Boxoffice - May 2019

Party Hard
BOOKSMART DECONSTRUCTS THE
CLASSIC TEEN COMEDY
BY REBECCA PAHLE
>> Best friends Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie
Feldstein) have spent the last four years spurning parties
in favor of studying. The purpose of avoiding all
the raunchy fun of high school was to get into top-tier
colleges—which looks kind of silly in retrospect, once
they find out that all the people they’ve been judging
as slackers have gotten into excellent colleges too. Cue
a mad game of catch-up, as Amy and Molly try to fit
four years of typical high school rule breaking into one
last night.
The feature directorial debut of actress Olivia Wilde, Booksmart
was co-produced by Jessica Elbaum, who in 2014 founded the
production company Gloria Sanchez Productions. Sister company
to Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s Gary Sanchez Productions,
Gloria Sanchez has as its goal the elevation of female voices in
comedy. In addition to Wilde, Gloria has given the mic to Leslye
Headland (Sleeping with Other People), Atsuko Hirayanagi (Oh
Lucy!), Lorene Scafaria (the upcoming Hustlers), and Booksmart
scribe and producer Katie Silberman. Having previously written
rom-coms Set It Up and Isn’t It Romantic, Silberman thought it was
about time to take her genre-skewering eye to the world of high
school comedies. The result is a sharp, funny, and ebullient film
from United Artists and Annapurna Pictures that hits theaters on
May 24. She and Elbaum talked to Boxoffice about Booksmart.
How did you both come to be involved with this project?
Jessica Elbaum: The script has been around for a very long
time. I got called by Annapurna probably three-ish years ago. At
the time it was a very different project. Susanna Fogel was attached
as a writer and director, and at that point it was just Kaitlyn. Beanie
was not a part of it. We were putting it together and then, as
these things do, it fell apart. We needed a new director. I had been
friends with Olivia Wilde. She and I were developing a
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106 MAY 2019