The House Bunny 2008

"27 are 59 in bunny years"

- that's too old for Playboy Mansion. Bunny Shelley (starring Anna Faris) leaves the house of parties and fun to find another home. She finds it in the house of university girls and teaches them as "The House Bunny" about the opposite sex ... Can you guess who learns the most?

Video: Official trailer "The House Bunny" (2008) directed by Fred Wolf, written by Karen McCullah Lutz & Kirsten Smith, starring Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, Emma Stone ...; costume design by Mona May.

The Screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith have experience with creating polarising women's roles; they have written the hit movie "Legally Blonde".

“She teaches the girls how to be cool and cute and popular – that’s definitely true – but for Shelley, it’s all about self-confidence,” McCullah Lutz continues “Shelley defined herself as a Bunny and thought that was all she was capable of. She only defined herself in terms of her value as an object for male eyes. But then she learns she has more inherent talents and a bigger purpose in life than just being a Bunny.

Costume Designer Mona May
Mona May previously designed costumes for films like "Clueless" and "Enchanted": “I’m a colorist. I work with color and it’s very important in my work. I was working very closely with the production designer Missy to make sure that everything goes together. What happens in a movie like this when you have so many girls, you have to worry who’s wearing what. What color are they wearing? Are they going to go together in the clothing that they’re wearing? You only have so many colors in the color wheel. So if there’s already pink and yellow and blue, you want to make sure nobody’s wearing the same color and the patterns are not clashing.”

Mona May set out to define each character and each character’s transition. “The wardrobe very much supports that transformation. With Fred we worked very closely to make sure the character stays true to the whole film even as they’re transforming from one look to another. The punk girl always stays punk. The hippie girl always stays hippie.”

With eight leading characters, the volume of clothing, shoes and accessories alone was head-spinning, requiring two wardrobe trailers. “It was really fun to work with that many girls. I think that each one of the Zetas has about 30 changes. Anna had about 50 changes. So it’s about 300 changes that I dealt with on this show. Fantastic craziness. Fred stayed away from our trailer,” the costume designer winks.

The transformation of Shelley

“Shelley likes to wear heels,” says actress Anna Faris, “Some of the shoes are around 7 or 8 inches high. In fact, there was one scene I couldn’t wear my high heels and it threw me for a loop -- I was totally unnerved. I felt like I couldn’t play Shelley properly.”

House Bunny Shelley transforms during the movie. “You really are starting as this very cartoon-y character,” designer Mona May says of Shelley. “We specifically made the clothes very cartoon-y with bubblegum colors, plastic jewelry, big hair and it’s all about pink and bright blue and shiny objects pointing to your breasts. As she goes through this transformation, we strip the bling off of her and start covering her up a little bit more.”

For many of the other girls getting into character was, “All about bras and bra pads,” jokes designer May. “I’ve never been on a show where I’ve had so many bras.”

Check out release dates thehousebunny.com

More about Mona May The costume designer was nominated by the Costume Designers Guild for her work for "Enchanted" (2007), starring Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey. Her filmography on www.imdb.com/name/nm0562082/ starts in 1989; Mona May has designed for movies such as the thriller "8mm" starring Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix and James Gandolfini; the teen comedy "Clueless", ...

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fig.: The House Bunny (Anna Faris) and her students. © 2008 Sony Pictures Releasing GmbH.