WHAT WENT WRONG - My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

My Big Fat... Latina Wedding? This week, Chris & Lizzie dive into the magical, seemingly impossible indie-darling that could, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Learn how Nia Vardalos turned what Hollywood perceived to be her biggest liability (her Greek heritage) into a movie so specifically hilarious, it felt universal. This is the unlikely story of how a one-woman show (and a $500 ad in the LA Times) found Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks in its audience and birthed one of the most successful indie films in the history of Hollywood. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And action. Hello and welcome back to what went wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a movie that said, hey, it's okay to have a big, fat, weird family. You can still get married.

What a treat. I am one of your hosts, Lizzie, here as always with Chris Winterbauer. And Chris, what do you have for us today? We have a family favorite. of the Winterbowers and the Lewis is my mom's side, my Big Fat Creek Wedding. I would say, and actually one of the things I really appreciate about this movie, is it actually, before we get into the romance subplot,

it's more about her achieving her independence, which I forgot, and I actually do really appreciate it for like an early-a-a-auts romantic comedy. Yeah, I spend a long time on it. But, yes, we have my Big Fat Creek Wedding. But, Lizzie, we have something else that we need to talk about quickly before we talk about my Big Fat Creek Wedding. You do. Because you have, like, been involved in this secret side project that I was not.

involved in, and I've been just so jealous, so tell the folks what's coming their way for any fans of Lizzie Bassett or Vampires or Bulls. If you want to talk about secret side projects, Chris is the one with those, but we'll get to those later. I am very excited that I got the chance to host the after show companion show for season three of Interview with the Vampire, which is called the Vampire Lestat. The show that I'm hosting is called The Vampire Listat After Dark, and it was an unbelievably good time. It was so much fun to be able to do this. I absolutely loved talking to the cast and the creators, really fascinating conversations. Also, the show, it's really fucking good. It's really good. I watched it the entire season twice, and I will watch it a third time. And you can start watching it

this weekend. It premieres on June 7th on AMC. You can watch the after show, the premiere episode, at least on AMC and AMC Plus. So make sure that you go watch the vampire Lestat. It is so, so good. You know, we talked about Lestat a little bit in our interview with the vampire episode. And I said in that episode before even getting this job that I thought that Sam Reed was the best incarnation of Lestat. And I absolutely stand by that. And also, just what a fun guy. Very fun to talk to him and spend a few days working on this show. So go give it a watch and then make sure that you watch the vampire Lestat after dark, after every episode. You can watch the after show on AMC Plus.

So please go do that. And what a fun opportunity that I got. Thanks to this podcast. So thank you all for listening and making this possible. All right, guys. And I can back up that Lizzie genuinely liked the show because she texted me saying she said, like, thank God this is good after she had already agreed to do it.

Yeah. All right. Well, let's dive into my big, fat Greek wedding, which is tonally on the opposite side of the spectrum from the Vampire. Pireola stop, but I'm very excited nonetheless. Lizzie, had you seen my big, fat Greek wedding before, and what were your thoughts upon watching or re-watching it for the podcast? Of course, I had seen my big fat Greek wedding.

It was, for anyone who was not conscious in 2002, I think, when this came out. Yes, 2002. This was like a watershed cultural moment where it was like everyone suddenly realized that it was okay to not be a wasp and also to openly mock the only wasps in the movie. So, yes, I saw this in theaters, potentially more than once. I know I've watched it since then, but I don't think I've seen this movie since I was probably like, I don't know, 14, 15 years old. We watched it last night. I really enjoyed it.

It's very fun. I will say my favorite performance in the entire movie is one that I had completely forgotten about. And it is... Can I guess? Yes, guess. Is it Andrea Martin? Is Aunt Vula? Yes.

How could you forget the Babopsy? She steals this movie? She's so fun. And I didn't realize how burned into my brain that scene was where she explains about the twin. The bobbopsy, yes. My whole life, I have a lump in my throat. It was my unborn twin. Being a twin that she then absorbed that had a spinal cord in it.

It is so funny and she really got the energy of the movie, I think. As did Lewis Mandelor, who plays her brother, I really liked him a lot in this. You know, it's a little more. uneven than I remembered, which is totally fine. It feels very, very cartoonish, even from the beginning when, you know, she's kind of hiding from Aiden, whose actual name is John Corbett, who is playing Aiden again, except actually a good and attractive version of Aden. Ian Miller, yeah. He's very good in this, yeah, Aiden from Sex and the City, of course, if anybody doesn't know. But yeah, you know, I didn't remember it being so, like, slapstick over-the-top ridiculous. It is.

which was fine. Once you kind of settle into that and you know what you're in for, I definitely enjoyed it, and I'm excited to talk about it because I know what I remember most about this was like, can you believe that that woman,

the star of this movie, also wrote it? Everyone was like, she can put a pen to paper, and she can star in a movie, and she looks like that. And then in retrospect, watching it, I'm like,

yeah, she's beautiful. Yeah, exactly. successful, beautiful writer and actress. Like, yes, she can do this. So I'm excited to talk about that. They do style her very specifically in the first 10 to 15 minutes, I think, lean into a couple of things. I got to tell you, they don't do her any favors over the course of any part of this movie.

And I understand it was the 2000s. It was early 2000. There was a specific style happening with, like, the weird top button cardigan over things on every outfit. Yeah, we all had it. Yeah. I had it. I was something you say. It was very recognizable look.

Yes, yes, but she is a lot more attractive, I think, than she looks at any point in this movie, although she does look very attractive after she goes through her own little makeover. And we were talking about this a little bit before we got on, but I really appreciate that they spend quite a lot of time of her kind of making herself over, not for a man, like not to get a husband, but because it's making her happy and because, you know, she's sending herself to school to learn more about computers and to have a career. And it is really nice that it's like she actually has come into her own and accepted herself, to a certain degree, before Ian even comes into the picture. And that is unusual for a movie like this. So I did really enjoy that. I got to say, though, the one problem is that there is another movie about not a Greek family, but a big Italian family that is more burned into my brain. And I couldn't help comparing the two over the course of this. Do you know what it is? Probably the godfather. Not the godfather. No, which one? Are you thinking of? Moonstruck.

Sure. Yeah. It felt like it borrowed a lot from Moonstruck, but the thing that it misses that, for me, Moonstruck, doesn't, is that Moonstruck has these moments of real, like, clarity. And this movie doesn't really ever give you that chance to breathe or really see these people as humans, I guess. And that's potentially my one complaint about this,

is that everyone remains so cartoonish all the way through, that it's fun, but it doesn't quite have the same emotional impact that I think maybe it could have. But I'll stop there. Chris, what's your experience with it? Don't necessarily disagree with anything you just said. My sister wanted to remind me that Nia Vardalos has said. In the beginning of the movie, it's just what she looks like when she wakes up, to which I also say, but also they give her the clothing of brown burlap sacks at the beginning of this movie. They put her in like a David Byrne once in a lifetime style suit at one point in this. That just looks insane. Anywho. So I saw this movie.

when I was, it was December of 2002, so I would have been 13, almost 14 in Dallas with my mom's family. My mom is Puerto Rican and my dad is Ian Miller. And so it was, it was really, to us, I think, and my sister can attest to this too, it felt like such a mirror. My family's not quite as exaggerated as what we're seeing on screen, but they're, oh, that person's just like this uncle like this, you know. And I do think that that element of we all have that big, loud, boisterous, either half of our family or person whose family is that, right? Like, through a friend or something like that in our lives, it's so recognizable. It's so fun.

And it feels, I think, in comparison to the other films at the time that we're coming out of Hollywood, the other romantic comedy films, I don't disagree that something like Moonstruck does ultimately feel a little bit more grounded, despite having many exaggerated, you know, elements, including one-handed Nick Cage and whatnot. It is my favorite Nicholas Cage performance of all time, I think. It's amazing. We will cover it at some point. Yeah, and I agree. It wasn't as quite a smooth ride as I remembered when I rewatched. I still loved it. But I do think it, in part, was so successful because this was so quenching a thirst that we had in the early 2000s. If you look at what else was being released for something that felt even remotely recognizable and human and real. And we'll get to the review by Roger Ebert, which really calls that out. But I saw this movie at least two times in theaters during that one December trip in Dallas with my mom.

family. I've gone back and watched it a few times, rewatching it. Certain moments just continue to make me laugh. Andrea Martin is amazing. She's the best. I actually think Nia Vardales gives an excellent, like, more grounded performance than a lot of the other characters. And I do think, in part, there's a conscious choice being made to have Lainey Kazan and Michael Constantine go bigger so that then Nia and some of the other characters feel more realistic around them. I'm assuming that was a choice. But I just love, like, you know, you're going to get baptized in the Greek church tomorrow, you know. And then he says, yeah, and he goes, your lucky day. Nicky going to be a godmother.

And you cut to Nicky fixing her boobs in her shirt. And then she's rubbing him down with oil in the kitty pool in the Orthodox Church. There's just so many fun jokes, the Nick, Nick, Nick, the joke that all the family members have named their kids the same thing, which in my family, actually on my dad's side, on the white side, it's like Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Michael, Michael, Chris, Steve, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Michael. Steve, it's just the same three. And your name is Christopher Andrew. It is. I know. And my uncle's name is Andrew. And my brother-in-law's name is Andrew. And my uncle's name is Mike. And my father-in-law's name is Mike. What I love about this film is, yes, it's my big fat Greek wedding. But you could also call it my big fat American wedding, which I think is what really makes it so universal. But let's jump into it because it's a really interesting story. I'm very excited. And there's one thing I want to say, too,

to clarify, you know, this is one of those movies. Like, you're talking about what was available at the time. And absolutely, this. was different culturally, which was important. But the other thing that, you know, we kind of touched on saying, like, it's a bit ridiculous that Nia Vardalos has painted as this extremely unattractive woman, it was not ridiculous at the time. And I think when you're talking about the other offerings that were available, I mean, and this is what we grew up with. And, you know, this was the time of the gossip blogs starting to really generate content. And she did look markedly different from what was being pushed to young women, teenagers. And I do remember that standing out

to me. And it was important. And I am glad that she was able to do this, even though it's ridiculous that it was even a question if she could, you know? Yeah. And let's get into some of the other options that were perhaps floated for this movie. Because they're illustrative of that point that you're making. How white are they? No, actually not. Okay, okay. But also not Greek. And we'll get into that as well. This is a really interesting. It's a nuanced story. I'm really excited to talk about it. The focus today, guys, is very much on the development of this movie, which is fascinating,

and then the release of this movie. There's a little bit in production. But the reason I wanted to talk about this movie, aside from the fact that I really love it, is that I think in many ways it's a movie. It's not that it couldn't get made now, but it's just that it would never happen in the way that it did in 2002 because so much has changed with the way movies are released and the way that they're marketed and our attention is divided. So let's dive into one of the questions.

craziest stories behind an independent film ever made. So my Big Fat Greek Wedding is a 2002 romantic comedy film directed by Joel Zwick. It was written, as we've mentioned, by Nia Vardalos. It was produced by Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks, and Gary Getsman. It stars Nia as Tula Portacalos, John Corbett as Ian Miller, Lainy Kazan as her mother Maria, Michael Constantine as Gus, Lewis Mandelor is Nick, Andrea Martin as Aunt Vula, and many, many more, including Joey Fetone of InSync as Angelo.

It's pretty funny. Yeah, he's good. It premiered on February 22nd, 2002, had a limited release on April 19th, 2002, and platformed wide beginning August 2nd, 2002. It's had a very interesting release schedule that we'll get into. It was distributed by IFC films, produced by HBO, Gold Circle Films, and Playtone, and the IMDB logline reads. A young Greek woman falls in love with a non-Greek and struggles to

get her family to accept him while she comes to terms with her heritage and cultural identity. Pretty good. Sources for today's episode include but are not limited to Instant Mom, Nia Vardalas's 2013 book, her 2025 interview on the Don't Kill the Messenger podcast with Kevin Gets, her 2014 interview as part of the dialogue series, The Ringers, great coverage of the release of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and many, many more articles, retrospectives, and interviews with those involved in the film. All right, Lizzie. because it's my big fat Greek wedding.

We have to start with the fact that every word comes from a Greek word. The word cinema comes from the French, Cinema, which is a shortening of Cinematograph, coined by the Lumiere brothers, to describe a device which projected a series of photographs in rapid succession so as to produce the illusion of movement.

And you'd say, but that's not Greek. Of course it is. It all goes back to the Greek. Kinema, meaning movement, Graffin, meaning to write, draw, or record. And it's a bit ironic that would be a moment in Nia Vardalas's life that she perhaps hoped to forget that would be recorded forever in cinema history. It's the early 1980s, and Nia is 20 years old when her father turns to her and says, you better get married soon because you're starting to look old.

I'm sorry, 20? 20 years old. Great. She told her mom, who told her dad to apologize, and he doesn't. He just says, hey, kid, someday you'll laugh at it. about it. And one day, she would. She'd also get married, but let's rewind for a moment. So Nia was born, Eugenia Antonia Vardalos in September of 1962 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her father's name was Constantine, but everyone called him Gus. He immigrated from Greece and

eventually moved to Winnipeg where he met his future wife, a Greek Canadian named Doreen. And yes, Lizzie, he did believe in the healing powers of Windex after it seemingly cured a one time. Okay. She had three siblings and 27 first cousins, and her family was very big and very funny. But to be clear, it wasn't exactly the family we'd see on screen years later. Here's her quote. In our family, everyone is funny.

That's the way you got attention. But we were never rude because preserving the family was more important than being funny. We were all very, very supportive of each other. And growing up in that comfort zone, that bubble, gave me an inordinate amount of confidence later. So Nia grew up watching a few very funny women in particular. Gilda Radner on SNL. Andrea Martin on Second City TV, Bet Midler, Barbara Streisand, and Monty Python.

But she wanted to be a serious actor, and she had chops. She earned a scholarship from the Manitoba Theatre Company, which gave her the opportunity to attend Ryerson University in Toronto. But Lizzie, that would mean moving to another province from Manitoba. to Ontario. What do you think her dad said? Absolutely not. Why you do this to me? He started crying.

And she said, but dad, this is such a prestigious program. They only chose 27 people out of thousands. And he says, no. And she says, but I'm going to be an actor. And he says, no. And so she finally says, but dad, I'm the only Greek they accepted. At which point, he swelled with pride and started telling people, my daughter was the only Greek accepted into this program.

So she moves to Toronto, she studies Shakespeare, and trains to be a classical actress. She graduates in that protective familial bubble bursts. She gets a whole lot of, you're just not what we're looking for. And a fair share of, you're too fat. She said she worked enough bad dinner theater for several lifetimes, and everything changed when she went to an improv show at Second City in Toronto. She said, I saw people become anyone or anything they wanted to be not held down by physicality. So, Nia starts taking classes at Second City.

The cast is full, so she works a job at the box office. And every night that there's a show, she takes tickets, then takes the phone off the hook, and goes and watches the show. And one night, one of the cast members gets sick and is rushed to the hospital. The stage manager runs to the box office and says, Nia, call an understudy. And she does, while secretly praying that they don't answer the phone. They don't.

So she goes to the stage manager, says they didn't pick up. But I can do it. And the stage manager says, okay, and she did it. And the next day, the producers made her a cast member. Wow. In the early 90s, she moves to the U.S. She starts working for Second City in Chicago, where my Big Fat Creek wedding will end up being set.

And it's there that she meets fellow actor Ian Gomez, who Lizzie, you may recognize in this film as Mike Ian Miller's friend that we meet early on one of his fellow teachers. Yeah, he's in a ton of stuff too. Wasn't he on like the Drew Carey show forever? He was. Yeah. Yes.

He's a prolific character actor. He's in a lot of television work. He is handsome, talented, funny, Jewish, Puerto Rican, definitely not Greek. So her family at first didn't want to meet him. Eventually they came around because he was baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church, which they were married in in 1993. They then moved to L.A. They start to work in TV and movies.

And as you mentioned, Lizzie, Ian is the one who finds. steady work. The Drew Carey show, Felicity, and I think this is really important. This is where somebody like Ian, I think, has an advantage in that he has a very specific look, right? He's already bald. He's got kind of a cherubic face. He's very funny. So he looks different than a lot of other folks, but he very obviously slots into a character type, right? The funny male friend. We know what he is, and he starts working very quickly, whereas Nia's opportunities were far more fleeting. So casting agents, were constantly telling her she was either too old or not old enough, too ethnic or not ethnic enough, and perhaps a part of her wished she were blonde and slim, but as she later said, on the same day

that she was dropped by her agent because he couldn't get her work because she didn't look like anybody else in L.A., quote, my blonde slim friend was also dumped by her agent who said to her, I can't get you work because you look like everybody else in L.A. Yeah, I may have told this story before on the podcast, but the way that And God, I hope this is different now. But the way that women who are trying to enter the professional acting field are treated was shocking to me as someone who was going to college to try and be a professional actor. But we had a professional actress, a very famous person who was a graduate of our program, come to the school and in our senior year and do like a class, a seminar for all of the senior acting students. And part of it was we would like do a monologue.

And then afterwards, she would tell us, in her professional opinion, you know, like the types of parts we should be looking for essentially upon graduation. And everybody got up there and, you know, there's obviously a lot of like very beautiful ingenue types in my class. I was not one of them. I also, you know, maybe looked a little older than I was, didn't look sort of like a typical ingenue at all. And after I did my monologue, she looked at me and she said, yeah, look, the reality is you're just not going to work until you're 40. So just be prepared for that. And then, you know, you'll probably start to come into your own a little bit then. And I'll never forget it. Again, this was a very famous person. Just bleep the name. It's boom. Love it.

Blacklisted. No, look, she probably wasn't wrong. Like, in all honesty, she was probably trying to be kind. But it was shocking to hear that and to basically be told, yeah, it doesn't really matter how good you are. Like, you just don't look like what I could see fitting into any particular category. You know, basically, you're not young enough, you're not old enough, you're not pretty enough. You're also not quite ugly enough. So we just don't know what to do with you until you're old.

I mean, you and Nia, I think she was running into the same problem. I also think she also, to me, looked a little more when she was young, a little more mature is the way I would describe it. And I think a great way. But it's, again, it's if you don't fit a preconceived type. That's the thing. The failure of imagination will shock you, or as it did there for you, Lizzie. Now, you will clearly start your whole transition from podcasting into acting in only three years, so I've got to take advantage of it while I can.

Yay, it's my dreams. Yes. But, you know, the other thing that was working against Nia is that agents seemed to be confused by her Greek heritage as well. So it was not just the fact that she didn't fit into a conventional type just holistically. It was also, well, what minority are you on top? of it. Yeah, that was not a problem I had, but yes, definitely. Right.

There was one agent who had claimed to have handed out her head shots left and right to no success, who once asked her, again, according to Nia, what are you? Latina? And I said, no, I'm Greek. And she said, well, that's the problem. We're going to change the spelling of the last part of your name from OS to EZ and send you out as Hispanic. And Nia said, I don't think I want to do that.

And the agent said, I don't want to represent you and drop Yeah, by the way, this continued happening. I'll keep this brief as well, but one of my very good friends is ethnically very ambiguous, though she's of Japanese, Italian and German descent. And there was a long period of time where her agents kept sending her Native American parts. And she finally just had to be like, guys, I can't do this. I understand that I look, because she does. She looks like she could be Native American, absolutely. But to her eternal credit, she started turning them down and just said, this is like, I can't. I can't do it. And she lost a lot of parts. Well, Hollywood was not letting Nia transcend her physicality in the way that Second City had. But there also weren't a lot of Greek roles available for her. So she decided to write one. So she sat down at her kitchen table and she wrote out all the family stories that she'd been telling for years. And it sounds like around this time she started taking these stories on stage at Open Mic's. Because her friend, another writer in L.A. told her, hey, don't do that.

Don't tell your idea out in L.A. land of Steelers and Liars and Thieves. That's the official slogan. You should register it. So she calls up the Library of Congress and they're saying, you can't register ideas, but you could write a screenplay and register that. Now, she'd written sketches for Second City, but she'd never written a screenplay, which is a blessing in disguise. Because she later said if she knew how hard it was or the chances of it getting sold, she never would have written it. But she borrows a friend's laptop, which has a copy of final draft, which is the industry standard screenwriting software,

and it just basically makes sure that you're formatting everything properly, and she gets to work. She doesn't go out. She barely sleeps three weeks later. She has the first vomit draft, we'll call it, of my big, Fat Creek wedding. Sometimes when she tells the story, it's two weeks, sometimes it's six weeks. No matter which version or how long it took, she says she hated it. She put it in a drawer. She didn't look at it for months. And when she finally did, she realizes, oh my God, there's way too much exposition.

She decides to read a bunch of old film scripts, learn about scenecraft. She does a rewrite, and she says, okay, this thing is ready. And she sends it to her managers, as well as various studios. With a very modest goal, I'd say, she doesn't want to be the lead at this point. Or perhaps she does want to be the lead, but her goal is. is maybe they'll make it, and maybe I could play one of the bridesmaids. Oh. I mean, I'm thinking, like, is she thinking maybe cousin Nikki would be a reach?

You know what I mean at this point? Yeah. So then she waits to hear back. The studios send back their copies unopened. Now, that's not really a negative reflection on the studios. If you send an unsolicited script to a studio, they have to send it back unopened to prove that they did not read your script because there is always a chance they could be working on something similar, and then later on there could be an issue with chain of title, and there could be

exposure to legal liability in some way. Yeah, there's also like safety risk with, you know, opening, I worked at the front desk of a major management production company, and we were not allowed to open that stuff either. Yeah. So after three months, she does work up the courage to ask her managers, who theoretically should be reading her script. Indeed, yeah. About it. Now, things were not great with her managers. She hadn't booked any of the additions that they'd lined up for her, and they had not been able to convince an agent to took her on. She said, I knew I was a disappointment to them, because they told me. She went in, and her manager grabbed the script from the floor behind her desk,

pushed it across the table, and said, you're an actress. Whoever told you you could write a screenplay. So, Nia fired them. Whoa! Yeah. The studios, the agents, the managers, they were all one big dead end. The only person who seemed to believe in this idea was Nia.

So she said, what if I made it into a show starring the one? one person who believes in this idea. What if I make it into a one-woman show? She was inspired to write something like Julia Sweeney's God Said Ha or Jeff Garland's, I Want Someone to Eat Cheese with. And it does seem like she had one important connection that she could leverage, which is the HBO workspace. So according to some coverage from 1998, the HBO workspace was a 67-seat theater in Hollywood that was designed to provide young comics a place to hone their material. Now, this was not done entirely out of the goodness of HBO's heart, right? The space is provided free of charge, but the real kicker is that at the end, HBO execs theoretically could come down

and watch it, and then if there's something good there, right, they have the opportunity to to pounce on this material without any competing bids from anywhere else. So she said that HBO workspace knew her work through Second City. So she had some sort of in there. She gets to do it four times in front of an audience. She gets notes, feedback, a chance to improve. And this is so valuable. I mean, even it's something like a table read, hearing your dialogue and then learning where the laughs are and where to time things, it's a really invaluable experience. And obviously, though, what she's really building toward is this opportunity to run it for these HBO executives. But she says that there was a regime change at HBO while she's workshopping it and none of the

executives show up on the night of her big presentation. So it ends up being great learning experience, not going anywhere there. She also does an early run version at the Acme Theater and eventually she and Ian Gomez decide, screw it. Let's scrape together a bunch of money, rent the Hudson, which is a 99-seat theater in L.A., and she started performing the show once a week for $10 a ticket. And at first, the only people that are coming are the only people that come to all of our shows when we get started in L.A. Her friends from Second City, exactly. But then she did something really smart, Lizzie. Where do you think she could go to start finding an audience for this show, which is my big fat Greek wedding? Greek restaurants around Los Angeles.

Basically, she starts handing out flyers at Greek churches and community groups, and all of a sudden the audience grows until one fateful day a famous face appears in the crowd. Former golden girl, Rue Mclanahan. Oh. Her assistant comes up to Nyan says, Rue loved the show and she'd be honored to have you over for dinner. She's thinking, this is it. This is the big break I've been waiting for.

The assistant says, Rue wants to throw a Greek dinear. She asks for suggestions of what groceries to buy. The night of the dinner party arrives. Mia and Ian Gomez show up at Rue's house, and Rue's assistant directs them to the kitchen. She'd been invited to cook Greek food. Lizzie's face is... No. Yeah.

She's so surprised, and she's too polite and probably terrified to say no. So she and her husband cooked dinner for Rue and her friends. And as they're leaving, Rue says, wait. And Nia thinks, oh, finally she's going to say something about this being some sort of misunderstanding. And then Rue says, can you give Estelle Getty a ride home? Oh my God. Yeah. It's a heartbreaking dead end.

But there's good news, which is that Rue aside, the show is doing well. The show's doing very well. In fact, she was starting to get approached by production companies that wanted to turn it into a movie. But it wouldn't be her movie. She said the first thing that they tell me is that no, they didn't want to read my screenplay. They just wanted to buy my story and have a real writer write the script. They also didn't want her to act. They didn't even want to keep her on as a bridesmaid, let alone the bride. Guys, read it. It'll take you two hours. Somebody just read it. Lizzie, they didn't even want to keep it Greek. So they said, let's do it Hispanic with Jennifer

Lopez. Okay. Let's do it Italian with Marissa Tomey. She said it was really hard to say no. One production company reportedly went as far as offering her $50,000 for the rights. If you are a struggling artist in L.A. Yeah, it's a lot. In 2002, turning down $50,000 would be tough. But she was in a meeting at one of these production companies when the quote, writer in the room pitched her some openings for their version of the movie. And she said, I think I've seen that before. And he said, yeah, It worked in, and then he listed three films. And that's when she realized she had to do it herself. She also said there was a very funny moment there where she said,

I'm going to do it myself. And they said, you've never written anything. And then she looked at the writer and says, have you written anything? And he said, I've assisted on many scripts. Oh, no. Not written anything. Yeah, bye. But she realized that she has to do it herself.

Otherwise, they're going to strip the authenticity away. In the meantime, she decides that she needs to try to expand the show's audience to earn an income from it. So she spends $500 on an ad in the LA Times. It's two inches by two inches, and it catches the eye of another actress of Greek descent. Lizzie, enter. We talked about her before the show started. Rita Wilson? Enter Rita Wilson.

Oh. Born Margarita Ibrahimov. I believe her Greek heritage is on her mother's side. Wow. She got her start in TV back in 1972 with a guest appearance on the Brady Bunch. She was only 16 years old. And in 1981, she met who on the side? set of bosom buddies. Tom Hanks. Thomas the Tank Engine Hanks. Better known as the father of Chet Hanks.

Yes. And Rita Wilson as his mother. She broke out with 1985's volunteers, which she co-starred in with Hanks. They married in 1988. They had two children, Chet in 1990 and Truman in 1995. She continued to work, but generally speaking, she'd been taking fewer acting roles to focus on raising her kids. And she had not yet produced any movies. I just want to say briefly, Chet Hanks, pretty funny in running point. Anyway, continue. Chad Hanks having quite the comeback from White Boy Summer, got to say. I know. He's very charming. He is very charming. He's pulling it off. Did you listen to him on the Z-Way interview that he did?

No, I haven't. She gets him, like she gets him with some good burns, and he's pretty good. Like, he takes it, well. Good. I've come around. All right, let me play you this clip of Rita Wilson on how she discovered my big fat Greek wedding. It really was because I go to see a lot of off-Broadway theater when I'm in New York. And many years ago, I thought, why am I seeing so much theater in New York and not really focusing on the theater in Los Angeles? L.A.'s got great theater, too.

So I opened up the newspaper one day, and there was this little tiny ad about that big that said, Neovardalas is my big-fact Greek wedding. And I just thought, being of Greek heritage, that is a very funny time. I will go see this play and it was at a 99-seat theater. I took my mom and was alive at the time and my sister and my nieces and we saw it and I thought it was literally one of the funniest things I had ever seen. It was just truthful about families and particularly about Greek culture. So I asked to meet Nia at the playwright after the play was done and she came out and I said,

Nia, this would make an amazing movie. And she said, I have a script. So I don't know if you caught the end there, Lizzie, but yeah. She said, I have a script right when Rita Wilson came up to her. And is Rita Wilson going to be the only person who says, I can read? More than the second. Now, Nia knew that Rita Wilson was coming. Because the box office phone number on that newspaper ad, that was Nia's home phone number.

Oh, no. And the box office attendant answering the calls, that was Nia doing voices. So when Wilson told her it should be a movie, Nia says she handed her the screenplay so fast her hair flew back. And the next day, Nia got another call at the home box office, we'll call it. Wilson was sending some more family to check out the show. Her father, her brother, her son, and... Tom Hanks.

Tom Hanks. Whoa! That would be so crazy. The show starts and no one's looking at Nia on stage. They are all looking at Tom sitting in this roped off section. She hits the first punchline, and Tom Hanks laughs loud and hard. The forest cop, like, ha ha!

I laugh. A couple days later, she gets a letter from Hanks, and I'd like to read part of it. I'll paraphrase. Dear Nia, I know you. You are one of those Greek girls who come into the lives of men like me, men who are not Greek, non-Greek men.

We see you, then we work up the courage to speak to you, then we fall in love with you and ask you to marry us. Then you do in one of those big, fat Greek weddings where you walk around a table three times, and then us non-Greek men live happy forever. P.S., I look Greek. Nia would apparently call her mother every few weeks and read the letter and her mother would cry.

She says in her book she would have been happy if the story ended there, but it doesn't. Because there was another party interested in the script, and he claims that he was in the audience the same night as Tom Hanks, and that's director Jim Millio. Now, Nia had recently acted in a 1997 film called Men Seeking Women,

which I have never seen and got kind of panned with Will Farrell. Yeah, I've heard of that. Directed by Jim Millio. Now, Millio claims that when Nia met up with Wilson after the show that first night, she actually introduced him as the director attached to her script. Now, she denies saying this, but this is where things get a little tricky.

Here's what we know. Around this time, Rita Wilson told Nia to do the show as a full theater run with Rita Wilson, producing it. So Rita Wilson put her name on it. They rented a bigger theater, and she started doing the show five nights a week. Wow. In an interview from early 1997, Nia says that she gave Jim Millio the second draft of the script, and that she then didn't hear from him for weeks, assumed he hated it, but then found out his production company, MPH, needed time to drop a budget so they could make an official offer. Here's her quote. I had an option agreement with them, meaning Jim Milio MPH. Right now,

a bigger company is trying to buy it from the smaller company, meaning Jim Milio's company. As the smaller company are my friends, I don't want them to get shafted. We're negotiating, trying to find a solution favorable to everybody. I'm hopeful we'll have an agreement shortly and shoot it sometime this year. Here's my best guess is what happened. I'm just putting some pieces together.

These are my assumptions. At some point, Nia shared the script with Milio because he was perhaps the one feature director she knew or at least knew well since they'd worked together. He optioned it because I'm sure he thought, it was good, but didn't buy it. Then Wilson and Hanks get interested. The bigger company she mentioned moments ago was probably Playtone, which is Tom Hanks's production company that he'd formed with producer Gary Getsman, which, Lizzie, do you remember what the Playtone name is from?

Playtone Records, that thing you do. That's right. My guess is that Nia realized the likelihood of the movie getting made with Hanks was a lot higher than getting made with Milio. Milio said that he and Vardalos had a number of heated exchanges because he felt that he had a business stake to protect. She felt that he was causing her to miss the opportunity of a lifetime to work with Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. So eventually, MPH sells the rights, basically the option, for $200,000, co-executive producer credits, and 3% of the film's profits. So I'm guessing they had demonstrably done some amount of work on either the script or shopping it around, because I don't know how they would have gotten that, you know, without that, but we can't know.

Let's go back to the phone call with Hanks. He calls Nia up. He's read the script. He says, I want to make your movie. And Nia decides to take a shot. She figures none of the other big Greek actresses she knows are available. They're either busy or pregnant. Jennifer Aniston is shooting friends.

Melina Kanakaridis is pregnant. Tina Fais on SNL, but she hasn't broken out yet. Angie Harmon is best known for Law and Order. Maria Minunos isn't going to get going until the early 2000s. Yeah. So she asked Tom Hanks if she can play the lead. there's a tiny pause? And Hank says, yeah, of course.

Now, Hank's for his part, says he never hesitated. She's the one who says there was a tiny pause. I bet there was a tiny pause. Either way, she said she was shocked. And then she waited for 18 months. Because what she didn't know is that when Hanks and Wilson shopped the project to several studios, the feedback was basically, love the script, lose the girl. Oh, no.

Now, could Tom Hanks really take the role from her? She'd written the script. It was her life. but Playtone still had a card to play, Lizzie. HBO's theatrical movie division had already passed on the script when Gary Getsman calls up HBO exec, Chris Albrecht. And according to Albrecht, Getsman said, I really want to do this.

If I can get half of the $5 million budget, will you put up the rest? Albrecht hadn't read the script, but he said yes. Maybe because HBO owed Tom Hanks. He had done the miniseries from the Earth to Moon with them. It's a docu drama about the Apollo program. Every episode features Tom Hanks.

And what big World War II? show would Tom Hanks develop, put his name on, bring to life. Band of Brothers. Band of Brothers, which was given immense credibility by him and Steven Spielberg, given that they had just done saving Private Ryan. So eventually, Gold Circle Films, which is founded by Norman Waite Jr., one of the co-founders of Gateway Computer, puts up the initial $2.5 million, and HBO puts in the matching $2.5 million, and by August of 2000, Variety's reporting that Playtone is producing,

and Joel Zwick is going to direct. Now, Joel Zwick was an established TV director with a Tom Hanks connection, which television show did he direct several episodes of back in the early 80s, Lizzie? Bus and Buddies. Busom buddies. Now Zwick's reaching out to Hank's. He's trying to transition into indie films. He sent Tom a script, and Tom says, hey, what do you want to do with this?

And he's like, well, I want to direct it. I want to do indie films. And Tom says, well, I've got a script. I want you to direct. And he sent him my Big Pack Creek wedding. And Joel Zwick said, I would have directed the phone book if he had asked me to. But the script still needed. work. About a year before filming begins, they do a table read, and Nia says it is a rude awakening

hearing it read out loud. She takes three months to revise it, and then she takes it to the people who had inspired it, and she reveals it to her parents. She didn't want to offend them, but she says, you know, people are going to think this is real, a documentary of her life. And I'd like to play you a clip of Nia talking about explaining to her father the character of Gus in the film. Before we shot the movie, I sent it to my parents, just to make sure that they were okay with it, because I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to offend them. People are going to think it's a documentary. And, you know, I said to my dad, you know, I'm naming the main character Gus.

People are going to think it's you. And he went, but I know it's not me. And I said, but you do actually change every word into a Greek word. And he went, every word is a Greek word. And I was like, okay. He's fine. He's fine with it. Now, the low budget comes with some perks.

HBO and Gold Circle have no input on the script or casting, but it also comes with some caveats. Specifically, there is a provision in Nia's contract that she can be fired and replaced within the first four days of shooting if they are unhappy with Daly's. Jesus. Let's talk about the rest of the cast

and get back to that. Okay. Who from Moonstruck could have maybe been in this movie? Danny Aiello. Not Danny Iiello. Sorry, Olympia Dukakis. Olympia Dukakis. Danny Ielo, too, could have been great.

He totally could have been in this. Olympia Dukakis, I actually, when this movie started, I was like, is she in this? She's not. But Nia talked about one. wanting her to play the mother. Yeah.

And she also wanted Rita Wilson to play cousin Nikki. Oh, fun. Now, Wilson took a role in a play called Dinner with Friends, which left Nikki to Australian Greek actress, Gia Caritas, who's very funny. She is. And she really nails the role. Now, they did try to find as many Greek actors as possible.

And a lot of the secondary roles and many of the extras are local Greek actors. But they actually found Nia's father, Gus, right in their backyard. Michael Constantine was in his early 70s and happened to be visiting his sister in L.A. He's the son of Greek immigrants. and he'd been acting in TV and movies for 40 years. He was an Emmy winner for his role in the sitcom Room 222, which ran from 1969 to 1974, created by James L. Brooks.

He plays a high school principal. He had a wide swath of credits. I mean, The Hustler with Paul Newman. He was in Mel Stewart's, if it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium, which we just talked about on Willie Wonka. And he'd just been in the Demi Moore, Alec Baldwin thriller, The Juror,

which has my favorite tagline I have seen in forever, which is, there is no defense. So that's it. That's the whole timeline. Now, he'd actually played very few Greek characters throughout his career. He'd played Russians and Frenchmen and Italians and Germans and, quote, even in Okinawan. And maybe that's why Constantine said he wanted to read the script before auditioning. He was leery. He didn't know who Nia was. And he said that he was anxious about somebody writing about Greeks.

But he sits down and reads the script. And he said, yes, this person obviously knows Greeks, end quote. Yeah. Well, there was not a lot of content featuring Greeks. Greek people, if any, like, it actually is pretty crazy. Yeah, it is. And anything that could have potentially been played by Greek people, whether it's, you know, Alexander or Troy, and I know that's after, but like, they're not played by Greek people. Yeah, I just think, be it, like he said, like Russia, Eastern Europe, Greece, Italy, the Balkans, Armenia, like, it's all, they're all just like, yeah, just throw them in there. We won't notice. And, you know, I will say for most of my life,

I did not notice. And so, you know, they rely on the lack of of education of Americans on the diversity of people beyond the Americas. So Constantine says he auditioned three times before getting an offer. But Zwick says Michael Constantine walked in for a reading and he didn't say three words and he was cast. Now, Nia backs this up. She says, Tom slapped the table and said, we're done after Michael left the room. I do think, I think Tom Hanks loves slapping tables. I just have this idea. It sounds right. It's a deal. We're done. Like, I would love to work with Tom Hanks. I know. It could be an absolute dream. He's popped up, you know, in a couple of movies and things that we've talked about.

He's just never sounded not delightful. Delightful. Like, there's never been a thing that's been wrong with him. But also, I've read very smart, very thoughtful, a real student of history. Very interesting, man. Now, my guess is that Constantine read for the casting directors first. You know, I'm guessing he did audition three times, but by the time he hit the producers and the director, they realized, oh, okay, this is our guy.

Yeah. Either way, Constantine turned the role down. The casting director offered him the part. told him the pay and said, take it or leave it. Clearly, she wasn't Greek. Constantine said, where's the negotiation? You can't say, take it or leave

it to a Greek, according to Constantine. A producer then stepped in and, quote, then we did a true negotiation in the business, that's standard operating procedure. A week later, I was playing the role. End quote, for all I know, it was the exact same amount of pay. He just needed to have the negotiation

in place, but I do think it is a sign of respect, and especially for somebody who's been in the business for 40 years. Take it or leave. It's a little rough. It's a little tough. I also, though, understand it from the casting director's perspective. They're probably saying, like, I have a mandate to keep my budget very low. But sometimes the Kabuki Theater can be important to the folks involved.

Yes. A couple more fun casting notes. So, Nia wrote the role of Aunt Vula for Andrea Martin because she'd grown up watching her on SCTV. Now, Martin is Armenian. She is one of the non-Greek cast members. She'd been in TV and movies for 30 years. She'd also won a Tony for her Broadway debut in My Feud.

favorite year. Joey Fatone filmed his scenes at the same time as he was recording the album Celebrity with Insync. Wow. Yeah. He's definitely a bit of a stunt casting in this movie. Also, I believe he is of Italian descent. He's also not Greek. One quick fun story I heard

separately years ago, but I looked up again about Fatone, because he seems like a cool guy, and he has got a ton to do in this movie. So before fellow Insink member, Lance Bass came out, he was at his house, and he said, quote, my boyfriend at the time, my very, very first boyfriend was sitting on my lap. And at 3 a.m. Fetone wakes up looking for Bass, and he, like,

comes into the room and Bass's boyfriend is straddling him. And Bass is like, surprise. And Vaton's like, oh, please, I don't care. And then he just goes back to bed and didn't tell anybody until Bass came out in 2006, which that was a very nice story. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. I just love he's like, oh, please, what are you take? I care. Now, there's one more crucial Greek part that went to a non-greek actor. Lizzie. Yeah. Who? Lainy Kazan. Lainy Kazan, as Tula's mother, Maria. I did not know this. Do you know where Lainey Kazan got her start? Oh, I did at one point, but no, I can't remember. It was on Broadway, and she was the understudy to a singer and actress that we talk about a lot on this show. Barbara. That's right, Barbara Streisand. So she had famously or

infamously been Babs' understudy and Funny Girl. Oh, that makes sense. And she didn't go on for 18 months because Babs refused to miss a show. No matter what, this was my role. I'm going to do it every night. Finally, at some point, Babs couldn't do it. And so Lainey got the chance to do it. And people loved her. She was a real force.

I think she did the show, you know, a number of times. Also, have you seen pictures of a young Lainey Kazan in the 60s? Because holy smoke show. Have you seen her Playboy spread from the early 70s? Because holy smoke show. Nope, looking it up. Yeah. So, Lany Kazan, you know, she'd worked with Francis Ford Coppola when she was at Hofstra.

She'd been in Playboy. She headlined, yes, Lizzie's face. She'd headline Playboy Jazz Clubs. She has a later quote where she says, No man I've ever met has not tried to sleep with me, I believe, was what I saw. She'd guest starred on the Dean Martin show dozens of times. I mean, she is like the consummate stage, jazz, you know, triple threat performer. But she was probably at this time was the best known in the 90s for her recurring role as Aunt Frida on the Nanny, the Fran Dresher sitcom.

Yeah. Are you still looking at her playboy spread? Yeah, sorry. There's a picture of her boobs. I'll stop looking now. Yeah, Lizzie, come on, wildly inappropriate. Now, they're four days out from production. They are missing one key player.

Lizzie, what role have we not talked about yet? Ian Miller. There's a million of these guys, right? The White Boy. The White Boy. The Milk toast. It's a White Boy Summer. It's a White Boy Summer.

The obvious choice would seem to be Nia's real-life husband, Ian Gomez. Right? But she didn't want to cast him in the role. She says, you can play Ian's friend, Mike. her dream choice was John Corbett. Was he already playing Aiden? He was playing Aiden. Yeah, I mean, listen, it makes a lot of sense.

He wasn't available. He was actually shooting serendipity. Now, he'd broken out with the role of Chris Stevens in Northern Exposure. And as you mentioned, Lizzie, he'd taken on the role of Aden in Sex of the City, kind of the good guy to Chris Knoth's big, bad guy. Yeah, although he ends up being a drip anyway, but yes. Yes, I know. They don't love the way they wrote him in the end.

But I do think Corbett has a very charming, easygoing disposition, at least on stream, that really lends itself well to this character who ultimately is just a good partner to her, you know, throughout the movie. Well, and also, he's obviously very attractive, but. No, they feel like a good match. Yeah, and he looks like a real person. He does look like a real person. He is a leading man, absolutely. He's very attractive. He's very charming.

But he doesn't look like someone that you wouldn't see, you know, at your time. table at the restaurant. Yeah. I mean, would he be the most handsome person at the table at the restaurant? Probably, but he totally fits in this world. He got those slutty little glasses when he's teaching his class. And he's very charming. And I think his height actually works really well opposite her family in a lot of ways. Yeah, he's super tall. There's a fun humor to when they like all rush him. And he's just a super tall statue of Liberty white guy being rushed by all these Greeks. I will say, to quote Bridget Jones, I do think he should rethink the length of his sideburns. But that is my only critique. Well, let's talk about the hair for a second. So Mia and the team had spent six months combing lists of

actors and could not find the right guy. They couldn't find their John Corbett who wasn't John Corbett. She says there was, quote, a bit of a conflict in that there was a guy that some of the producers wanted, and I just didn't want him. I can't remember his name. Nia, you are classy for not sharing, but there is no way you do not remember his name. You will remember that name. That'll be the last name you say before you die. Now, I do wonder if at any point, Lionsgate the distributor or, you know, Gold Circle said, why doesn't Tom play the role? I'm guessing he was busy and also think he would overwhelm the movie. The movie would have to be...

He's too old as well. He's probably too old, and the movie would have to be about him. You know what I'm saying? It doesn't make sense. So, they go to Toronto where they're shooting the movie, and Nia heads to a bar with producer Gary Getsman, and she looks across the room,

and there's John Corbett, because that's where he's been shooting. He hadn't been available, but their shoot dates had recently been moved back two weeks, so they sidle over to the bar. Now, John does not know who they are, right? They know who he is. And they eavesdrop on his conversation with the bartender.

This is according to Nia. So take it with a grain of salt. But Nia claims that the bartender asks Corbett, what are you going to do after you wrap your movie? And he says, I don't know, but I just read the script in my room called my big fat Greek wedding and I want to be in it. At which point, Gary says, hello, sir. My name is Gary Getsman.

I'm a producer and he offers him the role. And Corbett says, are you telling me if I shake your hand right now? I have this role. And he says, yeah. So he did. With one caveat, he had to keep his long hair, which he'd grown out in part for his role in serendipity. a musician with long hair. So that was a stipulation of my Big Fat Creek wedding production was that

he had to keep the long hair. I do think the hair creates a great opportunity for, it subtly introduces conflict and also humor. So Constantine, Gus's disapproval of him. I think it's like subtly reinforced, you know, who is this guy? He's got long hair. He's coming into my house. Yeah. It makes him a little more interesting because he is very, like his whole joke is I was boring until I met you, right? But you can tell he doesn't want to be boring, which I like. And also then the joke of Andrea Martin, which will get to running her hands through his hair, is so funny.

And then also when he gets baptized and the hair is all in his face is very funny as well. Yeah. So shooting kicks off in Toronto in May of 2001. Different sources say 21 shooting days to 30 shooting days, which, by the way, is a big different. 21 would be crazy fast. That's how many days basically I had on my first feature.

And just from experience, I can say it's crazy fast. That's what, like four weeks? Yeah, that's four weeks almost exactly, with a Saturday. And then 30 feels more doable to me. That feels probably more accurate. They shoot most of the movie in Toronto. The bulk of the Chicago footage is just stock photography of the city.

They built the interior of dancing Zorbas. It's built not on a soundstage. It's built inside a supermarket. And of course, Lizzie, Nia is terrified that they're going to replace her. But she just has to make it for four days. So one of the first scenes they shoot is when Tula asked her dad if she can attend night school. And he says, no. And she cries.

And she said, that was easy. I just imagined I was getting fired from the movie. And she started crying. But four days come and go, no word, she's safe. And then her confidence takes a hit when she hears an extra on set, ask another, what's this movie about? And the extra explains the plot and then points to Nia saying she's the romantic lead. And the first extra was like, that's her?

End quote. But they had a lot of supporters. The local Greek restaurants rallied around the movie. They're like, this is our movie. And they started sending food to set. And she had some great performers like Andrea Martin, whose SCTV background came in handy when she forgot her. her line and improvised,

let me touch your hair and grabbed his hair, one of my favorite parts of the movie. They shot the opening scene of the movie last, Tula and Gus driving to the restaurant, and Nia and Constantine felt genuinely sad that the experience was coming to an end. But little did they know. The end was just the beginning.

Now, in most instances, Lizzie, the writer is not invited to editorial, speaking from experience. But Nia sat in on editing. And she says every once in a while, she'd say, could you just go to a close-up on me? And she said they did. And she said, quote,

they treated me like gold, and I know it will never happen again. They trimmed some scenes. They considered ending the movie with the wedding instead of the jump forward in time to them living next to her parents. They were not prepared, though, for the test screening reactions. Lizzie, how do you think people reacted to my Big Fat Creek wedding in their test screenings? Extremely well. People loved this movie.

Yeah. As of last year, she was still carrying around a top line sheet from one of the first test screenings at AMC. They scored a 94, which means. 94% of the audience ranked it in the top two categories, meaning they definitely recommend it to somebody. And I believe 60 plus percent of the audience gave it an excellent, which is the highest rating they can. It's an extremely high score. For a movie that people were worried was too specific to resonate with general audiences.

But it didn't seem to matter. Everybody kept saying, we don't know how to market this. It's a very specific story. There are no big name actors. And then their original distributor, Lionsgate, dropped out. She'd written a great script, found a great producer, made a great movie, audiences loved it, and it didn't seem to matter. In the end, they turned to a very new kid on the block, IFC films, which had just been formed and was trying to get into the indie film market. And it turns out, IFC had exactly the man they needed for the moment.

Now, we discussed Bob Bernie, distributor Maestro a bit in our episode on Memento Lizzie. Yeah. He was instrumental in getting that movie distributed. When he first screened my Big Fat Greek wedding, a woman apparently fell out of her seat because she was laughing so hard and broke her hip. She didn't need that hip. They had to pause the movie

so she could get medical attention. And everybody stayed. He knew they had a hit. He knew that there was demand. But he also knew that they couldn't compete with the bigger movies at the box office, like Spider-Man. So they decided not to. So 50 of the Vardalos family members

fly out for the premiere in February. They stay at the same hotel. And Tania's relief, they laughed when they watched the movie because her biggest concern was she didn't want them to think, if you remember our quote from the beginning, we're not mean to each other. She wants to make sure they're not thinking that she's being mean to them.

They definitely don't think that. And it seems like this family vibe is the vibe that the distribution team very smartly tried to recreate and rolling out this movie. So they start with screenings at Greek Orthodox churches. Then they move on to cities

with big Greek populations, always making sure that they can sell it out, keeping it small, special, limited. They do promotional screenings, not director-driven interviews or reviews, they know that the audience is going to sell the movie for them if they can just get them in the theater. Here's a quote from Bob Bernie.

We would get church groups or Greek groups to band together and buy out a first show. Not only did that help the actual initial grosses of the film, but we had instant ambassadors for the film coming out of the screening. They also had some unexpected help. Gary Getsman, who'd worked as a composer and music producer. I believe he co-wrote some of the music in That Thing You Do, Lizzie, had helped put together this, quote,

Dog and Pony Show around America. He got Nia on local radio. They handed out t-shirts, frisbees. They made a deal with Windex to donate money to a Greek foundation in Chicago. So in April of 2002, they do a limited release in 108 theaters. Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, cities with big Greek populations. It makes $600,000 its first weekend. And the reviews, Lizzie, are pretty mixed.

So the New York Times praised Nia's writing and acting. They said she was very natural, but criticized Zwick's pedestrian direction and the performances of both Kazan and Constantine. they pointed out exactly what you did, is that they felt that a lot of the characters were too broad for the material. The LA Times said that it would, quote, make passable television eventually.

But I think Roger Ebert is the one who nailed what audiences would feel. He gave it three out of four stars, and he said five minutes into the film, I relaxed, knowing it was set in the real world, not in the Hollywood alternative universe where Julia Roberts can't get a date. Yeah.

This movie is warm-hearted in the way a movie can be when it knows its people inside out. audiences were aligned. They expand to 150 theaters, then 250 theaters, and the box office receipts keep growing. 800,000, 1.2 million, 1.6 million. By mid-July, my Big Fat Creek Wedding, which was made for $5 million, and the biggest actor involved is John Corbett, is on 500 screens and is approaching $30 million at the box office. That would have been fantastic. And then it released wide. According to Bernie, once the movie hit 1,000 screens in August, it stayed there for most of the remainder of its nearly one-year run.

They had to record a voicemail message, specifically for theater owners who were calling for more prints, telling them to call back next week. But they never expanded too wide. He has another great quote where he talks about how they decided, even when they were starting to succeed, they would never allow themselves to get out ahead of their skis. They always wanted to keep the demand in check with the supply. So the box office receipts peak over Labor Day weekend in 2002. It brought in $15 million that week alone, 20 weeks into its run, second only to signs and beating out Triple X with Vin Diesel, which had been in theaters for 16 fewer weeks than my Big Fat Greek wedding.

Now, I didn't see my Big Fat Greek wedding until December of 2002, and then we saw it twice in theaters. At this point, it had been nominated for two Golden Globes. Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and Best Actress, Motion Picture, Musical, or Comedy for Neo Vardalos. Lizzie, do you know what film beat it in both categories? Oh, Chicago? Yes, very good. That's tough competition.

It is, I know. Chicago's great. Godspeed to my Big Fat Creek wedding. I think well-deserved Chicago. Yeah. Now, Neo was nominated at the 2003 Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay. She lost to Pedro Almodovar for Talk to Her. Oh.

The awards were held on March 23rd, 2003, and my Big Fat Greek Wedding was still playing in 36 theaters. I would like to read you, Lizzie, a list of the top 10 highest-grossing films of 2002. Great. In order. The Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,

Spider-Man, Star Wars Episode 2, Attack of the Clones, Men in Black 2, die another day, signs, Ice Age, My Big Fat Creek Wedding,

Minority Report. Wow. The next lowest-budgeted film on that list cost over $70 million to make. Was it signs? It was signs. Yeah.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding ended its run with a global hall north of $350 million. Oh, my God. That guy got 3% of that. Or did he? Uh-oh. In 2003, MPH sued Vardalos, HBO, Gold Circle, and Playtone, claiming they were still owed 3% of the profits. Accounting statements apparently should.

showed that the movie had lost more than $20 million. MPH's attorney said, quote, my clients gave up practically everything to help get this picture made, and all they asked for in return was a small share of the real profits and proper credit. What they received was a big, fat Greek tragedy. They also claimed they were excluded from award ceremonies, festivals, and press releases. Well, they didn't work on it. To be fair, it seems like Nia Vardalos, Tom Hanks, and Rita Wilson

didn't have anything to do with this Hollywood accounting, because a few years later in 2007, they also sued Gold Circle, claiming that they'd underreported revenues from the film by over $100 million. Oh my God. The complaint, which alleges breach of contract and fraud, seeks unspecified monetary damages and in accounting. Plaintiffs claim the participation statements have been vague and inadequate, and their attempts to conduct an audit have been thwarted.

They dropped the suit in 2008, so we do not know if there was any fraud committed or what Hollywood math may or may not have been engaged in. Now, there was a TV show that was made, My Big Fat Greek Life, almost in conjunction with the movie. To be fair, this was basically the result of a contractual agreement that Nia had from she had taken the show to the Just For Last Festival in Montreal,

and then she agreed to turn it into a series, and then they wrote the series while she was promoting my Big Fat Greek wedding in Europe without her. And so I think one of the reasons that the show ultimately was not very well received. I like vaguely remember that, yeah. Yeah, was that it just did not have the personality that the movie did in this, because she probably wasn't as involved. Now, Joel Zwick directed two more movies, both in 2004, and then he returned to television.

Mia, of course, returned to my Big Fat Creek Wedding in 2016 with its sequel, my Big Fat Creek Wedding, 2, and then My Big Fat Creek Wedding 3 later on. Both of those films received poor reviews, although my Big Fat Creek Wedding 2, I believe it made $90 million at the box office, and the third one still made 35 or 40, which is pretty amazing. But Lizzie, the truth is, few indie films, if any, have been able to replicate the box office magic of my big fat Greek wedding. A couple examples I was able to come up with. Little Miss Sunshine took its VW bug to about $101 million at the box office on a budget of eight.

Yes, although one big difference there is that that had very recognizable name actors in it. Absolutely. But still, quirky family, indie film, you know, it's got similar vibes. then you have other films that, yes, technically they're independently financed, but they have huge names involved or they're based on IP. Passion of the Christ would be an example, right? Which made an incredible amount of money, but come on, guys, it's the oldest IP in the world. No, there's older.

That's true. Please, Chris. Christopher Nolan's adapting something older anyway. Yes, he is, Daddy. Everybody's upset about the word Daddy in the trailer. Maybe something like The Intouchables out of France from 2010. I'm not sure if you saw that movie with Omar Sae, but that movie made an incredible amount of money without huge American names involved, very big French names. To me, the movie that's

come the closest in the last 10 years, Lizzie, is The Big Sick. Oh, yes. I mean, there's one that we've covered that keeps coming up as an example of a truly independent film that made an enormous amount of money with no-name actors in it. Well, Blair Witch Projects. Yeah. But that was before my Big Fat Creek wedding. Yeah. But yes, absolutely another example. The Big Sec made $56 million against a $5 million budget, to be clear. Wow. And so, you know, in concluding this episode, I think what's so interesting about my Big Fat Creek Wedding is that it represented kind of the highest moment of independent film, in my opinion, in terms of what you could accomplish on the global stage with a smart release strategy and a good, although perhaps not great movie, a very charming movie.

But then, you know, as we slowly transitioned into streaming and whatnot in a more fractured media landscape, we entered a world where I don't think it's not that this movie couldn't get made. It's just that I don't think this movie would ever happen culturally. in the way that it did in 2002. And so I think it's such an amazing time capsule for that moment, you know, for that reason and many others. And I do think it's also interesting that the movie was such a success that instead of breaking Nia out to other bigger opportunities,

it became, in a weird way, the high point. Its own kind of cage. Yeah, its own kind of cage, so to speak. I don't want to overstate that. I think she's had many opportunities since then, and she co-wrote Larry Crown with Tom Hanks, and she's had great success on Broadway, et cetera. But it's such a double-edged sword, you know,

that just the victory has a thousand fathers and the manipulations of the profits. And it's just, it's such a tricky business. Everything eventually broke right. And yet still, it's not the fairy tale ending that you think it's going to be. But that concludes our coverage of my big fat Greek wedding. So, Lizzie, I have to ask you what went right?

Well, before I answer that, I have a little bit of a question, which is, was this kind of the last, you know, when I said Blair Witch Project, you were like, well, that came before. Was this period of the early 2000s, sort of the last dying breath of what, like, a truly successful, truly independent film could be? Because when I'm thinking, yes, the big stick does come later, but like, everything else I'm thinking of is around that time. You mentioned Little Miss Sunshine, there's Napoleon Dynamite. I just wonder what happened. Because it seems like we had this

period where discovering a truly independent film and bringing it to this kind of massive blockbuster success was something that we collectively as an audience really enjoyed. And I can't think of anything in the last 10 years, really, that has achieved that. No, I mean, I think there are two things happening. You have fracturing at the top, right, which is our culture is not as monolithic as it once was in terms of dominating the attention of the public via a box office run, right? Right. We are in an age where the box office runs even of successful films are a fraction of what they were previously because we are competing with television and streaming and social media platforms. And then I think the other side is, well, why do you make an independent film? You make it as a calling card. But as we've seen, actually, there are more effective vehicles for making a calling card now, which is developing a social media following, which is making content on YouTube, which is becoming, you know, successful on TikTok. I think we just talked about Caleb Heron showing up and. the Devil Wars Prada too. Caleb Huron's a wonderful performer. He's very funny. And I know him just from appearances on video podcasts that I've been served through YouTube shorts. Caleb Heron, you know,

I believe that was one of his first mainstream acting roles. It may have been his first big one, you know, for all I know, that he was cast out. If you have someone like Kane Parsons who directed backrooms for A24, he taught himself Blender when he was 14. He made a series of creepypast of YouTube videos, and they become a web series. And now he's been moved into a, I mean, you could call it an independent film. I would call it A24, a mini-major studio. You know, so 20 years ago, Kane Parsons would have made that as an indie film

and taken it to Sundance, and now he's going to make it and put it online. So I think that part of the issue is that the pipeline is just different now. And I don't think that that's inherently bad. I think it's somewhat tragic only in that it's so fun that we all had the same touch point with my Big Factory wedding, which was so lovely. Yeah, and we had these moments of like collective discovery, kind of.

Like there was so much excitement around these types of movies and finding something that you knew was small and being part of, you know, the audience that made it hundreds of millions of dollars. And I just, we don't get that anymore. Yeah. I agree. To your point, Lizzie, it's not the last example of a movie that seems to have captured the zeitgeist despite being, you know, it's the little engine that could. Yeah. But I do think it's the last biggest example I can think of. I mean, you mentioned Napoleon Dynamite, at least for me, that really good.

captured the moment, too, and that was 2004. That was a couple of years later. So I think this era from, you know, I think once Judd Apatow's comedies kind of came into the four in the late 2000s, a lot of these smaller indie comedies were crowded out a little bit. Yeah. Also, a smaller box office for Napoleon Dynamite, but also a much smaller budget, it's worth mentioning. Maybe we'll cover it at some point. Yes. But Lizzie, what went right? What went right? I mean, God, Niavardalos, like the fact that she didn't give up, the fact that she didn't sell this to people who were saying that they were just going to rewrite it. This is a remarkable story. It shows so much perseverance and more backbone than I would ever have, I think. It is so hard to turn

down, A, the money, B, you know, the opportunity, thinking like this may be my only chance to get this thing made. And the fact that she had the power to say no that many times is amazing. I mean, that deserves so much credit. And it's such a good reminder that it is important to say no. and that that is sometimes the greatest power you have. I think that's great. You stole it from under me, but I would like to give mine. So I will give one What Weren't Righteous to the whole cast, who I really, it's also rare that you get a movie

where so many people in the ensemble just make you laugh. I mean, yes, when they're, like, casting huge names and whatnot, but this just goes to show you there's so many talented people out there who are so capable of delivering such great performances. So kudos to the entire cast and Jolzwick, the director. But I would like to specifically give mine to Rita Wilson. Yes. Good.

And one of the reasons is that, okay, I know she said that she wanted to go see this play, this one woman's show, because she had great heritage and she had not been seen theater in New York. But this actually reveals like what I think a producer, half of a producer's job is obviously getting a movie made, is truly being the midwife of this movie from script to screen. But the other half is being in the trenches, digging through gold and shit and slime and finding the diamonds in the rough. And it's the people who go to the one woman shows. It's the people who, you know, read the scripts on the weekend, who check out that weird

short film link. I think those are really the best producers out there who find the really incredible material. And then, as Hanks and Wilson, hopefully were able to participate handsomely, financially in the success of those things. But I just am impressed that she went and she said, this is great. This should be a thing. I'm going to make it a thing. You know what I'm going to put my name on it.

She never produced anything before. That's awesome. Yeah, it's great. And also, like, she could so easily have slapped her name on so many things at this point, being both who she was and also being married to Tom Hanks. Like, it would have been very easy. So I think that this is... And the sense I get is they really let it be what it was.

Well, they were, they're good at that. Yeah. And they would continue to be good at that, I think. Well, and it also, it does help that they also just made a movie about losing who you are artistically through the process of working with a big record label. It's very fortuitous in many ways. Which, by the way, this year is the 30th anniversary of that thing you do. So perhaps if you all are interested, we might cover that.

You do that thing you do. Wow, it's really hard to sing together. Steve's on. You've never aged at all. It's crazy. All right, Lizzie. Thank you so much for joining me at this big, fat Greek wedding. Please tell folks at home how they can support this podcast if they happen to be enjoying it. Listen, if you like this podcast, you can listen. Go to a Greek Orthodox church.

Tell people about it. Seriously, that would probably help. If you like this podcast, tell a friend, tell a friend at a Greek Orthodox Church, or anywhere. Just tell them that you like this show. What went wrong? You should give it a listen. You can leave us a rating on whatever podcatcher you are listening to this on.

That really does help us. You can go a step further and you can subscribe on Apple or Spotify. You will get at least one bonus episode every month, but honestly, probably more than one. That's how it's been shaping up lately because we're enjoying doing them so much. And then if you want to go even a step beyond that, By that, I mean you have to actually click off of the platform that you're listening to it on. I know it's hard.

But if you do, you can go to Patreon. And for $5, only $5, you get everything I already mentioned, bonus episodes plus an ad-free feed and a fan community that is really delightful. We love talking to all of you on Patreon. And then, if you want to just go even one step further. If you want to be Gus buying his daughter a house for her wedding, this is the equivalent. It is, by the way, my worst nightmare in terms of a wedding gift is to be... Your dad's just plot you in a little piece of land right next to his and Maine. Chip, we love you.

We love you? We need some distance. Yes, a little bit. If you would like to go one step further, for $50 a month, you can get a big fat Greek shout-out just like this. All right, for this week's shout-outs. I thought we would embrace the idea that every word comes from a Greek word. Obviously, I say all of the following in jest. We really appreciate your support.

Adrian Peng Correa from the Latin name Hadrianus, or Hadrianus, meaning from Hadria, a city in northern Italy, which would have been better if it was in Greece. Angeline Ray Cook from the Greek, Anhalos, meaning messenger and archangel, very good. Beatrix Earhart, Beatrix from the Latin name, Beatrix, meaning Voyager or Traveler, you should travel to Greece. Ben Shindleman from Hebrew, the right hand, but the wrong origin, not Greek. Blaze Ambrose, from the Greek, Blasios, no idea what it means. Brian Donahue, probably old Celtic, meaning high or noble, but not Greek. Brittany Morris, meaning from Britain, not from Greece. Brook, like a little river or a stream.

Greece has great rivers. Cameron Smith, Scottish, for bent nose. And Greece, our noses are straight. C, Grace B, from the Greek word charis, meaning grace, kindness in life. Well done. Chris Leal from the Greek. Christophoros, Christbearer. Jesus is in your soul, at least in Greece.

Daniel P. Daniel Hebrew, God is my judge. He judges you for not being Greek. David Friskalancey. Again, Hebrew, beloved, her friend, not to the Greeks. Darren and Dale Conkling, Darren from the Greek, Doron, meaning gift, but Dale, maybe from the Norse, meaning valley, I will take the gift. Don Schibel from the Latin, Donatus gifted for a non-Greek. MZodia, we love you. Couldn't figure out where that name comes from. Evan Downey could be a shortened version of Evangilos, meaning good messenger, very Greek. Let's go with that. Felicia G. Latin. Felix. Lucky. Not lucky enough to be Greek. Film it yourself. In Greece. Good tax incentive.

Frankenstein, German, but based on Prometheus. Very Greek. Galen and Miguel, the broken glass kids. Galen from Galene, meaning serene or tranquil. But Miguel from Mikhail, who is like God, not you. You are not Greek. It's Hebrew origins. Same with you. Michael McGrath. From the cast and crew of Winnet Trip to Browntown, maybe next time, Winnet Trip to Browntown. maybe next time when a trip to Greece Half Greyhound, Argus, Odysseus's faithful dog, believed to be a greyhound, very Greek.

James McAvoy, sir, you are Scottish. Jason Frankel, could be Greek, meaning healer. JJ Rapido, send us your first name. John D. Wiltshire. From the Hebrew, Johanon, God is gracious, he lets you live, even though you're not Greek. Jory Hillpiper from the Greek. Georgios, meaning farmer.

Very good. Jose Emilano Salto. del Giorgio, from the Hebrew, Yasaf, to add, need to add, a little more Greek. Karina Kanaba, from the Greek, catharos, maybe, meaning pure, pure Greek, ignore the Latin version.

Same goes for Kate Ellrington and Kathleen Olson. Amy Ogishogger-McCoy, Latin for beloved, not in Greece. Lana, L.J. from the Greek, Helena, from Helios, meaning shining one. Lousy Susan, not so lousy,

maybe, from the Greek, Susana, wait actually from the Hebrew Shoshana, meaning Lotus or Lily. Close enough. Same with you, Suzanne Johnson. Lydia Howes, from the Greek, meaning woman, from Lydia. Great place. Mark Bertha maybe traces back to the Roman god Mars, who's really just a copy of Ares. You are now Aries. Mariposes humans, lots of Latin here. In ancient Greek, it would be Psyche Anthropos, much better.

Matthew Jacobson. Matityahu. Ancient Hebrew, gift of God, maybe a gift, not Greek. Nate Ashley, Nate the Knife, Hebrew again, Natan, meaning gave, Rosemary Southward, Latin, Rosmarinous, dew of the sea. Rural juror, two words with Latin roots. Sadie, just Sadie, from the Hebrew, Sarah, wife of Abraham, not Greek. Scott Oshita, Scott, Scottish, go hang out with James McAvoy.

So Manchinani, Sanskrit, meaning moon. or in Greek would be Celine. Steve Winterbauer from the Greek, Stephanos, meaning crown. You're the king, dad, and the provost family from Provost's Latin origins. The O's may sound like O's, but they are not Greek. All right, thank you so much to our full stop supporters. I hope you enjoyed that perhaps somewhat accurate exploration of the origins of your names, which are all wonderful.

We are coming back at you next week. Lizzie, what do you have for the fine folks at home? I am so excited. We are covering Giant, which is one of James Dean's only movies, not his most famous, although I would argue one of his best performances. And it was obviously a huge movie for Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. Really, really fascinating episode. I'm very excited to dive into it. It is a long movie. I was a giant running time. It is a giant running time. So yeah, you know, maybe anticipate splitting it up over two nights or, you know, make a day of it. But it is a great. great and I think important film. So I'm excited, very excited to talk about it. And to talk about

these, particularly these two male leads who I think have loomed large across Hollywood for different reasons. So we will get into it. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening. We will see you next week with Giant. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer, post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Jesse Winterbauer and edited by Karen Krepsaw.