Upamanyu Biswas
Olive Penderghast, the 17-year-old protagonist of the 2010 comedy ‘Easy A,’ narrates her entire story through a live recorded webcast on www.FreeOlive.com to explain the rumors about her promiscuous attitude. After a case of miscommunication and misunderstanding leads to gossip spreading in the halls of her high school in Ojai, California, the young protagonist takes matters into her own hands by releasing her version of events through a real-time broadcast to all her schoolmates. The webcast becomes a pivotal part of the narrative as Olive finally manages to take control of her life through its use, generating interest regarding its real roots!
FreeOlive.com is a Fake Webcast Show
While most of the story in ‘Easy A’ hinges upon Olive’s narration through the FreeOlive.com webcast, the site is fictional and does not exist. It was conceived by Bert V. Royal during the penning of the script. The site allows the protagonist to disseminate her firsthand account of the rollercoaster ride of emotions she has been through as people draw wrong conclusions about her. Olive announces the site address during a pep rally where she performs a dazzling dance. Everyone is hooked by the false implication that it is going to be a sex show. However, once all eyeballs are upon the live feed, Olive instead tells the real story behind the lie that has perpetuated her status as an easy woman.
Interestingly, if FreeOlive.com is typed into the URL bar of a web browser, the site name changes to letsnotandsaywedid.com, which is the tagline for ‘Easy A.’ As Emma Stone, who plays Olive, had a great audition through Skype, the actor was given the freedom to direct all the webcast scenes by herself. This proved somewhat challenging because of the actor’s perfectionist streak and repeated attempts at doing the same scene many times. In a Cinemablend interview, she said, “Well, I was not happy needless to say, when he [director Will Gluck] asked me to do that. Because I know myself. I knew that if I had the control, I was going to do it over and over and over and over because you don’t want to send something and be like, ‘That is the best I can do.'”
Instead of waiting, Stone did all her webcast scenes soon after her audition, fearing that she would get obsessed over the scenes the longer time flew by. During the process, her roommate helped her break that fixation by telling her to send the one-minute monologue without getting hung up on it. Stone added, “Yeah. So, I just did it that night. It was right after the audition, and I just went home and tried to get it out of the way. Because the longer I waited, the worse it was going to get.” The natural, intimate, and sarcastic tone of Olive’s narration is packed in the way she elaborates upon her tale through her use of witty and clever dialogue.
Although FreeOlive.com fails to live up to the high expectations set up by its smart protagonist, as the people watching the live cam expect Olive to put on a sexy show, it’s similarly so for those hunting for its real-life origins. The webcast is confined to its fictional storyline, but that doesn’t diminish its impact on how valuable it proves to be for Olive to set the record straight and get her life in order.
Read more: Where Was Easy A Filmed?
