Production
Tennessee Williams wrote The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond in 1957; at that time, director Elia Kazan (who previously worked with Williams on A Streetcar Named Desire and Baby Doll) was attached to the project, reuniting with Williams for a third time. Kazan, however, went to work on other projects.
Jodie Markell recalled how she first became aware of the script: "I had been interested in Tennessee Williams since I was a teenager. I'd read a lot of his work, everything I could find. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and it really spoke to me. When I was in acting school one of my teachers showed me a collection of his screenplays, and when I read The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond I couldn't believe it had never been made. I really related to the character, Fisher Willow – mostly in her struggle to be heard in a society that keeps those who are more sensitive, more perceptive, more artistic, more romantic, witty – those people, he had an affinity for. He makes us understand them, he makes us see their vulnerabilities."
Markell then sought out the rights to do the film from Williams' estate. She was fairly young, and at the time the estate was extremely tight and not giving the rights to a lot of Williams' work. Markell said, "In time things changed, and the people who were in control of the rights changed, and we kept approaching them every few years with producer Brad Gilbert, who was really great and obtained the rights eventually. Together, we sought out the actors we wanted and the project started to come alive and the financing came together."
In November 2006, it was announced that Lindsay Lohan was going to play the lead role, but in March 2007, Bryce Dallas Howard was under negotiations for Lohan's role and went on to be cast. However, Markell later stated that the casting of Lohan never happened; that the reported announcement was an error by the press. Howard was her first choice, and later went on to be cast. Shooting for the film began on August 13, 2007 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
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“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
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