Booksmart
Short description
Booksmart follows two high-achieving best friends, Molly and Amy, who have spent their high school years focused on grades and college applications rather than social life. On the eve of graduation, Molly discovers that classmates who partied their way through school ended up at the same elite universities she did. Convinced they have missed out, the pair resolves to compress four years of fun into a single night, setting off on an increasingly chaotic attempt to catch up before morning.
The film is Olivia Wilde's directorial debut, followed by Don't Worry Darling and The Invite. Kaitlyn Dever plays Amy and Beanie Feldstein plays Molly, with Jessica Williams, Jason Sudeikis, Lisa Kudrow and Will Forte in supporting roles. Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins and Susanna Fogel wrote the screenplay, and Jessica Elbaum, Chelsea Barnard and Megan Ellison produced. It runs 102 minutes and was made for about 6 million dollars, earning roughly 25 million worldwide, a strong return relative to its cost.
Audience response has been positive but more measured than the critical reception: on IMDb it holds 7.1/10 from around 140,000 votes, and on TMDB 7/10 from roughly 2,900 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 8.3/10 from 384 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- The first draft of the script was written back in 2009. Screenwriter Susanna Fogel later made one of the main characters a lesbian.
- Initially, Beanie Feldstein was supposed to play a different character, but that character was eventually removed from the script altogether. When Olivia Wilde became the director of the film, she wanted to cast Feldstein as Molly. According to screenwriter Katie Silberman, Billie Lourd was so convincing in the role of Gigi that new scenes were specifically written for her and included in the script.
- Director Olivia Wilde insisted that the lead actresses, Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein, spend as much time together as possible. As a result, Dever and Feldstein lived in the same room for 10 weeks.
- Olivia Wilde allowed the actors in the film to rewrite their characters' lines at their own discretion.
- Olivia Wilde explained in an interview that "malala" is a little word used by the heroines of her film to denote complete support. In reality, it refers to the name of Pakistani human rights activist Malala Yousafzai, who advocates for access to education for women worldwide, and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate.
- According to Billie Lourd, she initially intended to jump into the water from the yacht herself and firmly refused to let professionals perform the stunt. However, when she was informed that the water she was to dive into was so dirty that she would be better off using a tampon to prevent infection, the actress gave up and asked her stunt double, Hayley Pascoe, to do the jump instead.
- According to Olivia Wilde, she drew inspiration from John Hughes's drama 'The Breakfast Club' (1985), Amy Heckerling's comedy 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High' (1982), Richard Linklater's comedy 'Dazed and Confused' (1993), and Amy Heckerling's romantic comedy 'Clueless' (1995) while working on the film.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
