A simple name change would have made all the difference...

Why did the creators of the film Mona Lisa Smile, filmed at Wellesley, actually name the college in the film...Wellesley? Go figure. It caused them lots of headaches afterwards, when, rightly, many protested the portrayal as stereotypic and just plain wrong. They could have created a fictional university, just as Tom Wolfe does in I am Charlotte Simmons, and avoided all this trouble. I found it quite distracting to have an actual college portrayed in a dramatic film. Several Wellesley graduates have said to me that the film does not capture the intense intellectual atmosphere of that college, or the close mentoring by faculty.