[Upbeat music playing in background] If you’re a Steve Martin fan then stick around
because you’re about to discover 15 behind the scenes facts about the 1991 comedy/drama
“Father of the Bride”.
[Film clapper sound, music continues]
The movie is actually a remake of another movie that was based on a book.
The original “Father of the Bride” was released in 1950 starring Spencer Tracey and Elizabeth Taylor,
and even received three Oscar nominations including Best Picture,
but the original idea for the story came from a book of the same name that was written in 1949.
It took Steve Martin several hours to film the opening monologue.
The director and co-writer Charles Shyer wanted the scene to have a very relaxed feeling to it
just like the opening monologue of the 1950 film.
And it took Steve Martin 35 takes to loosen up enough to get the right feel for the scene.
Franck was based on a real wedding planner.
Martin Short portrayed the over-the-top wedding planner, Franck Eggelhoffer,
who was partly based on the celebrity wedding planner Kevin Lee.
Martin Short, who played the character to hilarious perfection, said he largely improvised Franck's dialogue,
which he said was mostly just gibberish on the page anyway.
As for the character's incomprehensible accent, Short admitted there was no consistency
since it was a mixture of several European accents.
This was Kimberly Williams-Paisley’s first movie role at 19 years old,
but she wasn’t the first choice for 'Annie'.
The filmmakers first wanted to cast Phoebe Cates, but she was pregnant and unavailable at the time,
so they went with Kimberly instead.
It took two houses to film the movie.
The outdoor reception scenes and basketball game were filmed at a 2 million dollar home
in Los Angeles’s Alhambra neighborhood,
but the front of the house that we all associate with the movie was filmed in Pasadena.
Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams-Paisley filmed over 200 takes
to get all the footage needed for the basketball scene.
They filmed all night for two nights because the director wanted them to play for real
instead of just faking their shots with camera tricks.
Luckily both actors were actually good ball players.
Kimberly especially had a lot of basketball experience because her dad is a big fan of the sport
and played with her all the time while she was growing up.
The idea for George’s tuxedo scene in the attic
came from the book and Steve Martin’s creative input
who decided that George’s pants should be too short
and he should be wearing white socks.
The wedding cost a lot of money.
George Banks’s frugality is a running joke throughout the movie,
but it’s never mentioned how much the wedding actually cost.
BeFrugal.com broke down all the wedding expenses,
and the total cost would’ve come to $249,323.
They figured Annie’s dress cost $68,000,
and with 572 guests at $250 a head,
George shelled out $143,000 on wedding reception food.
The bridesmaid dresses tacked on an additional $10,000,
and flying in nine relatives from Copenhagen
smacked George with another $10,323.
The father’s name was changed for the remake.
The father’s first name from the original movie was ‘Stanley’,
but the screenwriters changed it to ‘George’ for the remake
to have the character named after ‘George Banks' from Disney’s “Mary Poppins”.
However they used the name ‘Stanley' as George’s middle name
that can be heard in the jail scene.
The most difficult scene for Kimberly Williams-Paisley to film was the blender scene
when George goes to comfort his crying daughter after a big fight she had with her fiancée Bryan.
Kimberly admitted in an interview with ABCNews that she was too young in her career to be able to cry on cue,
so they filmed about 50 takes, hoping she would be able to shed some tears.
After all that was still dry-eyed and had become very frustrated with herself,
but they decided to do just one more take.
Before the cameras started to roll she began tearing up for reals
because she felt like a complete failure.
Well, those tears were eventually turned into tears of joy
because the last take worked perfectly
and was reportedly the only footage used for the scene.
If Annie’s little brother Matty looks familiar to you
it’s because he’s Kieran Culkin who is Macauley Culkin’s younger brother
and is widely known for playing Kevin McCallister’s bedwetting cousin Fuller in “Home Alone”,
but “Father of the Bride” was his Kieran’s first major speaking role.
Another actor you might know but didn't recognize is the nite club singer
who was played by Eugene Levy.
His appearance in the film was actually a reshoot,
so neither of these three actors saw each other face to face
because the footage of Steve Martin and Diane Keaton was actually of them watching
another actor sing who wasn’t funny enough.
So Eugene Levy was brought in later to film insert shots to make the part more funny.
A wedding gift from the original movie was used in this movie too,
which was the Venus clock that was found in a prop house at the Warner Bros. studio.
Steve Martin agreed to do the film before it was even written.
Up to this point in Steve Martin’s career he was mostly known for doing silly comedies,
but by the 1990’s he was in his mid-40s
and he thought he’d look foolish if he didn’t change things up and start acting his age.
Just before “Father of the Bride”, he had done a more serious role in “Parenthood”
so he signed on to do “Father of the Bride” in the early stages of development
to keep the ball rolling in this new direction of his career.
Diane Keaton almost didn’t get the job.
When Keaton signed on to play 'Nina Banks' in “Father of the Bride”,
she was already familiar with the director/screenwriter Charles Shyer and co-writer Nancy Meyers
because she had worked with them on the 1987 film, “Baby Boom”.
The problem was Disney, who owns Touchtone Pictures,
didn’t want anything to do with Keaton
because of the last Disney/Touchtone film she was in–called “The Good Mother”–
that completely bombed at the box office.
So Shyer and Meyers practically had to beg Disney to cast her in “Father of the Bride”,
but luckily they gave in because she was the perfect choice for Nina Banks.
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