 Producer Stokley Chaffin was the one who developed the movies  concept and brought it to screenwriter C. Jay Cox to write. Chaffin,  now the Senior Vice President of Productions at New Line Cinema, was  raised in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and like Reese Witherspoons  character, she changed her name after she left the South (during her  childhood, her friends and family called her by her first name,  Caroline; Stokley is her middle name). Chaffin insisted that Cox  visit Alabama before writing the screenplay.