“That was why it needed to be California.”
The film, a dark-horse awards contender, is also a missive for Valley kids everywhere.
“It kind of worked!”
“At that point, emotionally, the characters are pretty stressed out, so we rolled with it.
I called that myE.T.overlook.”
and drug-coated strawberries among other moments, was one of the most intense, logistically-speaking.
“We wanted to have different types of homes,” Byron says of the many party stops.
“The man who lived there and his furniture was super charming and amazing,” Bryon explains.
“We based our ideas on that and just made it more dramatic and cinematic and opulent.”
Wilde chose Lido because of its strip-mall location an L.A. trademark and its camera-ready neon sign.
“When we lit that Lido Pizza sign I really fell in love with that location.”
“They make amazing pizza, which I discovered,” she adds.
“We ate so much pizza that night.”
Encino
Every epic teen party movie needs an equally epic party house.
But it had to be handled with care.
Behind the scenes
Where to decompress after a night shoot?
Countless burgers from the L.A. chain In-N-Out, which Wilde says were the only way to survive the all-nighters.
And forBooksmart, a tour through the city serves as perfect symbolism.
“What they learned by the end was to embrace the world around them.”
