'Easy A' films pep rally, earns a fan

Readers, in my introduction post made just a few hours ago, I promised movie news and celebrity encounters. It's entirely possible I only made this promise because I already have something to report on that front. As a note, I did not actually speak with any celebrities firsthand - not on this movie set anyway. I did, however, spend a grueling thirteen hours on the set of Easy A (2010), Paramount's new vehicle for up-and-comer Emma Stone.

Allegedly based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Easy A tells the story of Olive (Emma Stone, Superbad), a high school girl who's apparently fairly ignored until she decides to rev up her reputation by pretending to sleep around. Yeah, she's faking it on a grand scale. But when she's faking it to piss off Amanda Bynes and it involves Cam Gigandet and Penn Badgley, and Malcolm McDowell's her principal? Darling, I'm so in.

Yesterday's shoot - on location in Ojai - involved three separate pep rallies. I won't tell all, because that would actually be fairly dull (short story: I spent a long, long time just sitting around), but things I learned in my experience of life on set are as follows.

• Penn Badgley (Gossip Girl) was on set from the early morning, painted head-to-toe blue to portray the school's mascot, the Blue Devil.
• Even being painted blue doesn't prevent him from being hot. Take it from the girl sitting closest to him before the shoot. And making a spectacle of himself in front of two hundred cranky teenagers? Doesn't keep him from behaving like a total professional, under-his-breath cursing aside.
• Each of the film's three pep rallies will involve a stunt of some kind, two successful and one failed. We were told to act concerned and stunned, but I think we were all much closer to cracking up. It probably had something to do with the costume.
• Oh, didn't I mention? At some point, Penn stops being a Blue Devil and becomes, for various plot reasons, a Woodchuck. Gossip Girl fans, be prepared to have to hold in laughter of your own when Badgley prances across the screen yelling "WOOD! CHUCK!"
• This film has, as of the most recent count given to me by More Informed Sources, not one, not two, but three musical numbers. Given that other reports on the interwebs tell me Cam Gigandet (The O.C., Twilight) has been spotted on set with a guitar, I'm banking on a fourth.
• Yesterday's number was a song and dance I can't get out of my head, entitled "Knock On Wood." I expect WAY too many magazines to come out with punny headlines about Emma Stone being a Stone Fox, har har, given that she spends this routine in a black corset with red piping, teeny black shorts, sheer stockings with a seam up the back, high heels and a big red-and-black feather boa. Punny though they'll be, however, they won't be lying.
• Let it also be known that this little number involves Penn Badgley dancing with her, albeit still dressed as a woodchuck.

Suffice it to say, I'm looking forward to seeing this film come out for real, and I didn't have to fake a bit of my enthusiasm during our cheering scenes.