Trivia for
Sweet Home Alabama (2002) More at IMDbPro »

• Two dogs mentioned in the movie, "Bear" and "Bryant", are references to legendary University of Alabama head football coach Paul W. "Bear" Bryant.
  
  
• Charlize Theron was originally cast as Melanie Carmichael, but due to the actor's strike, she jumped to a ready-to-go movie Trapped (2002). Reese Witherspoon was cast the same weekend that Legally Blonde (2001) opened.
  
  
• An entire character (along with a subplot about her) was deleted from the film, when test audiences consistently misunderstood her relationship with Andrew. Erin Vanderbilt (played by Katharine Towne) survives in the finished movie only in a newspaper wedding announcement shown to Melanie during the closing credits.
  
  
• When Melanie (Witherspoon) is chasing Andrew through the crowd of people watching the reenactment, she trips over the dolly track.
  
  
• The ending of the movie was re-written and re-shot after test audiences found the original version to be horrifying rather than funny. In the original ending Melanie (Witherspoon) and Jake (Lucas) are struck by lightening as they're kissing on the beach (bringing the story full-circle). Later we see Jake carrying an apparently dead Melanie into the tent where the "reception" is taking place. As everyone gasps in shock and dismay, Jake says "Melanie Charmichael is dead," pauses several seconds for effect, then says "long live Felony Melanie," at which point Melanie pops up to the assembled crowd's delight and relief.
  
  
• The first movie to be allowed to shoot in New York after the 11 September 2001 attacks.
  
  
• Despite the movie's title, Sweet Home Alabama, the house Melanie pretends is her home is really at Berry College in Mt. Berry, Georgia. This house, called Oak Hill, is a Georgia historic landmark and was the original home of the college founder, Martha Berry.
  
  
• Oak Hill, the real name of the house Melanie pretends belongs to her family, is difficult to get to, as the interstate is approximately 45 minutes away. To direct cast and crew members to the site, yellow signs simply saying "SWA" with arrows pointed out the correct route. Some Berry College students stole these signs as movie mementos.
  
  
• Keni Thomas, lead singer of the band "Cornbread" that plays in the fair scene is a real-life survivor of Task Force Ranger and is portrayed in the film "Blackhawk Down" (the trooper with the inhaler).
  
  
• Earl asks Pearl to pull the bologna cake out of the freezer when Melanie announces her engagement. This tasty item came to the film as a dish served to one of the (many) script re-writers by his fiancée, who was from Indiana. It is bologna, cream cheese and horseradish.
  
  
• The teen who asks Andrew for his signature at the ground-breaking is wearing a letter jacket from North Gwinnett High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia.
  
  
• The coon dog cemetery featured in the film is a real place in Tuscumbia, Alabama (a north Alabama town just south of Florence).
  
  
• Jake's glassblowing shop was filmed in Fayette County Georgia at an old mill called Starr's Mill. The exterior was repainted and the porch was rebuilt for the movie. The bridges were later washed away in a flood.
  
  
• During the movie's filming at Starr's Mill in Fayette County, Georgia, the Starr's Mill High School marching band was asked not to practice outdoors due to the sound carrying all the way to the Mill.
  
  
• Jake's plane lands on Lake Peachtree in Peachtree City, Georgia. It is illegal to land a plane on Lake Peachtree, and the Peachtree City Police issued the movie company a $300 ticket.
  
  
• Producer Stokley Chaffin was the one who developed the movie's concept and brought it to screenwriter C. Jay Cox to write. Chaffin, now the Senior Vice President of Productions at New Line Cinema, was raised in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and like Reese Witherspoon's character, she changed her name after she left the South (during her childhood, her friends and family called her by her first name, Caroline; Stokley is her middle name). Chaffin insisted that Cox visit Alabama before writing the screenplay.
  
  
• The glass featured as "Deep South Glass" is actually hand-blown glass, made by a company named Simon Pearce. Simon Pearce is based in Vermont, and was started by an actual Simon Pearce who emigrated to the US from Waterford, Ireland.
  
  
• The apartment at the beginning of the movie is the same apartment used in the movie "It Takes Two". The director, Andy Tennant, liked it so much he decided to use it again
  
  
• Jake's float-plane is a De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver.
  
  
• In the deleted original ending (included on the DVD), the jazz band at the reception is ‘The Clock Tower Jazz Ensemble’ (from Rome, GA) directed by Sam Baltzer. The singer is Lillie Huddleston from Atlanta.
  
  
• The downtown scenes were filmed in Crawfordville, GA (pop 572). Crawfordville is the county seat of Taliaferro County (pronounced "Tolliver"), the least populated county in Georgia.
  
  

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