Mean Girls: Saturday Light Live

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Released in 2004, Mean Girls is said to be one of the most influential and memorable teen comedies ever produced. With a witty screenplay, written by Saturday Light Live alum, Tina Fey, very freely adapted from the non-fiction novel, Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman, Mean Girls possesses a “zest and sing few high school comedies ever muster,” according to Rob Blackwelder of Combustible Celluloid.
Fey had not initially read the novel Queen Bees and Wannabes when she decided she wanted to adapt the book into a film. She contacted Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels regarding her idea. Michaels knew that the concept showed potential to become a classic among the generational teenage girls and called Paramount Pictures who went out and straightaway purchased the book’s rights. It was not until after selling the pitch and finalizing the agreement for filming with Paramount that Fey realized it was actually a non-fiction guide to help parents get their daughters through high school and not a fictional narrative. She then had to write out the entire plot from nothing but her own thoughts and personal high school experiences; the character that Fey portrays, Ms. Norbury, was actually named after a teacher from the high school that Fey attended as an adolescent. Fey also wrote in her autobiography, Bossypants, that the character Damian, was named after “TV Guide” writer Damian Holbrook, one of her close friends whom she met as a juvenile in Pennsylvania at a summer workshop for kids interested in theatre. One of the most famous characters, who was not even credited because he had no lines, was Glenn Cocco, which was the name of a good friend of Fey.
Much of what Fey wrote, however, was in fact too raunchy for a PG 13+...

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