Story of movie Easy A :
Easy A (stylized as easy A) is a 2010 American teen comedy film directed by Will Gluck, written by Bert V. Royal and starring Emma Stone, Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson, Thomas Haden Church, Dan Byrd, Amanda Bynes (in her last film before acting hiatus), Penn Badgley, Cam Gigandet, Lisa Kudrow, and Aly Michalka. The screenplay was partially inspired by the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
| Easy A | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Will Gluck |
| Produced by |
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| Written by | Bert V. Royal |
| Starring |
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| Music by | Brad Segal |
| Cinematography | Michael Grady |
| Edited by | Susan Littenberg |
Production company | Olive Bridge Entertainment |
| Distributed by | Screen Gems |
Release date |
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Running time | 92 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $8 million |
| Box office | $75 million |
Shot at Screen Gems studios and in Ojai, California, the film was released on September 17, 2010, received positive reviews with major praise drawn towards Stone's performance and was a major financial success, grossing $75 million worldwide, against an $8 million budget.
Screenplay
The story is narrated by Olive Penderghast, a 17-year-old girl living in Ojai, California, speaking into her webcam.
Olive lies to her best friend Rhiannon Abernathy about going on a date in order to get out of camping with Rhiannon's hippie parents. Instead, she hangs around the house all weekend listening to Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocketful of Sunshine", which is played by a musical greeting card from her grandmother. The following Monday, pressed by Rhiannon, Olive lies about losing her virginity to a college guy. Marianne Bryant, a girl with a devout Christian faith whom Olive considers to be prissy, overhears her telling the lie and soon it spreads like wildfire. The school's church group run by Marianne decides Olive will be their next project. Olive confides the truth to her friend Brandon, and he understands because others bully him because of his homosexuality. He later asks Olive to pretend to sleep with him so that he will be accepted by everyone as a "straight stud".
Olive agrees to help him and they pretend to have sex at a party. After a fight with Rhiannon over her 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, inspired by The Scarlet Letter (which her literature class is currently studying), stitches a red "A" onto everything. Boys who usually have had no luck with girls in the past now beg Olive to increase their popularity by saying they have had sex with her, in exchange for gift cards to various stores. This in turn increases her reputation. Things get worse when Micah, Marianne's boyfriend who has had to repeat several grades, contracts chlamydia from sleeping with Mrs. Griffith, the school guidance counsellor, and blames it all on Olive. As Mr. Griffith is her favorite teacher, Olive agrees to the lie to spare his marriage.
Marianne's friends from the church youth group, which now includes Rhiannon, begin harassing Olive in order to get her to leave school. After an ill-fated date with Anson, a boy who wants to pay her to actually sleep with him and not just pretend she did, Olive reconnects with Todd, her old love interest, who is also the school's mascot. Todd tells her that he does not believe the rumors because he remembers when she lied for him when he was not ready for his first kiss years ago.
Olive now has a change of heart and begins to ask everyone she lied for to help her out by telling the truth, but Brandon and Micah have abruptly left town, and with their newfound popularity, no one else wants to tell. When Mrs. Griffith also refuses to tell the truth, Olive threatens to expose her affair, but Mrs. Griffith says no one would believe her. Out of spite, Olive then immediately tells Mr. Griffith, who believes her and separates from his wife.
After a friendly talk with her open-minded mother Rosemary, Olive comes up with a plan to finally get everything out in the open. She does a song-and-dance number at a school pep rally to get people's attention to watch her via webcast—the film. The various boys whose reputations Olive helped improve are watching; Olive texts Rhiannon, apologizing for lying to her. As she is finishing up her webcast, Todd comes by on a riding mower, serenades her by playing a recording of "Don't You (Forget About Me)", and asks her to come outside. She signs off by saying that she may lose her virginity to Todd sooner or later, but proudly declaring that "it's nobody's goddamn business". She goes outside to meet him, they kiss, and the two are shown riding off on the lawnmower.
- Emma Stone as Olive Penderghast
- Juliette Goglia as young Olive
- Penn Badgley as "Woodchuck" Todd
- Braeden Lemasters as young Todd
- Amanda Bynes as Marianne Bryant
- Dan Byrd as Brandon
- Aly Michalka as Rhiannon Abernathy
- Thomas Haden Church as Mr. Griffith
- Lisa Kudrow as Mrs. Griffith
- Patricia Clarkson as Rosemary Penderghast
- Stanley Tucci as Dill Penderghast
- Cam Gigandet as Micah
- Malcolm McDowell as Principal Gibbons
- Mahaley Manning as Nina Howell
- Jake Sandvig as Anson
- Bryce Clyde Jenkins as Chip Penderghast
- Johanna Braddy as Melody Bostic
- Fred Armisen as Pastor Bryant
- Stacey Travis as Mrs. Bryant
- Max Crumm as Pontius
- Lalaine as Gossip Girl
Development
Screenwriter Bert V. Royal claims to have written the entire screenplay, except for the last ten pages, in five days. 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. Natasha Bedingfield's 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). Gluck's favorite film 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. According to Royal, although the word "fuck" appeared 47 times in the original draft, which 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. Although the film was cut down for a wider audience, the film still obtained a 15 rating in the United Kingdom.
Filming
Gluck credits Stone with improvising the line about being a "Gossip Girl in the Sweet Valley of Traveling Pants". The entire film was shot in Ojai, California, using Panavision's Genesis and later filmized. Not a single film set was used; even the houses in the film belong to Ojai residents. The school used as "Ojai North High School" in the film is Nordhoff High School, and the end credits are filmed on Fordyce Road, both located in Ojai, California.
The soundtrack was released by Madison Gate Records on September 14, 2010, and is available via iTunes. It features tracks from Jessie J, Lenka, Natasha Bedingfield, Kardinal Offishall, and Cary Brothers. Other songs in the film but not on the soundtrack album are from OneRepublic, The Dollyrots, Death Cab for Cutie, and The Pussycat Dolls.
| Easy A (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | |
|---|---|
| Soundtrack album by Various Artists | |
| Released | September 14, 2010 |
| Genre | Pop, hip hop, rock, punk rock, new wave |
| Label | Madison Gate Records |
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