GLEEasy A- GLEE and Easy A.[]
GLEEasy A is a film about a smart, clean-cut girl called Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) who, after one lie, uses the high school rumour mill to get everyone talking about her, with unexpected results.
After lying about a date with a college boy to get out of going camping with her best friend, Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera) and her wildly eccentric hippie parents, she makes up that she slept with him, furthering her lie. Instead, she spent the weekend dancing around her house to Natasha Bedingfield's 'Pocketful of Sunshine'. Unbeknownst to both Rachel and Santana, the head of the school's religious clique, Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron) overhears the conversation and ultimately spreads it around the school. Her church group decides to make Rachel their new 'fixing' project. Olive confides the truth to her friend Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) and he explains to her how others bully him because of the fact that he is gay. Kurt, later, asks Rachel to sleep with him so that everyone will accept him and not think that he is gay.
Kurt and Rachel pretend to have sex at a party, with successful results for Kurt. Everybody just thinks of Rachel as the girl who slept with a 'previously gay' guy. Rachel has a fight with Santana about her new image as a 'dirty skank'. Rachel, furious at the statement, decides to embrace her new identity. Her clothing becomes more provocative and she embroiders a red 'A' onto her clothing, just like Hester Prynne in 'The Scarlet Letter', a book that she is studying in English class. Boys who usually have had no luck with girls in the past beg Rachel to say they have had sex with her in order to increase their own popularity, in exchange for gift cards to various stores, in turn increasing her reputation. Things go from bad to worse when Sam Evans (Chord Overstreet), Quinn's boyfriend, contracts chlamydia from sleeping with the school's guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays) and says that it was Rachel who gave it to him because he slept with her. Rachel, to save the marriage of her favourite teacher, Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison), agrees to the lie.
Quinn's religious group, with the surprising addition of Santana, begins to bully Rachel into leaving the school, believing that there is nothing that can be done for her. After a failed date with Noah Puckerman (Mark Salling) who actually believes that she will have sex with him if he paid, Rachel begins to reconnect with her childhood crush Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith). Finn tells her that he doesn't believe that she is who everybody thinks she is simply because of a time when they were kids when Finn wasn't ready for his first kiss and Rachel lied for him. Inspired by Finn's belief in her, Rachel begins to look to the people she helped by getting them to be truthful. It seems that Kurt and Sam have quickly left town, each separately in unknown locations, and the other people are enjoying their popularity that came with Rachel sleeping with them. Emma also refuses to confess, and when Rachel says that she'll tell everyone, Emma says that nobody will believe her.
Spitefully, Rachel tells Will, who ends his marriage with Emma. After talking with her overly eccentric mother, Shelby (Idina Menzel), Rachel concocts a plan to get the school to believe her story. To garner public attention to her web cam truth-telling, she performs a song and dance number in the gymnasium. She uses her web cam to explain the whole truth and everybody is watching, including Santana, Kurt and the various other boys that she has used. Afterwards, Rachel texts Santana with an apology for lying. She hears a noise outside and it's Finn, who is riding a lawnmower and asks her to come outside. Rachel signs off her web apology saying that she might lose her actual virginity to Finn and runs outside to him. They kiss and ride off on the lawmower, happily.
Cast Parallels[]
Rachel Berry as Olive Penderghast
Quinn Fabray as Marianna Bryant
Finn Hudson as Woodchuck Todd
Sam Evans as Micah
Will Schuester as Mr. Griffith.
Emma Pillsbury as Mrs Griffith
Santana Lopez as Rhiannon Abernathy
Kurt Hummel as Brandon
Shelby Corcoran as Rosemary Penderghast
Hiram Berry as Dil Penderghast
Noah Puckerman as Anson