American Teen party

Recently Paramount Vantage invited us to a special screening of AMERICAN TEEN in conjunction with the Los Angeles Film Festival. The evening started with a pre-reception at Paramount Studios, including some Mock-Tinis for the teens. Everybody was asked to pick a button representative of the role they played in high school. For the record mine read Geek.

I spent a few minutes with Colin Clemens (the Jock), Mitch Reinholt (the Heartthrob) and Jake Tusing (the Geek). We talked about how things have changed for them since the film played at Sundance and they all seemed pretty blown away by the response. Paramount has them in a Hollywood apartment with a car and a daily agenda in support of the film. Things don’t look to be slowing down anytime soon. They were all nice guys and it was good to see they’re enjoying themselves.

We boarded yellow school buses to take us across town. It was like going on a fieldtrip, complete with a girl doing a headcount to make sure nobody gets left behind at the end. I haven’t been on a school bus in many, many years and had no context for how small they were anymore.

We arrived at the historic Ford Amphitheatre, a spectacular space under the stars and tucked into the Hollywood Hills. Prior to the film we were treated to a set by Sunny Day Sets Fire, a London based band that is featured on the AMERICAN TEEN soundtrack. All five of the teens were in attendance and came out to introduce the film. Hannah Bailey did most of the talking. She was really pumped about being in Los Angeles and is every bit the spunky girl you see in the trailer.

Be sure and check out my review of the film later this week and let me know what think.