Revisiting “The House Bunny” With Its Writers Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah Lutz 10 Years Later
Ten years after The House Bunny hit theaters, Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith can still remember Anna Faris’ expression in the movie’s poster. That’s because the giant close-up of Faris as Shelley Darlingson, a Playboy Bunny who’s kicked out of the mansion only to become the house mother of a sorority of misfits, was hard to miss. “It was everywhere in Los Angeles. Her beautiful, innocent expression,” Smith, who wrote the 2008 film with her longtime writing partner Karen McCullah Lutz, says over the phone. “When we were driving around, seeing her face felt like a very powerful manifestation had occurred between the three of us.”
Smith and Lutz fell in love with Faris in the 2005 movie Just Friends and knew they had to write a movie for her. It was at a coffee shop in Hollywood that Faris shared her first idea for an aging Bunny that would become the inspiration for The House Bunny. Though, the two writers behind 10 Things I Hate About You, Ella Enchanted, and Legally Blonde now admit that Faris’ character pitch was much, much darker than the lovably naive Shelley that would end up in the movie.
Anna Faris has said that her initial pitch for her House Bunny character was very different than what ended up on screen.
KIRSTEN SMITH: When she first pitched the idea in the coffee shop, yeah. She said, “I want to play a Playboy Bunny who gets kicked out of the mansion.” And there was this question of where do those girls go? But she had some very dark avenues like it was gritty her version. Like, she returned home to the midwest, I feel like [Faris said] Shelley fell into drugs. It was very dark, but it felt like such a funny character and you yearn for interesting fishes to kick out of water.
Was there ever a moment where you thought about doing this darker version?
SMITH: No. [Laughs] After that meeting a couple of months went by and then Karen remembered that we had this idea about a very square uptight woman who becomes a house mother at a really crazy party sorority so we were like, “What if we flipped it, so it’s like the kind of wild woman comes into the very buttoned up sorority house?” So that character of that Bunny could live in this world and we then went back to Anna and we presented this notion that instead of going back to the midwest and getting addicted to drugs, what if you live in a sorority house and you’re a house mother? It took her a second to readjust to what the movie was, but you know she rolled with it.
KAREN MCCULLAH LUTZ: Yeah, I think she was thinking about what would be interesting to play, but we were thinking how do we get this made into a movie?
How did The House Bunny end up at Adam Sandler’s production company, Happy Madison?
SMITH: We had a lot of rejection. I think we counted it up, we pitched it around town between 21 to 24 times. We pitched it a lot and over a long period of time until finally an executive at Adam Sandler’s company got wind of the pitch. Anna got there quite early for the meeting, she’s always punctual. She saw him in the lobby and he was like, “What you doing here?” And she was like, “Oh I’m here to pitch my movie” and he was so excited he ended up coming in to the meeting and he loved it. He was very quick, within 24 hours he made a call to Paramount and said, “I love this actress we worked on The Hot Chick together, she’s great, I want to do this movie.” And so he made it happen. I did say to Anna, “It was because you were so early!” I’m not early myself and she’s very good about being early so I credited all of that to her, her punctuality.
Is there a moment when it really hit you that you did it, you had made this movie about a lovable Playboy Bunny happen?
MCCULLAH LUTZ: I remember the first time we saw her in costume, my god. She was at the table read and you know when we went out and pitched it she would wear a short skirt and look cute like our version of Bunny. The director [Fred Wolf] got her to hair and makeup for the table read for Sony and when she walked in the room I almost fell off my chair. Oh my god! It was such a transformation. Anna’s really girl next door beautiful but you know, they glammed her up to make her this sexualized Bunny beautiful and it was really funny to see the transformation. I remember that moment pretty vividly because the director was like giving me a thumbs up because he was happy about my reaction.
The movie did well at the box office, landing at number 2 its opening week behind Tropic Thunder, but re-reading the reviews it’s clear that while there were those that loved it, there were others who thought it wasn’t “sexy” enough, and some who felt it wasn’t feminist enough. Were you aware of what people were saying about the film at the time?
SMITH: It had been a similar experience with our past films where it was like they were slightly dismissed. There was always this kind of eye roll about the movies because they have a pop tone and they’re all about funny women and it seemed like that was what happened again with this movie. I don’t know what the Rotten Tomatoes is compared to [our other movies] like Legally Blonde or 10 Things or even She’s The Man. This has less overt feminist underpinnings but also I feel we were always approaching it from some kind of empowerment view. We’ve always liked the idea of underdog stories. We always liked stories where people are underestimating the central character and saying that she can’t do something or she’s defined in a certain way so that she can take the label that society is giving her and pushing back and say, “No, that’s not me, I’m much more complicated and I can be much more accomplished than the box you’re putting me in.”
MCCULLAH LUTZ: I think it’s funny somebody said it wasn’t sexy enough since that was definitely not our intent. Our intent was to make a funny movie, not a sexy movie. Go watch porn, dude. But yeah, the message of the movie was clearly simple Golden Rule messages: Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, don’t let other people’s opinions define you, and be kind to each other. All pretty simple humanity stuff so I think that stuff still holds and if someone doesn’t think that’s sexy. Fuck him.
SMITH: We just felt like this woman has been so largely defined by one man’s appreciation of her but that she finds her true self through this group of young women just felt like such a feminist message and the kind of story I want to see. You don’t want to be validated through this kind of male gaze but topple it with sisterhood.
It’s Anna’s movie, but she’s got such great support in Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, and Dana Min Goodman, who plays Carrie Mae and has some of the funniest lines in the movie.
SMITH: And they were all very empowered by Anna being a producer on the movie too. It wasn’t as common a thing as it is now and so they were all really impressed by that and like inspired. And whether [Anna] knew it or not, it was really changing ideas of what an actress could and should be and do and it felt like they really looked at her like, “If only I could one day do what you’re doing which is produce create and star in your own movie.” So, that was really cool.
I was reading a New York Times piece about you too around the release of The House Bunny and they talk about how it’s so rare to see a female writing team have so much success. Especially with movies starring women, about women, for women. But it still feels rare now to see two female writing teams have such success. How does it feel to be in this position?
SMITH: It makes me tear up when you say that, in such a good way. I think in ten years women are going to be running the show. Female creators are going to be running everything. There are going to be so many female writing teams and it’s very exciting to look forward. As far as looking back, it’s hard to place myself in that moment but I just knew that Karen and I wrote the stories I wanted to see onscreen that weren’t being made and somehow we were driven and clueless enough to not take any kind of no for an answer. That’s the way it was with The House Bunny, but I think that’s always been our feeling: We’re not going to stop until we’ve gotten the story to the screen, until we’ve gotten the script into the right hands with the right actresses and that’s what we care about. We care about the stories because we want to see women, we want to see shows about women and so that’s what we’ve been doing. We’ve been kicking around for 20 years hustling our wares and being like, “Cool, this is what we want to see so this is what we’re going to make.”
Being that this was pre-Bridesmaids, is there any part of you that feels like The House Bunny came out at the wrong time? That it would have been better accepted if it came out now?
SMITH: Perhaps it did. It’s hard to go back and undo that because it felt like a story that at that time hadn’t been told with an actress who hadn’t yet told it and hadn’t yet been in this role in a movie, front and center. So, I think, listen, the movie did well for its time period and I felt like it was all-around a success. We’re proud of the film and how it turned out and we love Anna with every fiber of our being. It launched her and the process was so special and we were kind of like Shelley, we didn’t know we could. To have a dream to go and see a woman onscreen that’s a great comedian and meeting her and building a movie around her, for her, with her and having it turn out so well, I mean who could have predicted that? Who could have dreamt that up? It was such a magical experience for us.
Do you feel like the movie was underrated because it was a bit ahead of its time?
SMITH: Ahead of its time? I wouldn’t try to move any piece of it forward or out of its time because it was that woman, our development as writers, our friendship, the three of us. And a marketplace that really was buying stories female-driven comedies because even though they weren’t labeled as such. We also had a male movie star who could do anything he wanted [in Adam Sandler] and he wanted to put his weight behind this movie about girls.
Ten years later, are there any lines that you’re still proud of?
SMITH: I think the “eyes are the nipples of the face” is one of our proudest accomplishments, which really shows you how weird our job is.That’s a good thing to have one one’s tombstone I guess. [Laughs] I think the “mahi mahi” line. That was in the pitch always and there were a lot of lines that were in the pitch that made it all the way through which is a great feeling as a writer.
MCCULLAH LUTZ: The “nipples of the face” came from us sitting by the pool. And Kirsten’s like, “Trailer moment!” and I was like “Don’t jinx it, don’t jinx it!” It was just one of those lines that popped into my head. The one that people always say to me is “I want the mahi mahi, but can I get just one mahi please?” I think Anna adlibbed that actually. But yeah, that’s a great line.
Are there any lines you wish made it into the movie?
MCCULLAH LUTZ: There’s one joke that’s just crickets every time and it makes me cringe. We had something slightly sexual in there and they were worried it was too racy. I think they really wanted the PG-13 rating even though it was about a Playboy Bunny, so they replaced it with another joke that wasn’t really a joke. That’s the one regret I have when watching it now. It was after the head house mother of the other sorority was mean to Shelley and walked away, I think Shelley said something like, in our script, “Someone needs a new vibrator,” just saying that to herself and they changed that to “Someone needs a mani-pedi combo pronto.” And I was like, “Oh my god guys, that can’t work! That’s not gonna work!” And they were like “It’s going to be funny” and it was never funny, no one ever laughed at that one. I always wanted to turn around in theaters and say, “I never wanted that line!” I like my vibrator line better.
I had read an interview in which Kirsten, you mention that The House Bunny would make for a good drinking game. Did this ever come to fruition?
SMITH: Oh my gosh, shit, I don’t know. I hope so. [Laughs] But we also feel like it would be such a great stage production as a musical. We got this bee in our bonnets a few years back that it should be a musical. But I think everybody wants their movie to be a Broadway musical, but The House Bunny I feel like it would be a really incredible musical.
You’re currently working on Legally Blonde 3, but is there a chance The House Bunny will get a sequel?
SMITH: Yes, we have an idea for it and we’d love to do it. We like percolated quite a few ideas and we think we have a good one.
So there’s that possibility we could see Shelley ten years later?
SMITH: Well, in our minds yes and then you’ll put it out there in the world and it could happen. I think it would be great we just have to convince the powers that be but there’s no better trio that’s ripe for a reunion than Karen, Anna, and I. I think we could do something so great 10 years later, 15 years later and seeing that character come back around, she’s just one of my favorite characters. I love her so much. For me, I think it’s just her innocence and her kindness and her vulnerability and her gullibility, you know. She’s kind of looking through these rose colored glasses at everything and she’s so earnest and there’s just I really identify with her. Just that hopeful optimistic positivity about her, I just really, and she’s so kind, she’s so loving.
MCCULLAH LUTZ: I think she’s definitely the most naive innocent character we’ve written which is hard to do in this world today. People are jaded and cynical about our recent government problems. It was fun to see the world through her eyes.
Have you thought about where Shelley would be all these years later?
MCCULLAH LUTZ: She could still very well be a house mother. She’s kinda good at that job. She might be with Colin Hanks [who played Oliver]. They might have gotten married but she could still be a house mother. Maybe she’s in charge of the Panhellenic Council. I’d like to think she still has a hand in that world and worked her way up to the top of the pack.
Now that The House Bunny’s celebrating a big anniversary, people may start reevaluating or reconsidering the movie. Is there anything you hope people will take away from it now?
SMITH: I feel like it’s not really young women are looking to that as a go-to movie. Perhaps because they think it’s one thing but it’s not. Kind of like Shelley. [Laughs] They’re going she’s not a woman of substance or she’s flighty. But I’m excited to have people re-approach the movie and the very loving heartbeat of it will shine through to them and get them to re-appreciate it because it means so much to me.
