CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN.
Running time: 90 minutes
Rating: PG – mature themes
In cinemas: April 8, 2004
Dear Member of the Press,
I was a teenage Drama Queen! In every sense. I was a teenage actress in London but in my mind I was a Superstar! (Delusional, I know.)
So, needless to say, when this script arrived on my doorstep I shouted out, “This is mine!” I’d always wanted to make a film that was for teenagers – a movie for every 14-year-old girl out there who’s had to go to a new school with a zit on her chin and deal with extremely complex high-school relationships. This was a teenage film where kids pay attention to clothes and music and “stuff.” I loved that challenge, because while I love clothes, Lindsay is a clothes horse – she looks a lot better in clothes than I ever did.
And! You can’t imagine what a dream it was for me to come from Wales and make a film in a place called “Hollywood.” (I had no idea we’d actually end up shooting it in Canada.) It was and is an awesome adventure.
I thought the script had a warmth and depth and charm that most teen scripts don’t have. It was more substantial than the average “teen chick” film.
I got the pick of every young actress on the East and West coast. There’s so much talent out there – but Lindsay shined. It amazes me that someone can act, sing and dance – all in a pair of size 6 hipsters.
My first studio movie -- I still get a buzz driving onto the lot each day. And at an early screening, I discovered one of life’s great pleasures is being in a cinema, hearing kids laugh at your film.
Sincerely,
Sara Sugarman
Walt Disney Pictures’
“Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen”
Production Information
Clothes. Music. Friends. Each is a minefield in every teenager’s daily battle – one wrong step and kaboom. Is it any wonder that the smallest decisions are played out with the highest drama?
Such is life for Lola Cep. Lola feels her life is simply not worth living when she moves with her family from every single thing on the planet that she loves (read: the Big Apple) and is plunked down in the middle of the cultural wasteland that is suburban New Jersey. As she juggles making new friends at a new school while standing up to a new rival, Lola finds it hard enough just to live her life, let alone remember how important it is to live her dream.
So much drama. So little time.
Hot off the smash hit “Freaky Friday,” Lindsay Lohan stars in a comedy with attitude, “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.”
Walt Disney Pictures’ “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen” is directed by Sara Sugarman. The screenplay by Gail Parent is based on the novel by Dyan Sheldon. Robert Shapiro and Jerry Leider produce. The film is distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution.
ABOUT THE STORY
“Lola Cep is ‘a flamingo amongst the pigeons,’” says producer Jerry Leider, “or so she thinks. I think every teenager is struggling with a balance – trying to stand out, to be the best person they can be, but at the same time, trying to be cool and fit in. When you’re living it, it seems like every situation you face every day is life-or-death.”
“I instantly related to Lola,” says Lindsay Lohan, who stars. Lohan last starred in last summer’s smash hit, Disney’s “Freaky Friday.” “And the thing that got me interested in this movie is that I felt others would relate to it, too. This movie really tells it like it is, about how girls are in school and what really goes on.”
“This story is going to hit home with tweens,” says Leider. “The title is hilarious, but it’s also a perfect description of what life is like when you’re sixteen or seventeen years old – I think that this story is something that every kid can relate to. This is a story about a girl who learns that it’s important to dream big, but to work toward those dreams in realistic ways.”
Making her studio feature film debut as a director is Wales native Sara Sugarman, who producer Robert Shapiro calls “the Welsh version of Lola. She has a unique way of looking at life. Sara is a free spirit, a force of nature.”
“I guess I am like Lola,” says Sugarman. “When I got the job to direct this film, I had to just jump in and trust myself without questioning, ‘Can I really do this?’ I just went with my instincts and stuck to them, like Lola does.”
Leider and Shapiro chose Sugarman after seeing her last film, “A Very Annie Mary,” starring Jonathan Pryce and Rachel Griffiths, which she made in Wales. “Sara had some very creative ideas about how to take the script and elevate it further. She became part of the team,” says Leider.
“I wanted to direct a teen film, and had read quite a few of them, but hadn’t found the right one. This one was well-written, in a way that most of them aren’t. It just had a great message of ‘grab life, make the most of every situation.’ Lola is a kid who isn’t perfect, but in spite of everything, she’s true to herself, and by the end of the film, she’s the best Lola she can be.”
“Sara is awesome – she’s so much fun,” says Lohan. “She’s like a little kid – she brings her great imagination to everything she does. And the fact that she was an actress before becoming a director makes the set a better place to be – she understands the process that actors go through. She knows when to walk away and when to push. We work well together.”
ABOUT THE CAST AND CHARACTERS
With the script and a director in place, casting for the lead character, Lola, began. Sugarman had a clear idea of the type of actor that she wanted for the role. “Someone who could cope with the dialogue and make their own, but still be able to shine through it. Someone who you believed was special. Someone who could keep a balance between the eccentric and modern contemporary styles which the character embraces. We needed a girl to reflect that.”
Lindsay Lohan was that girl. Lohan had recently completed work on Disney’s “Freaky Friday,” and her performance as a teenager trapped in her mother’s body for one day made it clear that she had the talent to play both comedy and drama, an attribute that would be critical for any actor chosen for the role of Lola.
“Lindsay was an easy pick. She glows like a five hundred-watt bulb,” says Shapiro. “She’s incandescent. She smiles, you smile, and the world’s okay.”
“Lindsay was our choice from the very beginning,” says Sugarman. “She is Lola – she’s not afraid to be herself and definitely stands out in a crowd. She had the part from the moment we met her.”
According to Leider, Lohan’s age was important. “She’s 17, and doesn’t purport to be 18, 19, or 20. She’s still a teenager, and I think she gets to that part of the Lola character very well. Of course she’s beautiful. She dances, she sings, and she’s good with the other actors.”
She also wanted to play a character that was a departure from anything that she had done before. “Lola is just such a different character from the one I played in ‘Freaky Friday,’” continues Lohan. “It’s good to see how she develops throughout the story. She brings out the fun and the good in people. She helps her friend, Ella, to become the person she truly is, and changes herself at the same time. It’s fun to do different things and switch on and off and see what I’m capable of doing.”
Alison Pill, who has received attention and acclaim for her recent performance in “Pieces of April,” was selected for the role of Ella Gerrard, a reserved young girl who comes into her own when Lola arrives at her school. The relationship between Ella and Lola was mirrored off-camera by Pill and Lohan.
“We had a great time together – we just clicked,” says Lohan. “We have so much fun together. Our chemistry is just incredible.”
“The balance between Lindsay and Alison is pretty spectacular,” notes Shapiro. “Alison is somebody who we’ve been watching for a long time. When we were casting this movie, we met her in New York, introduced her to Sara, and she read for us. Her reading was extraordinary. We’re so happy to have her.”
Pill was hooked by Ella’s transformation. She explains, “Ella changes so completely. She goes from being terrified of being herself because she thinks she’ll disappoint her parents. At the end, she decides, ‘I’m going to do what I want because I’ve decided to be who I am,’” comments Pill. “Ella allows herself to feel the enthusiasm that she has kept inside until she met Lola.”
Lola’s nemesis, Carla Santini, is played by Megan Fox. “Megan is a wonderful young actress. We met a lot of girls for Carla, and Megan was one of the sweetest girls that I’ve ever met, yet she plays one of the best villains I’ve ever seen. She’s also extraordinarily beautiful, and audiences will think well of her in this movie,” says Shapiro.
Fox has vivid memories of mean-spirited girls from her own experiences in middle school, but she is quick to note the differences between herself and Carla. “Carla seems confident, but she’s actually very insecure inside. That causes her to want to be in control all the time. She likes to make other people feel inferior, because that makes her feel better about herself. I wouldn’t want to be like Carla, but she’s a fun character to play.”
Leider was quick to see Marienthal’s potential for the role of Sam. “Eli is an extremely talented and intelligent young man. He’s brilliant – he’s got his choice of going to Brown, Harvard, or Princeton; he writes and performs slam poetry for fun. He’s an intellectual guy. This role is a far cry from what he’s done in the ‘American Pie’ movies. He’s a very serious actor.”
The producers are particularly pleased to have Carol Kane in the role of the eccentric drama teacher Miss Baggoli. “If anybody deserves to be called extraordinary, it’s Carol Kane,” comments Shapiro.
“Carol plays a music teacher, a drama teacher, and someone who’s very, very strict. In the middle of the reading, we all started laughing, because she’s very funny. She turns to me and says, ‘Do not laugh when I’m teaching.’ She did it in the character of Miss Baggoli and of course everybody got hysterical after that. There was nobody for Miss Baggoli except Carol Kane,” recounts Shapiro.
Like several of the other actors, Kane was captivated by the strength of the script. “I thought it was hilarious the first time I read it. It was also very, very well written, with three-dimensional adult characters. A lot of ‘teen movies’ are not well written, and they’re not gonna be interesting for adults. I feel this film crosses over because of the integrity of the writing.”
Sugarman and Kane honed the character together. “Sara had a lot to tell me about my character, because she felt that my character was like a drama teacher that she had had when she was growing up in Wales. She told me a lot of interesting details about that woman. Miss Baggoli emerged out of a combination of what I brought to her and what Sara told me,” says Kane
Kane prepared extensively, Shapiro recalls. “She had to conduct an orchestra. And we gave her conducting lessons at her insistence. She had to play the piano, so she took piano lessons. Carol Kane comes prepared.”
Kane is well known for her prodigious talent for improvisation, and which she employed in her performance. “Good improvisation comes out of good writing. Even after Sara called ‘cut,’ I could keep being Miss Baggoli – the character was written so well that she could keep on living beyond the confines of the page. I had a great time with that.”
Adam Garcia gets to live out one of his dreams on screen with the role of the British rock star Stu Wolff, the lead singer in Sidarthur. “We needed somebody who had charisma, somebody who was handsome, someone who could exude the combination of sexiness and confidence of a rock star while also coming across as a likeable, real guy,” says Shapiro. “Adam was by far the best choice.”
For Garcia, Stu is a combination of “Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Bono – they’re all there. Stu Wolff is the combination of all rock stars. He is the vessel in which they have poured their wisdom and gratuitous partying.”
To prepare for the challenge he watched videos and DVDs of The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and David Bowie – music acts he describes as the classic English rock personalities. “The great thing about playing a role like this is that you virtually have carte blanche to do whatever you want, even when the cameras are not rolling. It’s like, ‘Mate, I’m a rock star. What do you expect me to do?’”
Sugarman says of her cast, “I wanted to create a natural, and emotional warmth for the film. All of the actors we chose have that warmth; they generate that warmth naturally. They’re all bloody good actors.”
ABOUT THE MUSIC
For her role in her last film, “Freaky Friday,” Lindsay Lohan sang and learned to play guitar, but her role in “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen” takes things to another level. “I express myself through dancing and singing in this movie,” she says, “and I never realized how much work it really was! I have four songs on the soundtrack, which we rehearsed for hours and hours. And working with Marguerite – who’s a genius – as she came up with the choreography on the spot was one of the best experiences I could have asked for. It was all worth it – it was a thrill to bring Sara’s vision to life.”
“Sara is wildly musical,” says veteran music supervisor Dawn Solér. “We sang on-set a lot. I’ve never seen a director more willing to just sing the song to get a sense of how it will work on-screen.”
“It was important to me to have a musical plan for this film,” says Sugarman, “to try to tell the story through music. Music plays such a role in the process of growing up and discovering who we are. I wanted to give it the prominence it deserved.”
With Sugarman intending her film to be greatly influenced by music, Solér was charged with making sure that the many music cues in “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen” reflected Lola’s character arc. “The music is integral to what’s going on in the film,” she says. “It does more than underscore the story – it tells the story, but not in obvious ways.”
This is most true in the final number of the “Eliza Rocks” sequence. Titled “Drama Queen (That Girl),” the song’s lyrics reflect the changes Lola has seen. “Of course, in the play, Eliza realizes everything that she’s been working toward. This is a good fit with Lola, who also becomes fully realized at that point in the film.”
There was no one better to sing the song than the teenage drama queen herself, Lindsay Lohan. “The scene works because of her great acting abilities, but it’s her singing, her attitude, and her dance abilities that make the song work in a way that I’ve never seen,” says Solér. “She has such a great voice – such great character, that she’s set apart.”
The “Eliza Rocks” sequence opens with a medley of songs sung by Lohan, beginning with Stevie Wonder’s classic “Living in the City” and David Bowie’s anthem “Changes.”
Lohan also has several other new songs in the film. “A Day in the Life” comes at a poignant moment in the film, as Lola strengthens her relationship with her new friend, Ella. “Though they come from different sides of the tracks, Lola and Ella establish a strong friendship,” says Solér. “Lola says, ‘I’m just the kind of person they try to keep out, but I’m going to try this anyway.’ The song is a counterpoint to that – the lyric goes, ‘It’s just another day in the life / but I’m going to make something of it anyway.’”
“What Are You Waiting For” comes at the end of the film, mirroring Lola’s journey. Lola has been redeemed by her idol, British rocker Stu Wolff, and she has had a chance to establish her relationship with her boyfriend, Sam.
In addition, Lohan gets the rare chance to sing a cappella in her audition for “Eliza Rocks.” “Her favorite band is Stu Wolff’s Sidarthur, and her favorite song from them is called ‘Don’t Move On,’” says Solér. “We get to hear Sidarthur perform, and we also get to hear Lola reprise the song, without any musical accompaniment, in her audition. I think it’s a daring thing to do – most performers today wouldn’t be willing to be out there with only their voice to carry the song, but Lindsay’s fearless and her voice is definitely strong enough to do it.”