Photo Flash: Rubicon Theatre Company's MOONLIGHT AND MAGNOLIAS

Rubicon Theatre Company presents Moonlight and Magnolias, the hilarious fly on the wall comedy by Ron Hutchinson about how the most iconic film in Hollywood history almost didn't get made. Directed by Stephanie A. Coltrin, this production features the same principal cast members from her critically acclaimed staging of Moonlight and Magnolias at Hermosa Beach Playhouse in 2010. Just in time for the 80th anniversary of Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "Gone With the Wind," Rubicon brings this wildly funny, behind-the-scenes farce to Ventura. The show runs through September 18.

Three weeks into filming "Gone With the Wind"-Atlanta has burned, Scarlett O'Hara has been cast, but there's no workable script and the director has been fired. Legendary film producer David O. Selznick seemingly has the biggest white elephant in Hollywood on his hands and only five days to save the troubled production from certain failure. Desperate, he brings in the formidable Victor Fleming to take over as director and famed screenwriter Ben Hecht to rewrite the lackluster script. The only problem is that Hecht hasn't read the book, and the clock is ticking. With the shades drawn, phone calls unanswered, and subsisting only on a diet of peanuts and bananas, Selznick and Fleming reenact scenes from the novel for Hecht to adapt into a screenplay that would become an epic Academy Award-winning film.

Photo Credit: Jeanne Tanner

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