Khouri spent the next few post-''Thelma'' years settling into life with her husband, screenwriter David Warfield (''Kill Me Again''), and scripting ''Something to Talk About,'' the 1995 Southern comedy-drama that starred Julia Roberts as a two-timed wife. Again, Khouri asked to direct. Again, she was passed over. ''Lasse Hallstrom wanted to do it, and Roberts had approval,'' Khouri says. ''He was on her list, and that was that.'' Adds ''Ya-Ya'' producer Bonnie Bruckheimer: ''I think Callie realized that her fame and her forte was writing, and that's what people wanted her to do. And I think she felt that when the time was right, she would get her directorial debut.''
But Khouri -- who says she believes in fate -- was growing impatient. Her romantic comedy ''A Simple Wedding'' was stalled in development at Columbia. She spent a year trying to adapt Sarah Bird's quirky comic novel ''Virgin of the Rodeo'' for Warner Bros., and wasn't making progress. ''I just couldn't get it, and I was completely freaking out,'' Khouri admits. When she approached Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Warner's president of worldwide theatrical production, to talk about directing ''Mr. 3000,'' a baseball comedy she had also written, he brought up ''Ya-Ya.''
''I'd done all the women relationship stuff. It was kind of like 'Don't try to palm off your project that you can't get anyone else for,''' Khouri says with a laugh. ''He kept saying, 'Cal, I can't see why you don't see how right you are for this. You're crazy.'''
''She brings a lot to the table, having grown up in a similar world,'' Bonaventura says of Khouri, who was raised, along with three siblings, in Kentucky by her mother and surgeon father. ''I knew she'd bring humor, and a sense of what strong-willed women struggle with and are vulnerable to. Because she's strong-willed. She turned ['Ya-Ya'] down two or three times. Maybe four.''
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