Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Breakfast Club, Clueless, and Mean Girls, are all zeitgeist films in the decade in which they were made.
Booksmart, from first-time director Olivia Wilde, features a central love story that is relevant and contemporary. Significantly, it’s between female best friends Beanie Feldstein’s Molly and Kaitlyn Dever’s Amy (who is gay).
Gay Directors: Almodovar, Davies, Haynes, Van Sant, John Waters. By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press).
Its depiction of a gay teen in leading roles in a mainstream teen comedy — where being gay isn’t the point — is noteworthy.
The film’s refusal to easily label its characters is fresh and timely. No more the familiar cliques that have often included mean girls, jocks, nerds, and burnouts.
“The more leading characters we have that are queer, queer in different ways, and queer in their own way, is genuinely important,” Feldstein, who is queer, told The Advocate. “More representation is nothing but a beautiful thing on this earth, and the more people can relate to something, maybe the more that they can find themselves in it.”
