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Easy A

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Easy A
Olive standing in front of a green chalkboard, labels are pointing at her and she is holding up a page which explain how this is the story of how she ruined her reputation.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byWill Gluck
Written byBert V. Royal
Produced byWill Gluck
Zane Devine
StarringEmma Stone
Penn Badgley
Amanda Bynes
Thomas Haden Church
Patricia Clarkson
Cam Gigandet
Lisa Kudrow
Malcolm McDowell
Alyson Michalka
Stanley Tucci
CinematographyMichael Grady
Edited bySusan Littenberg
Music byBrad Segal
Production
companies
Distributed byScreen Gems
Release date
  • September 17, 2010 (2010-09-17)
Running time
92 minutes
CountryTemplate:Film US
LanguageEnglish
Budget$8 million[1]
Box office$74,952,305[2]

Easy A (stylized as easy A) is a 2010 teen comedy film written by Bert V. Royal, directed by Will Gluck, and starring Emma Stone.

Plot

Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) lies to her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) about going on a date in order to get out of camping with her and her hippie parents. Instead, she hangs around the house all weekend, listening to "Pocketful of Sunshine". The following Monday, pressed by Rhiannon, Olive lies about losing her virginity to a college guy. Marianne (Amanda Bynes), a girl at their school who is a zealous Christian, overhears her telling the lie and soon it spreads like wildfire.

The school has a conservative church group run by Marianne who decides Olive will be their next project. The group's harassment, disguised as concern, comes to head at an English class taught by Mr. Griffith (Thomas Haden Church). The class is reading The Scarlet Letter, a novel about adultery and shame. When one of the girls from the church group makes a snide comment to Olive suggesting Olive wear a red A as well, Olive shoots back and Mr. Griffith sends her to the principal's office. During her detention she tells her friend Brandon (Dan Byrd) the truth, and he explains how others bully him because he's gay. They confide in each other.

Brandon comes over later and asks Olive to pretend to sleep with him so that he will be accepted by everyone else at school. Brandon convinces Olive and they pretend to have sex at a party. Afterwards she bumps into Todd (Penn Badgley), whom she almost kissed years ago during seven minutes in heaven but instead agreed to lie about it when he said he was not ready.

After having a fight with Rhiannon over Olive's new identity as a "dirty skank", Olive decides to counteract the harassment by embracing her new image as the school tramp. She begins to wear more provocative clothing and stitches a red 'A' (a la Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter) to everything she wears. Boys who usually have had no luck with girls in the past begin to give her gift cards and money to say they have had sex with her in order to increase their own popularity, which in turn increases her reputation.

Olive comes to short-lived understanding with Marianne, but it is ruined when Marianne's boyfriend Micah gets chlamydia and lies that Olive gave it to him. Olive sees Mrs. Griffith, the guidance counselor and her teacher's wife, who tearfully confesses that she slept with Micah. Olive promises to take the blame to save Mrs. Griffith's job and marriage. Rhiannon, partly jealous of the attention Olive is getting, joins the church group and starts harassing her former best friend. She also spreads rumors about Olive having many STDs and Herpes.

Olive soon realizes that, though everyone thinks she is sleeping around, no one was actually attempting to sleep with her. This changes when Anson comes up to her and asks her out. The date goes sour when Olive sees Rhiannon at the restaurant and remembers she has a crush on Anson. In the parking lot, Anson attempts to pay her off; Olive asks what they will say happened but Anson thinks he will actually get sex and tries to kiss her. She resists and he drives off. Todd, who works at the restaurant, sees her and offers to drive her home.

Todd tells her that he does not believe the rumor mill, he remembers when she lied for him because he wasn't ready for his first kiss and thinks she is actually great. He says he wishes she actually was his first kiss, and not Rhi. Todd then asks for permission to kiss Olive but she says no, wanting to wait until she sorts out her life.

Olive goes to the boys that propositioned her and demands they admit that the rumors are all lies but they refuse (and Brandon even ran off, leaving behind a note telling his parents he's gay). When she goes to Mrs. Griffith to make her come clean, she refuses and implies that no one would believe Olive over her. Olive runs to Mr. Griffith and tells him the truth but immediately regrets it, realizing she just destroyed a marriage.

To get everything finally in the open, she does a song and dance number at a pep rally and pretends she will be doing a sex show via web cam with Todd. In actuality she confesses what she has done (thus setting up the movie's framing device). She also makes up with Rhi, apologizing for lying. When she is finishing up, Todd comes by riding a lawnmower, holding a boombox and tells her to come out. She closes her web cam confession saying she really likes Todd and maybe she will lose her virginity to him in the future but at the end of the day it is no one's business but her own. She leaves the house to kiss him and they ride off from the neighborhood on the lawnmower.

Cast

Development

Screenwriter Bert V. Royal claims to have written the entire screenplay, except for the last ten pages, in five days.[3]

Royal's plan was to adapt three classic works into films and to set them at the same high school, so that some characters would appear in multiple films. Besides The Scarlet Letter, which was the source material for Easy A, Royal wanted to adapt Cyrano de Bergerac and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.[3]

The song "Pocketful of Sunshine", which becomes a running joke in the film, was not in Royal's original script. He envisioned "Olive", a track from Ken Nordine's 1966 album Colors, to play during Olive's weekend montage (which introduces the song).[3]

Director Will Gluck wrote the scenes to play "Pocketful of Sunshine" by Natasha Bedingfield because his daughters used to play with a magazine advertisement for Verizon Vcast which featured the song.[citation needed]

Gluck's favorite movie is Ferris Bueller's Day Off and has multiple homages to it in the film, (Olive's shower mohawk, "never had one lesson") among many other John Hughes references.[4]

Gluck credits Stone with improvising the line about being a "Gossip Girl in the Sweet Valley of Traveling Pants".[5] According to Royal, although the word "fuck" appeared 47 times in the original draft and was written as an R-rated comedy, all occurrences were cut from the final film. However, director Will Gluck shot two versions of many scenes, both with and without the coarser language. [3] Although the film was cut down for a wider audience, the film still obtained a 15 rating in the United Kingdom.[6][citation needed]

The school used as "Ojai North High School" in the film is Nordhoff High School, located in Ojai, California.

Release

Easy A had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.[7]

Marketing

  • The website mentioned in the film, freeolive.com, will in fact lead to the official movie website LetsNotandSayWeDid.com.

Home media

Easy A was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on December 21, 2010.[8] The DVD features a gag reel, Emma Stone's audition footage, an audio commentary with director Gluck and Stone, and previews (including Burlesque, which features Cam Gigandet and Stanley Tucci, Beastly, and The Social Network). Blu-ray exclusive bonus features include: The Making of Easy A, The School of Pop Culture: Movies of the '80s, Vocabulary of Hilarity and a trivia track.

Reception

Box office

The film opened on September 17, 2010 and grossed $6,787,163 on its opening day and $17,734,040 in its opening weekend, placing second behind The Town on both figures. This was in line with expectations from Sony of an opening weekend take of around $15 million.[1] The film has grossed a total of $58,401,464 in the United States and Canada plus $16,057,768 in international markets for a worldwide total of $74,459,232.[2]

Critical response

The film has been well received by critics, with many praising Stone's performance. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 87% based on 157 reviews, with an average score of 7.1/10 and the consensus being, "It owes a huge debt to older (and better) teen comedies, but Easy A proves a smart, witty showcase for its irresistibly charming star, Emma Stone." [9] Another review aggregator, Metacritic, assigned the film a weighted average score of 72% based on 34 reviews from mainstream critics.[10]

In his review, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert awarded the film three and a half out of four stars, writing, "Easy A offers an intriguing middle ground to the absolute of sexual abstinence: Don't sleep with anybody, but say you did. It's a funny, engaging comedy that takes the familiar but underrated Emma Stone and makes her, I believe, a star."[11]

John Griffiths from Us Weekly gave the movie two and a half stars out of four, he praised Stone, stating that "With her husky voice and fiery hair, Stone is spectacular, echoing early Lindsay Lohan", but also added that "The story is thin, and the laughs meager".[12]

Awards and nominations

On December 14, 2010, Emma Stone was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her turn as Olive, in the category of Best Actress (Comedy/Musical). She competed against Annette Bening and Julianne Moore (both for The Kids Are All Right), Anne Hathaway (Love and Other Drugs), and Angelina Jolie (The Tourist). [13] Ultimately, the award went to Annette Bening.

The film was nominated for a Peoples Choice Award for "Best Movie Comedy" and a Comedy Award for "Best Comedy Film."[citation needed]

The movie won for Best Comedy at the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards.[14]

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was released on September 14, 2010, and is available on iTunes. It features appearances from The Pussycat Dolls, OneRepublic, Lenka, Natasha Bedingfield, Kardinal Official, the Dollyrots, Death Cab for Cutie and Jessie J.[15]

References

  1. ^ a b Fritz, Ben (2010-09-16). "Movie projector: 'Easy A' expected to lead 'The Town,' 'Devil,' 'Alpha and Omega'". Los Angeles Times. Tribune Company. Retrieved 2010-09-16.
  2. ^ a b "Easy A (2010)". Box Office Mojo. Amazon.com. Retrieved January 27, 2011.
  3. ^ a b c d Bert V. Royal Interview with Creative Screenwriting Magazine Podcast, Sept. 14, 2010
  4. ^ "Interview: Director Will Gluck for Easy A". ScreenCrave. 2010-10-14. Retrieved 2011-03-01. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ Jen Yamato (2010-09-18). "'Easy A' Director Will Gluck on Teen Sex and '80s Fantasy Boyfriends".
  6. ^ http://www.bbfc.co.uk/website/Classified.nsf/c2fb077ba3f9b33980256b4f002da32c/504797b879b16ddb802577f300503ef1?OpenDocument
  7. ^ Corliss, Richard (2010-09-17). "Easy A: We ♥ Emma Stone". Time.
  8. ^ "'Easy A' DVD Release Date Announced". BuzzFocus. Retrieved 2010-11-23.
  9. ^ "Easy A Film Reviews at rottentomatoes.com". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved October 15, 2010.
  10. ^ "Easy A Film Reviews at Metacritic.com". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved October 9, 2010.
  11. ^ Roger Ebert (September 15, 2010). "Review: "Easy A"". Chicago Sun-Times.
  12. ^ US Weekly - Issue 829 - Dated January 3, 2011.
  13. ^ http://www.goldenglobes.org/nominations
  14. ^ "The 16th Annual BFCA Critics' Choice Movie Awards". Retrieved 2011-01-26.
  15. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1282140/soundtrack
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