Talk:Mona Lisa Smile

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Location

Mona Lisa Smile tells the story of a feminist teacher ("Katherine Watson"), who, after graduating from the fictional "Oakland State" University (thought to be a fictionalized University of California, Berkeley), leaves her boyfriend behind in Los Angeles, California in 1953, to teach at Wellesley College, a women's college in the Eastern coast of the United States. The movie portrays Wellesley in the 1950s as being conservative.

Didn't the loosely-based novelization afterwards actually name the school as Berkeley? Mike H. That's hot 22:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe so, but this article is about the movie. It's fine if you want to add in a section about the novelization, but if details of the novelization differ from the movie, then those are details about the novelization, not about the movie. Catamorphism 00:29, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if this kinda thing should be/ is included in other such movie articles, but it was filmed in Glen Ridge, New Jersey ( where Tom Cruise started acting as a teen). Also i have a theory that most of the money made by the movie was from the girls at the highschool who got autographs and such, and the people whose blocks it was shot on.

Title

Isn't "Mona Lisa Smile" a chapter heading in the Motorcycle Diaries of Ernesto Guevara? Is it coincidental? Matthew Platts 16:05, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Box office performance

Costs (approximate):
- Production: $65,000,000
- Marketing: $25,000,000
Income:
- United States: $63,860,942
- Worldwide (excluding U.S.): $76,972,150
Loss: $33,666,763 (approx.)

How exactly does the loss figure? If the reported loss is correct, then there must be unmentioned factors involved. If so, these figures should be presented differently because currently it looks wrong given the intuitive understanding that (loss/profit = income minus cost.)

Agreed. I know that they practice "creative accountancy" in Hollywood, but the figures shown indicate a profit of $50,833,092. B00P 09:49, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Diversity

The current version of the article says that there were (about) 3 Asian students enrolled in 1953, and 12 African-American students, but later says that

[the movie did not] accurately reflect racial diversity of 1953.

I don't quite understand that. Is a college with 12 African-American students "racially diverse"? Or was that considered to be "racially diverse" in 1953? According to the 2003 press release, 99% of the student population in 1953 was "white/caucasian".

The article also says that "[the movie] significantly underrepresented African-Americans". According to the press release mentioned above, the African-American student population in 1953 was 12 out of 1685, or 0.7%. About 200 extras were Wellesley students (according to the press release); one of them (according to our article; I assume she was a student too) was African-American, that is about 0.5%. This is about as close as you can get to proportional representation; if 2 extras had been African-American, that would have been already 1%. --The very model of a minor general 22:07, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]