In Her Shoes (2005)

Image credit: In her Shoes: Sidney Baldwin

COLLETTE (LEFT) AND DIAZ

Author Jennifer Weiner didn't expect many Hollywood nibbles when her producer brother, Jake, started shopping around her second novel, In Her Shoes, in summer 2002. ''There aren't any car chases, nothing blows up, nobody saves the world, there's no fires,'' says Weiner. But by late summer 2003, she had news that Cameron Diaz was attached to star in a movie of Shoes as Maggie, the hard-drinking, casual-sex-addicted, learning-impaired little sister who infuriates older, more responsible Rose (About a Boy's Toni Collette). ''I swear to God, I thought I was on Punk'd, you know?'' says Weiner, stunned at her good fortune. ''I kept looking around my kitchen, like, 'Ashton? Ashton Kutcher, are you in there?'''

Shirley MacLaine, who plays a grandmother to the Diaz and Collette characters, remembers hearing very early intelligence that director Nigel Cole (Calendar Girls) might do the film. But it landed with Curtis Hanson, a specialist in quirky-relationship territory if not girl-power bonding. He worked very hard to balance his cast of characters, whose stories are heavily crosscut. ''They have to play as equals,'' he says. ''If they don't, if one is more interesting or fun or whatever, the audience is always going to be waiting to get back to that one.''