20 facts you might not know about 'Easy A'

Bert V. Royal hit it out of the park right out of the gate. While he had accomplished some as a playwright, he wrote Easy A on spec after the end of the WGA strike and managed to sell it. Not only was this his first film, but it’s also his only film, as he’s moved to writing for television.

According to Royal, the screenplay for Easy A came swiftly to him. He said he wrote the bulk of the script in only five days, though the final 10 pages took a little longer.

Easy A is partially based on The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Royal, though, had bigger plans. He wanted to write three films set in high school and based on classic literature. In addition to The Scarlet Letter, Royal had plans to adapt Cyrano de Bergerac and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Royal’s script was a bit more adult, particularly when it came to language. In his screenplay, the f-word was used 47 times. However, every use of the word was cut from the final script, and the film went from an R-rated comedy to a PG-13 offering.

There is a running joke in Easy A revolving around the song “Pocketful of Sunshine” by Natasha Bedingfield. This isn’t from the original screenplay, though. Royal had included the song “Olive” by Ken Nordine, which was fitting given that he named the main character Olive.

Will Gluck was a sensible choice to direct Easy A. He was coming off a high school comedy called Fired Up, his debut movie. On top of that, he had written on teen-drama satire Grosse Pointe to start his career. Easy A is the only film Gluck directed that he didn’t also write.

Gluck’s favorite movie is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and he put some direct references to the film in Easy A, including Olive giving herself a Mohawk in the shower. There are references to other John Hughes films in the mix as well.

The audition scene used to cast Olive was the opening webcam scene. Did Stone nail it? You can find out for yourself! Stone’s audition was included on the DVD release of Easy A.

All of the webcam stuff was shot on the same day. Stone did 14 hours of doing all the webcam stuff and narration. She did take breaks to stretch her legs among all that sitting. Hey, sometimes the most sedentary days are the toughest ones.

Evidently, Jennifer Lawrence auditioned to play Olive. That makes sense, given where she was in her career. Lawrence was then a cast member on The Bill Engvall Show. Easy A came out in 2010, also the year of Lawrence’s breakout film, Winter’s Bone.

Back in the day, people were accustomed to people in their twenties (and sometimes older, shout out to Grease) being cast as high schoolers. By 2010, that was less common and more likely to generate derision. Cam Gigandet was in his twenties when he was cast to play Micah, and a joke in the film has Olive wondering what Micah is doing in high school at age 22 — a way for the movie to wink at the audience about the actor’s age.

While filming the “fake sex” scene in the movie — a scene where two characters fake having sex, not a sex scene in which the sex is faked — Stone had trouble breathing. It turned out to be an asthma attack, the first the actress had suffered in her life.

Amanda Bynes was a successful TV actor with her own show that had moved into movie acting. Unfortunately, issues with her mental health and substance abuse got in the way of her career. In 2018, Bynes said she quit acting after watching herself in Easy A. To date, it is her last acting role.

Among the students who pay Olive to say that she slept with them are guys named Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Jay Chandrasekhar. All three are comedy directors, with Lord and Miller being the duo behind The Lego Movie and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, among others.

Royal may have written a successful film about high school but didn’t draw on real experience. The screenwriter was home-schooled and never attended a high school.

Easy A is set in Ojai, California, and the movie was shot there. The whole film was shot on location in Ojai. Not a single set was built for Easy A, and Nordhoff High School in Ojai was used as the school for the movie.

It only cost $8 million to make Easy A. In its first weekend, it earned $17.7 million worldwide. All it took was one week to double its budget! In the end, Easy A made $75 million worldwide, with $58.4 million coming domestically.

The high school audience seemed to take to the high school film. Stone won Best Comedic Performance at the MTV Movie Awards and Choice Movie Actress: Romantic Comedy at the Teen Choice Awards. The film also won Choice Romantic Comedy at the same award show. On the not-teen-oriented front, it also won Best Comedy Film at the Critics’ Choice Awards.

Easy A got strong reviews when it came out, and the reputation has lasted. In 2021, Entertainment Weekly put together a list of the 50 best high school movies. Easy A came in at 14 on that list.

In 2019, a spinoff movie written and directed by Royal was announced. While things sat fallow for a bit, in 2021 the idea came up again, though no substantive production news has arrived just yet.