I actually I have to admit, I don't know if that's both legally Blonde one and two or if that's just counting Legally Blonde one. Jamie, Jamie, could we get the wardrobe people from Legally Blonde one and to two? I get too, just in case, thank you. In an interview with Hollywood dot Com, she admitted that she obtained all this wardrobe not really for sentimental reasons before, to keep them from being sold on eBay. She said, it really bothers me. Imagine some sicko in Wisconsin smelling the seams. She's not wrong, No, that's what would happen to that. It creeps me out. So it's all of my closet and one day my daughter can play with it. And yeah, I said she had got all the outfits from the sequel Legally Blonde two, Red, White, and Blonde in two thousand three. And she says that all of the l Woods outfits are on a special stories unit. And this is her quote, finally preserved between tissue paper to quote Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. It belongs in the museum and I'm glad this is the next best thing. But she guess busted out some of the outfits in for the movies fifteenth anniversary when she threw a little Elwoods fashion show on social media and got to try some of those outfits on and we all got to see them, which was great. Yeah, and speaking of other heartwarming things that came out of this movie, the influence of this film is, you know, I would I would describe it as incalculable. Incalculable, I still, okay, I feel like that's the office. I would describe the influence as this of this film as far reaching. I would describe the influence of this film as inescapable. I would describe the influence of this film as lugubrious. Sorry, I'm really just making these bad. I like trying to make Jordan laugh and I ruined his day when he has to edit them later. Just me riffing poorly. So yeah, the influence of Legally Blonde lives on in the hearts of the many women who were inspired to apply to law school thanks on the film and anyone trying to, you know, move past the stereotypes of the blonde, or of any stereotypes really the wealthy, wealthy white women, I guess, but in an interview on The Today Show, said that she still loves that character and will always be special to her because she said, quote, I've had more young women come up to me and say I went to law school because of l Woods. It's very incredible to see how long movies can last and how important they can be to young people generation after generation. So that same year, there's a reporter named Lucy Ford who was interviewing Reese, Mindy Kalin and Oprah Winfrey and Oprah Winfrey if we should have put her first? Everyone comes after Oprah. She was interviewed them at a press junkid for a Wrinkle in Time, which um but in the middle of this interview, she gave Witherspoon a copy of a fifteen thousand word dissertation that she wrote on Legally Blonde, titled Legally Blonde post Feminism and the Reimagination of the Strong Female Character. And this reporter Lucy Ford told Reese that she watched the movie about eight hundred times while writing this paper, and it's such a delightful clip. Rees's visibly moved and she says, thank you. That really touches my heart as it should. That's bananas, but it gets even better. So this film has obviously made a difference in so many people's lives, but it also may very well have saved a life. That's what one viewer says, at least. Screenwriter Karen McCullough told Entertainment Weekly that she received an email from a man who was quote really depressed and was about to hurt himself when a friend called and asked him to go dancing. He initially didn't want to go and said no, but then after he hung up the phone, he remembered the line from Legally Blonde, exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. So we called the friend back, went dancing, had a great time, his mood improved, and he wrote the screenwriter a note saying that line saved my life. And the writers had no idea the impact that you know, this movie or that line would end up having. And the writer Karen McCullough says, what an offhand line to end up being so meaningful to someone. That blew my mind. I thought, that's very Nay, it's a nice a nice note to end on for this. Incredibly, this is a very wholesome episode. Uh Um, this movie, it saves lives, but it's also responsible for putting more lawyers into the world, so we'll call it a draw. We made Yeah, we made it this far without making a lawyer joke. Oh man, I've just been looking up sequel names to do riffs on UM. I like too blonde, too furious, that's good, that's um yeah, and on a lawyer joke. That is all I got. What else can you say about this really sweet, really pure, really positive, really warm film. Can't wait for the third one to come, hopefully sooner rather than later, But you can't rush perfection until next time. I'm Jordan runt Tug and I'm Alex Hegel. Thank you so much for listening. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalk and Alex Hegel, with original MU music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.