There’s a fine line between a great cinematic re-imagining of a classic novel and a torturous hack job. Based on the details in Variety‘s article about Screen Gems handing directorial duties to Will Gluck (creator and executive producer for the failed TV show “The Loop”) for their film Easy A, I was leaning towards it being more of the latter, but now I’m not so sure.
See, Easy A is supposed to be a re-imagining of The Scarlett Letter, that book you probably read in high school and manipulated your then-boyfriend into doing art for your book report… if you’re like me, that is. If you’ve never read Letter before, all you really need to know is that it contains more guilt, repression, long-term suffering, and emosity than a song by Morrissey due to its focus on Puritan values in the 1600s, the sin of adultery, and redemption.
Easy A, on the other hand, will be about a junior in high school who pretends to be the school slut for some financial of personal gain. Even before double-checking, I knew that a woman couldn’t have written the script, and was rewarded when I read the earlier Variety article that says it was written on spec by playwright Bert V. Royal.
I was all ready to roast him, with my phasers set to “Maim,” when I read this review from two years ago of his breakout play “Dog Sees God” in The Villager:
Bert V. Royal stabs the satirical needle into not only Schulz’s comic strip but also the entire teen angst genre. “Dog Sees God” pokes fun at everything from the teen classics Clueless and Fast Times at Ridgemont High to many of the silly, adolescent TV shows on which some of the play’s actors star [which included Eliza Dushku from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and Logan Marshall Green from “The OC”]. Although the characters are typical teen stereotypes, and the juvenile jokes about getting stoned, drunk and laid are certainly sophomoric clichés, most of the humor is witty and intelligent, and there are many great one-liners.
So for now, I’m undecided on how this could play out. How ’bout you?