Set Visit

In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Logan Lerman stars as Charlie, a high school freshman who finds solace in a group of friends after struggling with depression and his painful past. When we visited the set last year with a few other reporters, we chatted with Lerman about taking on the role of the sensitive protagonist, what it was like to work with costar Emma Watson (who also shared her thoughts about the movie), and how the film had to differ from the novel.

Stephen Chbosky, the director, said he knew he had found his Charlie when he met you. What made you understand the character so well?
Logan Lerman: I guess I was very similar to Charlie in many ways, growing up, and I just really responded to the material. Yeah, it was just an instant understanding, and I just knew I had to play the part.

In what ways did you feel similar to Charlie?
LL: I guess with his awkwardness and trying to figure things out in that time period and how to socialize and fit in. I guess I wasn't as naive as him, but I definitely had the morals that he had, so it kind of . . . I don't know. I really can't explain it very well . . . I’m just very similar to him, I guess. A lot of situations in the script have actually happened to me in real life, so I just connected with it.

What is it like working with Emma Watson?
LL: She's great. She's really a great person and easy to work with and a fantastic actress. [I am] a big fan of Harry Potter. Yeah, it's really exciting to see her outside of the series and what she's able to do. She's not only pulling it off, but she's blowing people away with her performance.

Read more of what Lerman had to say about Perks after the jump.

The adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower comes out this Fall, and I took a trip to the set last year to observe a day of filming and interview the cast. The movie tells the story of a teen, Charlie (Logan Lerman), who has a hard time fitting in until he finds a special group of friends. Emma Watson plays Sam, a high school senior who gets close to Charlie but struggles with her own issues. When I and a few reporters chatted with Watson about the film, she talked about why she wanted to play Sam so much, moving on after Harry Potter, and how director Stephen Chbosky, who also wrote the book, envisioned her as Sam before she signed on.

What attracted you to this role and this story?
Emma Watson: I'd been reading scripts after the fourth Harry Potter movie around the age of 15, 16 and just didn't read anything that I really loved instantly . . . it's almost not that I had lost interest, but my agent was starting to get stressed. I wasn't really into anything and then I read Perks of Being a Wallflower, and it's so beautifully written and so funny. I was incredibly moved by it and just instantly knew A) that the movie had to be made and B) that I had to play Sam. I really wanted to play Sam, and was just really drawn to her, so when I met with Stephen, we just instantly clicked and it felt like I was meeting an old friend. Then I met with Logan, and I knew he was the perfect Charlie, and it was just a really obvious, obvious choice for me.

How did you get your American accent to play Sam?
EW: I worked with a dialect coach before the movie. I'd rather give a really good performance — obviously I'm hoping that my accent is going to be perfect — but I kind of didn't want that to take over too much. My other castmates have been incredibly supportive; if I ever need to check anything, I'm just like, "Say this," and then they'll say it and I'll be like, "OK, thanks," and that will be it. So, it's been easy.

Find out what else Watson had to say about Perks, like her favorite scenes and the '90s fashion, after the jump.

Emma Watson plays Sam in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and when I was invited to the set of the film adaptation with a few other reporters, I was eager to talk to her about taking on one of her first post-Harry Potter roles (and using an American accent). We visited the high school set of the film, which is a coming-of-age tale about a boy, Charlie (Logan Lerman), who struggles with depression but finds a group of friends who make him feel accepted. I'm a huge fan of the book, so I was happy that everything I saw indicated that the movie will live up to its beloved source material. Director Stephen Chbosky is also the author of the novel, so each decision was painstakingly made, beginning with the setting of Pittsburgh, where the book takes place. On set, we chatted with a few of the cast members, including Lerman, Watson, Ezra Miller, and Mae Whitman. Read on for what they said about the movie — and how excited Emma's costars were to be working with her — and stay tuned for the full interviews from the stars.

Have you read the book, and do you feel pressure to live up to it?
Emma Watson: I read the script first and then I read the book. It was so funny because I read the script and I came back to Brown and I told my roommates that I've just read this amazing script, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and my friends were like, "Oh, that's my favorite book. So jealous that you get to play Sam. If I was ever going to be in a movie, if I was ever going to play any character ever, it would be Sam." I didn't realize, but similarly to Harry Potter, the books really have this cult following, so that was really interesting, but the response that I get from people who have read the book and really identify with it is pretty intense. It's kind of amazing to be part of another movie product again that has so much love for it in the same way that Harry Potter does.

Ezra Miller: What I feel is a great honor and a great privilege to be able to be involved in something that is of such deep seminal importance for my generation. And no, I don't feel a pressure. I feel a necessity, which, as an artist, is what I want. I think necessity is the mother of all invention. We need — as artists — that mother to validate our actions. And yeah, the very wonderful relationship between the readers of this book and this project, it's only a happy flame beneath us. It's not some sort of massive something that threatens to crush us. Or at least that's how I felt. I've just felt sort of spurred on by the fans, not deterred or intimidated.

Mae Whitman: I read the book a while ago — a few years ago and then, actually, some friends that are on Parenthood with me — Miles [Heizer] and Sarah [Ramos] — it's their favorite book too, so when it started coming back in periphery, I reread it and we all just would talk about it every day, and it's such a seriously special, meaningful book. Like, it means something to everybody that's read it, so to be a part of something like that is really special, and because the people who tell you that they appreciate it really mean it from a really visceral place.

To read more from the cast of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, just keep reading.

A visit to the set of The Odd Life of Timothy Green must be a lot like entering Peter Hedges's home. The writer and director (What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Dan in Real Life) is known for putting his heart into his films and sitting on his set is likely as comfortable as sitting in his living room. Case in point: after spending some time with the director, Jennifer Garner's first question for me was, did Hedges make me cry. When I said yes, and that he made me cry, she just smiled and nodded.

So it's no surprise that the film, which hits theaters on Aug. 15, is a bit of a tearjerker itself. Hedges took on the Timothy Green project after it was conceived by Ahmet Zappa. He spent two years pouring his life — and bits and pieces of his own insecurities as a father of two boys — into the film, which uses the whimsical tale of a boy who appears at an infertile couple's home out of nowhere to explore the idea of good parenting. When I visited the movie's suburban Atlanta set with two other reporters, we sat down with Hedges to talk about his decision to get involved in this project.

Read on for some of the best quotes and photos from the set visit after the jump.

Though she's a mother of three, Jennifer Garner is familiar with playing fertility-challenged characters. In The Odd Life of Timothy Green, the whimsical Disney tearjerker that hits theaters on Aug. 15, Garner revisits the issue, starring as Cindy Green; she also played an infertile character in Juno). When Cindy and her husband, Jim, played by the serious but endearing Joel Edgerton, learn they've exhausted their options for conceiving a child on their own, they give themselves one last night — and a bottle of wine — to dream of the child they can only desire. They write their dream child's characteristics on pieces of paper and bury them in the garden. When a child exhibiting all of those characteristics miraculously arrives on their doorstep, they must quickly adapt to parenthood while hiding their new child's secret.

A year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to visit the movie's suburban Atlanta set with two other reporters to chat with stars Garner and Edgerton and director Peter Hedges (Dan in Real Life, What's Eating Gilbert Grape). While we thoroughly discussed Garner's decision to take on such an emotionally charged role, we couldn't help but ask about motherhood and the possibility of adding a third child to her famous Hollywood family. In addition to interviewing the actors and director, we also watched, and served as extras, in a scene as it was filmed.

Read on for some of the best quotes from the set visit (and stay tuned for more in the coming days) after the jump.

The upcoming musical comedy Pitch Perfect boasts a funny trailer, writer Kay Cannon of 30 Rock, and Elizabeth Banks and her husband as producers. Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick stars as Beca Mitchell, a college freshman who reluctantly joins an all-girls competitive a cappella group. Brittany Snow, who showed off her musical abilities in Hairspray, also joins a cast that includes the hilarious Rebel Wilson of Bridesmaids and Adam DeVine of Workaholics.

I traveled to the Baton Rouge, LA, set of Pitch Perfect last November and caught up with Anna and Brittany between takes of a competition scene. I found myself dancing along while watching the women perform their a cappella mashup of "The Sign" by Ace of Base, "Eternal Flame" by The Bangles, and "Turn the Beat Around." Somehow, those songs worked together!

Just keep reading for my conversation with Anna and Brittany, who told me that songs by Coolio and Etta James are among their favorite to sing.

We're excited to debut this pic of Anna Kendrick from her new movie, Pitch Perfect! In the upcoming musical-comedy, Anna plays Beca Mitchell, a college freshman who gets recruited to her school's all-girl a cappella ensemble. Once in the group, Beca mixes up their outdated song list with the hopes of beating their boy-group rivals, led by Adam DeVine of Workaholics. Last November, we joined a group of reporters on the set of the film to watch the a cappella performance and interview the cast. You can read our interview with Elizabeth Banks, who makes a cameo in the film, which she produced with her husband. And to find out more about the movie, "like" Pitch Perfect on Facebook.

Zac Efron's The Lucky One costar Taylor Schilling is the lucky one, indeed — the actress plays his love interest in the drama, and when I visited the set of the film, I got to chat with her and a few other reporters about her dreamy leading man. Schilling also joked about shooting their love scenes, and gave us some insight into her character Beth.

Is it tough shooting the love scenes with Zac?
Taylor Schilling: I mean, I don't know. I don't think so. I wonder what he’ll say. . . [it's] not a bad day to come to work and do that. But you know, it’s not as exciting as you would think it is either; it’s a day that’s very technical when you have to do that in front of a camera.

What were your expectations of Zac?
TS: The thing is, honestly, I didn't know much of anything about Zac before I got this because I'd never seen those High School Musical movies — which at this point, I can't wait to see them when we're done shooting because I'm excited to see what he did before. But I did not really have much of an expectation about him. I knew that he's incredibly famous, but in terms of his work as an actor, I didn't really know. So I really got to know Zac when I tested for this film with him and he was just such an incredibly charming, down-to-earth guy — for me, coming in and having never done a studio film before — he made me so comfortable at that test, and he was so generous and so wonderful, and was also so interested in the work. He was so engaged in the scenes and was so good. So good. So talented. It's just been wonderful to work with someone I really feel has my back as a scene partner. There's some really vulnerable stuff in this movie, and I feel like I could trust Zac with anything I got. He's a special guy, a good guy.

To find out what else Schilling talked about, just keep reading.

When I visited the Louisiana set of The Lucky One, which is out April 20, I had a chance to chat with star Zac Efron about the Nicholas Sparks adaptation with a few other reporters. Efron plays Logan, who falls for a girl (Taylor Schilling) he finds after first seeing her in a photo, so when we sat down with the actor, he talked about being able to relate to that kind of romantic gesture. His character is also a former Marine, prompting Efron to put on weight and a slew of tattoos to look the part. Read on to see what Efron had to say about the fake tattoos, why meeting real Marines was so awkward for him, and why he was so impressed with his leading lady.

Logan walks across the country to find a woman; would you ever do something like that?
ZE: I guess this is my chance to do it without actually having to do it. I like the idea of this guy, I wish I was like him. So I figured I wanted to play him.

What did you to do to prep to play a former Marine?
ZE: I found this channel on TV, the Military Channel. That's probably one of the coolest things that I stumbled upon. It was a total accident, I walked into my room, and it was a Navy SEAL, their boot camp, that they were going through. And it was really in depth, watching them go through just the most basic training. There was always a part of me deep down that thought, if it came down to it, I could pass. I could make it through basic training, I could do it. And after watching these things I realized there's no way I could do it . . . subject myself to that. They're a different caliber of man than me.

Find out what else Efron had to say about The Lucky One after the jump.