Moonlight & Magnolias

Could producer David O. Selznick’s life possibly get any worse? Filming has barely begun on his latest magnum opus, Gone with the Wind, and “Selznick’s folly” is already a massive train wreck. He’s fired the director, the script is a disaster, and he now has only five days to save the movie and his reputation. This true-life piece of Hollywood lore sets the stage for Moonlight & Magnolias, playwright Ron Hutchinson’s hilarious take on just what might have transpired during those desperate five days that produced the final script for Gone with the Wind.

The play takes audiences behind the closed doors of Selznick’s office, where he has corralled director Victor Fleming and screenwriter Ben Hecht, and charged them with the task of getting the train back on the tracks. Selznick locks all three of them in the office and refuses to let anyone out until they have completely overhauled the movie’s script. Armed with a typewriter and fueled by nothing more than bananas, peanuts and coffee, the three men set about the daunting task of turning a 1,000-plus-page novel into a coherent 130-page movie script! Hecht, who loathes both the novel and the film, pounds the typewriter keys as Selznick and Fleming act out the story’s most famous scenes, in a mad dash to meet their deadline and rescue one of Hollywood’s most ballyhooed – and, ultimately, most celebrated – movies.

Playwright Ron Hutchinson skillfully combines the memoirs and recollections of those involved, along with his own personal experiences as a movie re-write man, to create an utterly hilarious portrait of the long-gone days of the Hollywood studio system. Moonlight & Magnolias premiered at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 2004 and made its Off-Broadway debut at New York’s Manhattan Theatre Club in 2005.