Filming of 'One for the Money' brings out onlookers, happily displaced homeowners

Debbie Reynolds, her trademark blond hair tucked under a gray wig and a long maroon scarf looped around her neck, waved at the folks on South Pacific Avenue watching Janet Evanovich's book "One for the Money" come to life.

Stray onlookers also saw both Katherine Heigl and her stand-in -- in matching short-sleeve T-shirts, jeans, sneakers and dark ponytails -- enter or exit a house in Friendship.

The former "Grey's Anatomy" star portrays Stephanie Plum, a lingerie buyer who loses her job and improbably finds herself working for her sleazy cousin's bail bonding company.

She's half-Italian and half-Hungarian and hails from Trenton, N.J., being played by such locations as Friendship-Bloomfield, the North Side, Braddock, Wilkinsburg, Shadyside, Mc Kees Rocks, Ambridge in Beaver County and Kittanning, Armstrong County.

"I have an 87-year-old uncle who was a bomber pilot in World War II and I'm telling him about this movie being filmed in our house and he said, 'I read that book,' " Mr. Pizzuto said with a laugh.
So have millions of others. If all goes as planned, the movie being directed by Julie Anne Robinson ("The Last Song," some "Grey's Anatomy" episodes) will arrive in theaters in July with a PG-13 rating.
In addition to Ms. Heigl, it stars Jason O'Mara as irresistible vice cop Joe Morelli; Daniel Sunjata as Ranger, sexy bounty hunter extraordinaire; John Leguizamo as a boxing manager; Debra Monk and Louis Mustillo as Stephanie's blue-collar parents; and Ms. Reynolds as spry, eccentric Grandma Mazur.

Casting questions

Producer Wendy Finerman read "One for the Money" in galley form and optioned the novel before it was published in 1994. She was sold on Stephanie as an "everygirl, a hometown girl."
The project went through various incarnations and rumored actresses before going into production with Ms. Heigl and an adapted screenplay by "Nurse Jackie" executive producer-writer Liz Brixius. Why so long?
" 'Forrest Gump' took 10, 11 years," said Ms. Finerman, who shared the Oscar for best picture for the Tom Hanks movie. "Some of them take many years, some of them don't. ...
"One of the things with this was just finding the right tone in the script and the right actor to play it and also, at times, different kinds of movies come in and out of fashion," with women-driven pictures a bit more challenging, to say the least.
Some fans of the series have criticized the choice of Ms. Heigl but, with dark curly hair, she looks very unlike TV's Dr. Izzie Stevens or the romantically challenged heroines of "Knocked Up," "27 Dresses" or "The Ugly Truth."

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