Video:Easy A Interviews: Director Will Gluck, Writer Bert V Royal

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Transcript:Easy A Interviews: Director Will Gluck, Writer Bert V Royal

Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the LA Premiere of Screen Gems' Easy A.

Easy A Director Will Gluck

Will Gluck: "I have a certain style. I keep yelling, 'This is how people speak.' I completely write stuff on the set, write it so that people speak that way. So I constantly change it, constantly, constantly and shoot it over and over and over until I get what I want. I do not want to do a high school movie. I wanted to do a movie that happened to take place in high school with the way people speak. Granted, I put the jokes in there, but it's a way that you wish you spoke as opposed to, 'Like,' and that. And Emma [Stone] never swears in this movie. Not once. I was very certain about making sure that that's how people should speak, not high school."

It is set in high school, but this is not just a teen movie. I'm certainly not a teen.

Will Gluck: "She's not. She's college - she's a freshman. No, it's a movie about reputation. And what's interesting about this movie is that the international press are going kind of bananas for this movie, and I thought it was just an American movie. But they pointed it out to me that it's a movie about reputation. Sexuality is a very American thing. We're the only puritanical society left in the world, but you take that out and put something else in...this movie's about reputation, how we all live our lives worrying about what other people think about us. Look at the cameras, all we care about is how other people think about us and that's what this movie's about. If people stopped thinking about what people think about each other and live their life, it would be much easier. It's very hard to do and in high school it's like a thousand times more concentrated, that's why we tried to put it in high school, but it's about reputation."

And Emma is phenomenal in this movie.

Will Gluck: "A star, a gigantic star. You're not going to be able to...you can't even get near her in a week. She's fantastic. She's the best actress in the world."

Did you know that? She's got so much dialogue to do.

Will Gluck: "I knew it. When I started meeting with her and when I started hanging out and rehearsing with her, oh my god this girl can do anything. And you know? The way I auditioned actresses, I made them audition and then go home to their house and email me any scene from their webcam on their computer, because this whole movie is this girl's face in the computer. She emailed me within four hours what turned out to be the confessional scene, and no hiding, no makeup, just like this, and I walked right over to the studio, 'This is the girl.' And they were like, 'Oh yeah.'"

Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as the parents. How did you get them?

Will Gluck: "Begging, borrowing and stealing. Meeting with them, writing stuff for them. And I subsequently have fallen in love with them. Patricia Clarkson is in the movie I'm shooting right now."

Friends with Benefits.

Will Gluck: "Right, as with Emma. They're great. We had such a great time and they knew each other before so they played a great couple together."

Is this like your gang that you're collecting now?

Will Gluck: "Yeah, I'm a little snowball through Hollywood until they get sick of me."

How is Friends with Benefits going?

Will Gluck: "It's good. We shot this morning and today. It's going great. We're at 10 weeks in and we have three weeks left."

Easy A Writer Bert V Royal

How easy is it for you to get into the mind of a teenage girl?

Bert V Royal: "Way too easy. Gay men and teenage girls, we're like this. It was way too easy."

Was she just the most fun character to write?

Bert V Royal: "Absolutely. I mean everyone makes fun of me. Sometimes I think I forgot that she was fictitious. I mean, I would have her as a best friend, definitely."

The movie doesn't only reference John Hughes films, it is like a John Hughes film. Were you going for that vibe in the first place?

Bert V Royal: "I think part of it. Yeah, absolutely. You know, the '80s teen comedies were beautiful, and not just John Hughes. I mean he was the king of them, but Can't Buy Me Love was so amazing and Say Anything. There's a lot of them to draw from."

With Emma Stone, was she someone you pictured in your mind when you were writing the character? Were you familiar with her at all?

Bert V Royal: "Absolutely. I joke with her, I was the biggest Drive fan. Her TV show, Drive, still to this day the best TV show ever created. When they called me and told me that she was interested, I freaked out. I jumped up in the air, I was so excited. I'd seen Superbad, obviously, and she's brilliant. She's a brilliant comedienne."

And you got Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci to play Emma's parents. I'm sure that's now who you had in mind when you were writing it, right?

Bert V Royal: "Oh no, absolutely not. I actually did have two people in mind, very like D-list actors. I'm not going to say who, but very D-list actors. I thought the whole project was going to be this sort of very, very tiny thing, so when they said Stanley and Patricia, I laughed at them. It's like, 'Yeah, right, they're never going to do this.' So when they actually signed on, I was like, 'Wow, that's pretty incredible.'"

Did you do any research for this specifically to make sure that you're getting the right vernacular?

Bert V Royal: "No, no. This is just kind of how me and my friends talked, oddly enough. We should be censored."

What are you working on next?

Bert V Royal: "I'm working on a television show for MTV, a pilot. Don't have a name for it yet, but look for it - whatever it's called. I'm really excited about that. And I just wrote a thriller for Relativity which I'm really, really excited about."

Is that one titled?

Bert V Royal: "Well it's based on a Japanese horror film called 2LDK and it's a lot of fun. I think it's going to be a good time."

My camera woman knows that movie.

Bert V Royal: "You know it? That's awesome. Go see it!"

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