Back in December 2001, a British made-for-TV movie aired on the BBC called Hot Money. Based on true events, Hot Money concerns three gals named Bridget, Liz, and Jackie, who work as cleaners at the Bank of England. When they discover that heaps of banknotes totaling thousands of pounds have been earmarked for the Bank of England's incinerating plant in Essex because they're too used and worn, the trio plot to make off with all that dough. Sure, it may be worn paper money, but it's still perfectly useable. So they stuff all the cash down their underwear and try to walk out like everything's hunky-dory.
Texan filmmaker Callie Khouri, who stormed onto the scene back in '91 when she scored a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Thelma & Louise (the first script she ever wrote), has directed an American remake of Hot Money called Mad Money. Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes play the three would-be heisters: Bridget, Nina (called Liz in the original), and Jackie. The story takes place in Kansas City, Missouri, the bank in question now the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Diane Keaton's character Bridget is our heroine. For decades now she's been a stay-at-home mom while her husband Don (Ted Danson) has been climbing the corporate ladder. The plot kicks off when Don, now a senior veep, is "downsized," which of course means laid off. Or as the British would say, Don was made redundant. And before I go further, I should point out that Ted Danson easily steals every scene he's in. Growing up on Cheers as I did, it was great seeing Sam Malone in top form. His performance is all the more impressive considering he's just come off playing the sociopathic Arthur Frobisher on the first season of the FX drama Damages. To go from Arthur Frobisher to this flick is quite a feat. Bravo, Sammy!
Anyway, Bridget's desperate not to change her lifestyle and not to sell the house, six-figure debts be damned. So while Don licks his ego's wounds, Bridget, armed with an ancient resume and her BA in comparative lit, lands a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank. One day, 
while polishing the monitor screens in the surveillance office, she sees someone on one of the screens shredding tons and tons of worn out paper money. While pretending to go through the motions as the janitor, Bridget eventually meets the woman down in the shredding room who has the dubious pleasure of grinding up all those dollars. Her name's Nina (Queen Latifah), and for eight hours every day it's her job to shred no less than a million dollars' worth of dead presidents. Nina's a single mom to two boys and has little sympathy for Bridget's upper middle class problems. Still, the two hit it off and soon become pals. I should say here, by the way, that Queen Latifah is terrific as Nina. In fact, she seems to get better with each film. Anyway, while befriending Nina, Bridget comes up with a plan to smuggle out some of that wasted dough. I won't go into the details of her plan, but suffice it to say that as with the three gals from the British original, it involves cramming as many greenbacks down their trousers as is humanly practical.
while polishing the monitor screens in the surveillance office, she sees someone on one of the screens shredding tons and tons of worn out paper money. While pretending to go through the motions as the janitor, Bridget eventually meets the woman down in the shredding room who has the dubious pleasure of grinding up all those dollars. Her name's Nina (Queen Latifah), and for eight hours every day it's her job to shred no less than a million dollars' worth of dead presidents. Nina's a single mom to two boys and has little sympathy for Bridget's upper middle class problems. Still, the two hit it off and soon become pals. I should say here, by the way, that Queen Latifah is terrific as Nina. In fact, she seems to get better with each film. Anyway, while befriending Nina, Bridget comes up with a plan to smuggle out some of that wasted dough. I won't go into the details of her plan, but suffice it to say that as with the three gals from the British original, it involves cramming as many greenbacks down their trousers as is humanly practical.The only trouble is, they need one more person to make it work. Jackie (Katie Holmes) works as a money cart pusher. I'm not sure what her official job title is, but that's basically what she does. Once the money sorters decide which money should be shredded, they count it all up and stack it inside this giant cart. And then Katie Holmes has to wheel it down to Nina in the shredding room. After convincing an at-first very skeptical Nina to take part in her plan, Bridget as well as Nina take Jackie out to Junior's, a pub that's basically Bridget's local. She and Junior have known each other for years. Whereas Nina needed a lot of convincing, though, Jackie pretty much agrees to the plan right away. She and her some-young-guy live in a trailer and wouldn't mind a few extra ducats. Yes, you guessed it, Jackie isn't exactly the sharpest knife in the military surplus store, and her husband is even worse. But hey, what does Bridget care so long as Jackie does what she's supposed to do and her man doesn't get in the way? In fact, Jackie's husband Bob is more than happy to help in any way he can, and he does. A little too much. In fact, Bob inadvertently makes things a little too complicated for our three heroines.
I won't go too much further into the story because, as with any heist film, part of your enjoyment hinges on not knowing the twists ahead of time. At first, the plan goes off swimmingly. Then the scheme seems destined for the fate any moviegoer could predict, but Callie Khouri never quite gives you what you expect. She, in fact, is the reason I caught the sneak preview of Mad Money last night at the ArcLight Sherman Oaks. She was there afterward for a Q&A, interviewed by Parade writer Jeanne Wolf.
Back in 1982 when she was 25, Callie Khouri moved out to L.A. to be an actor. She studied acting at the Strasburg Institute. Then she was like, "Nah, I don't wanna act. I wanna be on the more creative side." To tide herself over, she found a gig as a receptionist at a production company that made commercials. After work, she'd work on a screenplay by hand. Then, during the day when there was dead time at the office, she'd type up the script on the computer. This script we're talking about here? You guessed it. Thelma & Louise.
After landing on the Hollywood star map for Thelma (which won her not only an Oscar but also a Golden Globe and a WGA award), Callie went on to write the screenplay for 1995's Something to Talk About, directed by Lasse Hallstrom, that Swedish maestro of the feel-good flick, starring 
Julia Roberts, Dennis Quaid, and Robert "God" Duvall. She then made her directorial debut with 2002's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, for which she also penned the script adaptation. That had a ton of well-known actresses: Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, Ashley Judd, Maggie Smith, Fionnula Flanagan, Cherry Jones, you name it. Between projects she works as a script doctor on other people's stuff. I have to confess that I didn't catch Something or Ya-Ya until very recently, but of course we've all seen Thelma & Louise. Right? No? Well dude, put it on your queue, stat. It's directed by Ridley Scott, which means everyone should see it by default. Don't worry about the unhappy ending. It doesn't spoil anything. And besides, if you ask Callie, the ending was more than happy. When she accepted her Oscar for writing it, she went up on stage, held up her statue, and was like: "For those of you who wanted a happy ending to Thelma & Louise, this is it." Awwwww.......
Julia Roberts, Dennis Quaid, and Robert "God" Duvall. She then made her directorial debut with 2002's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, for which she also penned the script adaptation. That had a ton of well-known actresses: Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, Ashley Judd, Maggie Smith, Fionnula Flanagan, Cherry Jones, you name it. Between projects she works as a script doctor on other people's stuff. I have to confess that I didn't catch Something or Ya-Ya until very recently, but of course we've all seen Thelma & Louise. Right? No? Well dude, put it on your queue, stat. It's directed by Ridley Scott, which means everyone should see it by default. Don't worry about the unhappy ending. It doesn't spoil anything. And besides, if you ask Callie, the ending was more than happy. When she accepted her Oscar for writing it, she went up on stage, held up her statue, and was like: "For those of you who wanted a happy ending to Thelma & Louise, this is it." Awwwww.......Speaking of Thelma, at one point in the Q&A Callie talked about how floored she was at all the academic interest her debut screenplay has attracted over the years. There've been papers, books, you name it, all this stuff analyzing that one film and its place in the pop culture canon. So many people, Callie said, have been thinking about that flick much more than she ever did. Her only goal was to tell a rip-roaring yarn about women taking charge. Another thing that surprised her about Thelma was the scene where Louise (Susan Sarandon) kills that one guy. When she first watched it in the theater with an audience, she expected there to be stunned silence. Instead, she said people were cheering and clapping their heads off. Since then, she's given up trying to predict audience reaction.
Callie, by the way, is a petite blonde thing who doesn't look anywhere near 50. With her husky voice she kicked off the Q&A by talking about how it took close to forever to get Mad Money to the screen. Less than a year after the BBC aired Hot Money, Callie already had a deal with MGM to direct the American remake. They had a script by a chap called Glenn Gers, and Callie had producer Jay Cohen to help her out. Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah had already signed on to do it. Everything seemed set to go...and then Sony bought a controlling interest in MGM. The project was relegated to development purgatory. Finally the film went into turnaround, and
Callie and Jay got it back. Jay wasted no time in securing independent financing. Amazingly, Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah were still interested in doing it. The reason I say amazingly is that, as Callie herself pointed out during the Q&A, actors rarely retain an interest in a project if it's taking forever to get it off the ground. As for Katie Holmes, she was the second choice. If it were a perfect world, Callie said she would have angled for Lindsay Lohan to play Jackie, but we all know Lindsay's world at the moment is light years from perfect. Her drug abuse notwithstanding, Callie couldn't rave enough about what a great actress Lindsay is. I happen to agree with her. If you saw Freaky Friday or Mean Girls, you'll know that Lindsay was on a roll and had so much going for her before she blew her foot off. That said, Katie Holmes was a close second choice. Callie offered her the part assuming she'd opt out of it so she could reprise her character from Batman Begins in this summer's The Dark Knight. But nope. Jackie's a much meatier character than Rachel Dawes, so Katie said yes to Callie. By the way, the character of Rachel will still be in The Dark Knight but will now be played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Callie and Jay got it back. Jay wasted no time in securing independent financing. Amazingly, Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah were still interested in doing it. The reason I say amazingly is that, as Callie herself pointed out during the Q&A, actors rarely retain an interest in a project if it's taking forever to get it off the ground. As for Katie Holmes, she was the second choice. If it were a perfect world, Callie said she would have angled for Lindsay Lohan to play Jackie, but we all know Lindsay's world at the moment is light years from perfect. Her drug abuse notwithstanding, Callie couldn't rave enough about what a great actress Lindsay is. I happen to agree with her. If you saw Freaky Friday or Mean Girls, you'll know that Lindsay was on a roll and had so much going for her before she blew her foot off. That said, Katie Holmes was a close second choice. Callie offered her the part assuming she'd opt out of it so she could reprise her character from Batman Begins in this summer's The Dark Knight. But nope. Jackie's a much meatier character than Rachel Dawes, so Katie said yes to Callie. By the way, the character of Rachel will still be in The Dark Knight but will now be played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.When Glenn Gers sold the script, he wanted to direct it. Then Callie came aboard and said she'd do it, which was fine by Glenn. He figured if there was one person more qualified than him to direct his girl power flick, it would have to be Callie Khouri. It was sort of the reverse situation of when Callie sold Thelma & Louise. At first, she wanted to direct it. She said she had that whole thing mapped out in her head practically shot for shot. Then, when Ridley stepped in and said he'd do it, she was like, "Well okay. If the guy who made Blade Runner wants to make my movie, how can that be a bad thing?" Callie was much nicer to Glenn, by the way, than most directors are to their writers. With rare exception, screenwriters are barred from the set during production. Not Glenn, though. Callie insisted he be there every day and was very open to him helping her work out any last-minute story wrinkles. Now that is rare. Glenn is one lucky dude.
It took 39 days to shoot Mad Money, and Callie's amazed she was able to get it done in that
time. She didn't mean to go that fast, but the budget sort of demanded it. She shot Ya-Ya in 55 days, which at the time she deemed to be very quick. She remembered not believing she was "only" being given barely two months to do it. Although Mad Money is set in K.C., it was shot entirely in Shreveport, Louisiana. I'm sure the budget dictated that as well. If Shreveport was cheap, though, it certainly wasn't healthy. Everyone in the cast and crew got sick with the flu at some point. Callie said that Ted Danson was sick as a dog the entire shoot, which makes his scene-stealing turn all the more impressive.
time. She didn't mean to go that fast, but the budget sort of demanded it. She shot Ya-Ya in 55 days, which at the time she deemed to be very quick. She remembered not believing she was "only" being given barely two months to do it. Although Mad Money is set in K.C., it was shot entirely in Shreveport, Louisiana. I'm sure the budget dictated that as well. If Shreveport was cheap, though, it certainly wasn't healthy. Everyone in the cast and crew got sick with the flu at some point. Callie said that Ted Danson was sick as a dog the entire shoot, which makes his scene-stealing turn all the more impressive.During preproduction Callie paid a visit to the real Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and was given a grand tour. However, the point of that research wasn't so she could create an interior set that would look just like the real bank, but so that she could create an interior set that would look nothing like the real thing. The powers that be at the bank wanted to be sure Callie wasn't going to give would-be thieves any ideas about trying to pull off a copycat heist. So if there are any nutters in the audience who think this movie's giving them some inside look at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, they're in for a big surprise.
The recurring theme during the shoot was the hair. It was all about the hair. Callie said that never in her life has she ever seen so much attention paid to hair as was paid to the hair of her three leading ladies. We're not just talking about their hair being done in the trailer every 
morning. Even between takes on a single scene, assistants would run up to the gals and touch up the hair. All that stopping and starting meant more time for the three gals to chat away with each other. Callie said that Diane, Queen, and Katie got along so famously that now and then she'd have to step in and remind them that there was a movie to make here. Diane Keaton must be used to this process because Callie couldn't stop raving about Diane's ability to go in and out of character on a dime. Still, though. However much time was wasted by their gabbing, obviously it's better to have your three leads get along, right? There were two instances in particular Callie talked about. The first was the scene in Junior's BBQ joint where Diane and Queen are telling Katie about their heist idea. And then there's a scene during the first heist where all three of them are in a bathroom stall stuffing greenbacks down their shorts. When Callie saw how easily they pulled off those scenes, she knew her movie was going to work out.
morning. Even between takes on a single scene, assistants would run up to the gals and touch up the hair. All that stopping and starting meant more time for the three gals to chat away with each other. Callie said that Diane, Queen, and Katie got along so famously that now and then she'd have to step in and remind them that there was a movie to make here. Diane Keaton must be used to this process because Callie couldn't stop raving about Diane's ability to go in and out of character on a dime. Still, though. However much time was wasted by their gabbing, obviously it's better to have your three leads get along, right? There were two instances in particular Callie talked about. The first was the scene in Junior's BBQ joint where Diane and Queen are telling Katie about their heist idea. And then there's a scene during the first heist where all three of them are in a bathroom stall stuffing greenbacks down their shorts. When Callie saw how easily they pulled off those scenes, she knew her movie was going to work out.As thrilled as she was to have Katie Holmes in the cast, she still had to deal with paparazzi stalking the set. Callie couldn't emphasize their ubiquity enough. The damned buzzards were in the trees, on the rooftops, everywhere. When it came time to shoot Katie's first scene, Callie was sincerely concerned that Katie wouldn't be able to do it with weirdo photographers clicking away from all over the place. It's the one scene where she dances to her car in the parking lot with her iPod, and Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah first approach her about the job. Katie must be used to the extra attention because she nailed her scene on the first take. Tom Cruise paid a visit to the set with his and Katie's daughter, Suri. Callie gushed like a schoolgirl about Tom and his "megawatt charisma."
What impressed Callie about Queen Latifah was how she could remember precisely how she did a scene several hours earlier when it was shot from a different angle. You see, when you shoot a
scene, it's likely that you'll want to shoot from several different angles and then edit it all together later. The thing is, though, that can take forever. It takes forever to set up the scenes, especially the lights. No, really, if you've ever been involved in making a flick, even a short flick, you'll know that it's all about the lights. So when you shoot a scene from one angle, it could be two or three hours (or days) before you shoot the rest of that scene from additional angles. What Queen Latifah did that set her apart was remember precisely the way she was sitting or standing, her facial expression, mannerisms, whatever, when the first angle of the scene had been shot so that she could replicate it precisely for the next angle. Callie's never seen someone do that so well.
scene, it's likely that you'll want to shoot from several different angles and then edit it all together later. The thing is, though, that can take forever. It takes forever to set up the scenes, especially the lights. No, really, if you've ever been involved in making a flick, even a short flick, you'll know that it's all about the lights. So when you shoot a scene from one angle, it could be two or three hours (or days) before you shoot the rest of that scene from additional angles. What Queen Latifah did that set her apart was remember precisely the way she was sitting or standing, her facial expression, mannerisms, whatever, when the first angle of the scene had been shot so that she could replicate it precisely for the next angle. Callie's never seen someone do that so well.When Jeanne Wolf asked her what she preferred more between writing and directing, Callie said hands down it was directing. She went on to echo something I read in a George Lucas interview a few years ago. To her, writing a screenplay feels like writing a term paper. It seems like work that you'll never get done. With all due respect to Callie, I'm sorta glad she didn't write Mad Money then, although I think it's ironic as hell that she wrote such a zeitgeist-nailing film as Thelma & Louise. As a writer myself, I can't imagine why someone would choose to write if it seems like homework. When George Lucas said it, I immediately figured out why the Star Wars prequels were so poorly written. They were being written by a man who hates to write. Why he didn't farm out the screenplay duties to writers who like to write, as he did on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, is beyond me. Anyway, if Callie prefers strictly to direct, that's awesome. The next time she comes out with something, I'll be there to see it. I just hope it doesn't take another six years.
