AMANDA BYNES: from sweet girl, to mean girl

Making high school life hell for good girl Olive (Emma Stone) in Columbia Pictures' new teenage comedy “Easy A” are talented young actresses Amanda Bynes (“Hairspray,” “What a Girl Wants”) and Aly Michalka (TV's “Hellcats”) who are going to surprise audiences because they’re playing characters very different from what people are accustomed to.

Michalka and Bynes, who play Rhiannon and Marianne, respectively, readily admit that the differences between their characters in “Easy A” and their past work are a big part of what drew them to their roles.

“Rhiannon is crazy,” says Aly Michalka of the character she portrays. “She’s a girl who is very aggressive and passionate about whatever she believes in, or whatever her opinion is. She is definitely very foulmouthed and will say anything that’s on her mind, which can sometimes be either offensive or abrasive, but she always means well. She just doesn’t really have any sort of a filter. But she loves her best friend Olive, and like best friends sometimes do, she loves to give her a hard time and push her buttons.”

Known primarily to younger audiences for her work on the Disney Channel sitcom Phil of the Future, Michalka enjoyed pushing the envelope with Rhiannon. “I love that she’s a strong character. She’s similar to me in that she’s a great friend, and very loyal, but we’re definitely very different in the way we speak and handle ourselves. Rhiannon also dresses a lot more provocatively than I do. She wants to get attention from people and wishes she was twenty-five, even though she’s still a teen.”

When it came to the tightly wound, evangelical Marianne, Amanda Bynes found inspiration in a character very different than the kind of young woman she typically plays. “I’m used to playing the goofy, funny girl,” says the actress, “and Marianne is the very religious, uptight girl who thinks she rules the school. A lot of her actions come across as kind of mean, evil and totally judgmental, but she thinks she’s coming from a good place, because she claims to be doing the work of God.”

Bynes says that although Marianne’s actions are kind of questionable, there was still something likeable and relatable about her. “Everybody has met that girl who is a ‘type A’ personality, and just wants to be right, be better than everyone and always wants to one-up everyone,” says Bynes. “She’s a fun character to play.”

In directing the actresses, Will Gluck found it easy to forget his talented cast weren’t simply wonderful actors, but stars to the world outside a film set. “We got a good reminder when we were shooting on the street and there over 100 kids mobbing Emma, Aly and Amanda, trying to take their pictures and get autographs,” recalls Gluck. “They’ve established themselves so well in their characters that you sometimes forget they have such a big following.”

Opening across the Philippines on Nov. 10, “Easy A” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

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EMMA STONE is dangerous beauty

With her striking beauty and sincere talent, Emma Stone (“Superbad,” “Zombieland”) is claiming her role as one of Hollywood’s most sought out actresses. She has just been cast as Gwen Stacy in the “Spider-Man” reboot in 2012. And now, she’s starring in one of the year’s smartest and coolest teen comedies – Columbia Pictures’ “Easy A.”

In the film, clean-cut high schooler Olive (Stone) finds that her new-found bad-girl rap – courtesy of a little white lie about losing her virginity – has an upside: she is finally getting noticed. Olive decides to exploit her "easy" reputation and use the school rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing. But life starts to spin hilariously out of control, and there is only one boy, Todd (Penn Badgley), who sees through her vixen veneer to the heart of it.

On paper, Olive was a dynamite part: intelligent, funny, observant, surprisingly tough and heartbreakingly vulnerable. The big question for the filmmakers, then, was who could make this vital role come alive on screen. The success of the project depended on the perfect casting for Olive.

“Olive is an extremely smart girl,” explains director Will Gluck, “but she doesn’t annoy you with her smartness. A lot of people and characters that are really smart who know everything and talk like adults are so annoying that you want to punch them in the face. This is a girl who is smart like a whip, but doesn’t know she’s smart, and if anything, she’s embarrassed by the fact that she’s smart. You feel for this girl so much, because she’s trying to figure out who she is.”

Naturally, Gluck and the producers had no shortage of actresses who were eager to take on such a well-written role. “Everyone wanted to play the part,” the director recalls. “I got calls from what seemed like every actress between the ages of 16 and 28. As soon as I heard that Emma Stone wanted to do it, I was very excited. We met really quickly, and she had no problem auditioning for me. A lot of this movie takes place with Olive speaking into her computer’s web cam. After her audition, Emma went home, did a scene into her webcam and emailed it to me. I took the disc with that scene to the head of the studio and said ‘This is the girl.’ She was by far, always my first choice.”

Stone says she had been sent the script by a friend before it had been bought by anyone, and when she read it, she knew she had to do it.

“I instantly related to the character,” recalls Stone. “Olive uses all these big words and makes silly puns, and she’s well aware that what she’s doing is kind of dumb, but she can’t stop herself from doing it. I do the same thing. There were so many things that made me feel a kinship with the character, that I felt that whether or not it was me, she deserved whoever it was that played her be willing to understand her. I think it would be easy to go very goofy with her, or read her the wrong way, and I was afraid that if it was the wrong actor, they wouldn’t be true to this amazing character.”

In her first meeting with Will Gluck, Stone found that the two of them were very much in synch about the character. “Will told me he wasn’t looking for someone to become Olive,” explains Stone. “He was looking for someone that was Olive, because Olive becomes whoever is playing her. I understood that there was no becoming this girl. You either were or weren’t Olive. I’m so thankful that they gave me the chance.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Easy A” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

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a cinematic challenge for PENN BADGLEY in EASY A

Best known for his role of Dan Humphrey in the hit series “Gossip Girl,” Penn Badgley was more than happy to take on a new character challenge with his role in Columbia Pictures' new, edgy comedy, “Easy A.” Playing the part of ‘Woodchuck Todd’ was so tempting, he arranged to fly between the west and east coasts of America to accommodate the shooting schedules for both the film and his series.

In “Easy A,” clean-cut high schooler Olive (Emma Stone) finds that her new-found bad-girl rap – courtesy of a little white lie about losing her virginity – has an upside: she is finally getting noticed. Olive decides to exploit her "easy" reputation and use the school rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing. But life starts to spin hilariously out of control, and there is only one boy, Todd (Badgley), who sees through her vixen veneer to the heart of it.

Laying out the role’s particular appeal to Badgley, director Will Gluck explains, “The first time we meet Penn, his face and body are all painted blue. The second and third time you meet him, he’s in a woodchuck costume. The sixth time you meet him, he’s wearing a lobster hat. It’s not what you expect from Penn Badgley.”

“It really does run the gamut,” agrees Badgley, “and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to play the part. Ideally, for most of the film, you don’t really know what my character is doing in the movie, but it all makes perfect sense at the end. I had a lot of fun being the strange, irreverent guy who does these seemingly inconsequential things throughout the movie, but what made me really want to play the role, was the substance and importance of the character. It’s not necessarily a complicated role, but it’s one that could be easily misconstrued and played inappropriately if taken in the wrong direction.”

Adds Gluck, “There are certain guys in high school that can be the mascot, can hang out with the athletes, can hang out with the nerds. Todd is the kind of guy who straddles all those different subsets of high school and kind of skates through.”

“Yeah, he just does it,” agrees Badgley. “But I think it’s more than just being an agreeable sort of character. He’s like ‘I’m a teenager, I’m living in Ojai, I’m just waiting to go to college and for my life to begin.’ I think that’s the way he feels, and he’s having fun while he does it. If everyone else thinks he looks like an idiot for doing what he does, it doesn’t matter. Even though everything I’m doing as the character is theoretically really dumb and humiliating, hopefully I’m doing it with enough dignity that makes it sort of cool.”

Speaking of humiliation, in the pivotal finale scene, Badgley found himself back in blue paint, and in the woodchuck costume at the same time, and eventually, shirtless. “It’s already sort of a miserable feeling having the body paint on that’s clogging your pores and feels claustrophobic, and then to have the woodchuck costume on top of that,” says the actor. “I was shirtless in the scene, so the seams were rubbing against the skin. It was really hot in the costume, and production had to turn the air conditioning off for the scene. There was a lot of sweating, and in each take I’d have to run around, throw things into the crowd, yell and scream, have the costume ripped off, and then pick Emma up and join in the dance. It was a long, arduous process.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Easy A” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Find us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

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EASY A speaks of teen life

On the heels of a little white lie about losing her virginity, clean-cut high schooler Olive finds that her new-found bad-girl rap has an upside: she is finally getting noticed. Olive decides to exploit her "easy" reputation and use the school rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing. But life starts to spin hilariously out of control, in Columbia Pictures' teen comedy “Easy A.”

The film stars Emma Stone (recently cast as Gwen Stacy in the “Spider-Man” 2012 reboot) as Olive, Penn Badgley (TV’s “Gossip Girl”), Amanda Bynes (“What a Girl Wants”), Cam Gigandet (“Twilight”) and Aly Michalka (TV’s “Hellcats”).

The world of “Easy A” first arose out of a concept screenwriter Bert Royal had to fuse a timeless work of literature with a contemporary milieu. Royal chose Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” -- about the public ordeal a 17th century Boston woman named Hester Prynne goes through over an act of adultery -- as the classic source. “I never intended it to be a strict adaptation of the book,” says Royal, “but to use thematic elements as an inspiration.”

“The major theme of the piece,” continues the writer, “is about puritanical values versus being yourself. Olive is an extremely liberal person and feels like people should be true to themselves, but unfortunately she’s growing up in a society that condemns people for stepping out of the norm. Her goal is to loosen up the town a little bit, which she does, but not in the way she intended.”

Producer Zanne Devine says, “Using `The Scarlet Letter' as source material, and his understanding of the deeper themes, Bert wrote a screenplay that was wonderfully suited to modern day high school, and demonstrates in a funny and meaningful way that these themes are as relevant today as they have been for centuries.”

“Although the story takes place in high school, it goes way beyond that,” says director Will Gluck. “It’s really about morality, how rumors get started, and about the importance people attach to how they are perceived by others. It very quickly leaves high school and becomes a story about the entire town. It’s also a very funny movie with some very touching emotionally dramatic moments. It’s far from being just a high school movie.”

Gluck also responded to the female-centric nature of the screenplay. “It was great to see a script that’s written from the girl’s point of view,” adds Gluck. “Most films are about the lengths that the guys go through to get the girl. This is about a girl that doesn’t want to be ‘gotten,’ but still wants a boyfriend.”

For Gluck, the fact that this was a movie about the hot-button topic of sex, but with no actual sex scenes, made the experience uniquely fun. “In a weird way, it’s kind of conservative,” admits Gluck. “The lesson of this story is to wait, but sometimes you’ve got to take a crazy path to get to that answer. It’s interesting how sexuality in America has become about what people think about it, and less about the actual act. This movie gets rid of the act, as there is no act whatsoever, and is about how people talk about it, and how you feel about yourself if you’re perceived in that way.”

“The morality of this movie is actually a morality I think would be great for my eleven year-old daughter to understand,” says Devine, “which is a girl’s empowerment about making decisions about her sexual behavior, and her choices about how her level of intimacy she’s comfortable with in her life. Olive spends a lot of the movie reacting to what other people are projecting on her, not what really happened, and that morality is well within a PG-13 (US) mindset, because the moral of the story and the ultimate lesson of the movie is one I think that any parent of a young girl or boy would want them to take away.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Easy A” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

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sneak peek: EASY A

In Columbia Pictures’ new critically acclaimed comedy “Easy A,” Olive Penderghast was a typical American high school girl, until she decided to be, well, A-typical.

“Easy A” stars Emma Stone (recently cast as Gwen Stacy in the “Spider-Man” 2012 reboot) as Olive, Penn Badgley (TV’s “Gossip Girl”), Amanda Bynes (“What a Girl Wants”), Cam Gigandet (“Twilight”) and Aly Michalka (TV’s “Hellcats”). The film is directed by Will Gluck (“Fired Up”) from a screenplay by Bert V. Royal.

What’s your average, everyday girl to do when her popular, detail-seeking best friend Rhiannon (Michalka) wants the lowdown on Olive’s weekend, and the boring reality is nothing to brag about? Can’t a non-entity, a perceived zero, an anonymous girl like Olive tell a little white lie if it gives her just a tiny taste of that magical prize sought by every teenager: popularity?

Some status updates, however, just cannot be contained, especially when Marianne (Bynes), Ojai High School’s very own Tammy Faye Bakker, overhears Olive’s words. Soon, rumors of Olive’s promiscuity are being greatly exaggerated.

Within minutes, the student body is all a-twitter, linked-in and face-booked over Olive’s supposed indiscretions. While it’s not necessarily the kind of notoriety Olive was looking for, becoming the center of attention proves to be tantalizingly addictive, so much so that Olive decides not to deny the rumors. In fact, she embraces them, further playing the part by sporting a sexy new look and biting new attitude. After all, she knows the real truth, and her non-judgmental parents (Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson) trust her. So she’s not really hurting anyone, is she?

Sure, her favorite English teacher Mr. Griffith (Thomas Haden Church) feels the need to express his well-meaning concern, while his wife, the school guidance counselor (Lisa Kudrow), offers her own brand of advice and protection. But the spotlight feels pretty good to Olive, who even devises a creative use of her newfound reputation to help some of her status-challenged fellow students, including fellow peer pressure victim Brandon (Dan Byrd).

As her story continues to mutate and take on a life of its own, Olive can’t help but begin to identify with the notorious plight of the classic literary character Hester Prynne from “The Scarlet Letter,” the book she just happens to be studying in Mr. Griffith’s class.

But when Olive begins losing control of the raging rumors, she finds it’s not all that easy to put out a wildfire. Unless she’s able to clear things up, other people’s lives are going to suffer greatly as a consequence.

“Easy” does it, Olive.


Opening soon across the Philippines, “Easy A” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Find us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

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