Have you ever been alone in a crowded room when I'm here with you?

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room; well I'm here with you...

There may be a number of Perks posts in the future, so hopefully, everyone gets around to seeing the film so I don't ruin stuff.  This post won't contain spoilers, but I imagine that they will before long.

When they were filming Perks, the big casting decision that everyone was talking about was how Sam would be played by Emma Watson.  Rightfully so, of course, she's the A-list celebrity of the film (sorry, Percy Jackson... er, Logan Lerman).  A lot of people were talking about how she would "do" since this was, after all, Emma Watson's first big role post-Harry Potter, and I have to admit, I was curious about it too.  As I told a friend, I was "cautiously optimistic" because she did seem like the kind of person who could do a good Sam.  However, it wasn't until we/Charlie saw her for the first time, under the stadium lights of the Homecoming game, that I realized how absolutely PERFECT she was for the role.  Here's why:

I have always been struck by how people were captivated by Emma Watson's beauty ever since Goblet of Fire.  I think that was the film/book where she went from being a kid to being a girl (in a cultural sense), which makes sense, since that was thematically part of the Goblet of Fire plot.  From that point on, she became a bit of a media darling, and of course, by the time HP came to an end, it was clear that she was the Han Solo/Harrison Ford of the cast.

But I digress.  The point is, I've always been intrigued, not by the fact that she was pretty, but that there was a sizable faction of people who considered her the most beautiful girl in the world.  Furthermore, this wasn't just a "she's so hot I would like to bang her like a screen door in a hurricane" type deal (though of course, these people exist) that you sometimes get with someone like Megan Fox.  It seemed like everyone always just talked about Emma Watson in terms of how gorgeous she is, without necessarily implying that she was an object of sexual desire.

That, I'm sure, has to do with the fact that many of us "grew up" with Emma Watson.  When everyone first saw her, people said she was "cute," the way you would describe a child, because of course, she WAS child in HP 1.  Watching her go from child to teenager to young adult was something that many of us actually witnessed, and I think that experience has a lot to do with why people are so enamored with her now.  People love Emma Watson because "we grew up with her," and it's no secret that when you start to feel a familiarity and affinity for someone, they become better looking in your eyes.

This last point is something I realized only recently when I saw Emma Watson doing red carpet stuff for an event (possibly the Perks premiere, actually).  The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that if you took Emma Watson as she is today and dropped her in, say, 2000, before HP, she would not be hailed as the most beautiful girl in the world.  She would still be pretty, of course, but I'm not sure her features, in a vacuum, would be considered "ideal."    I'm not going to go into detail with this (brows, mouth, jawline), because the intent here is not to make disparaging comments about her appearance, but just to point out that our perception of her beauty has, to a great extent, been influenced by her evolution and role in the HP films.

But then I saw her in Perks.  And I realized, at once, how absolutely perfect she is for that role, BECAUSE of all the things I outlined above.  Charlie, in the book, says something to the effect of "Sam is really really pretty," and "I think she's the prettiest girl in the world".  Those aren't exact quotes; I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it.  The thing is, Charlie's an unreliable narrator - he says that Sam is the prettiest girl in the world because that's how he sees her, but the fact that he has a crush on her likely makes her seem more beautiful to him in a "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" sort of way.

When Sam first appears in the film, under the stadium lights, I realized that by casting Emma Watson as Sam, Chbosky (or the casting director) somehow accomplished the hereto-believed-to-be impossible task of making us see Sam the way Charlie sees her.  And I would argue that no other actress would have had that effect.

Fucking brilliant.

So anyone who knows me knows that The Perks of Being a Wallflower is my favourite book.  Those who know me a little bit better also know that despite this fact, I have some issues with the ending--not necessarily insofar as what happens, but the way Chbosky wrote it.  Apparently, he must have gotten wind of my complaint because when he wrote the screenplay for the film, he fixed those issues (yay!).

The final scene of the film was also so beautiful I cried in the theater.

A few years ago, I was filling out one of those survey/questionnaire things in facebook and one of the questions asked something like, "What's one thing nobody knows about you."  I remember having a very tough time with that question because truthfully, there aren't very many things that any one person might not know about me.  For a while, one thing that nobody knew about me was that I spend a great deal of time on reddit.com, but Goddard now knows that about me so that no longer qualifies.  For a while, nobody knew that I followed the career of Tiffany Alvord on YouTube, but my students now know that one.

See, that's the thing... as soon as I start "doing something," I always feel the urge to share it with someone.  I've also realized that most of the things that go unknown about me are internet-related.  So one more thing that I've realized I've been doing for over a year that nobody knows about is that I follow Jenna Marbles on YouTube because she's hilarious.  Of course, anyone who reads this now knows this fact so I guess I'll strike that off the list as well.

A few months ago, I was talking to my students about how Glee is not going to be the same this season because Rachel Berry graduated.  The argument was that, with all due respect to the other cast members, she powers the show.  Already, in the first episode, the remaining cast members duke it out for lead singer by doing a rendition of Call Me Maybe and the results were... less than spectacular.  Dammit Glee.  Maybe the new additions will make a difference.

"I don't know her personally, but I feel like she's probably not the most intelligent young lady."

Really?  This is considered an opinion now?  I don't know you personally, but I feel like you're an idiot too.

There's an interesting thread on Reddit that requests for people to post the phrase they hear the most at their jobs.  The idea is that we're supposed to guess the occupation based purely on the sentence that person hears the most.  So for example, the top comment is, "Could you make that 'pop' a little more?"  That was actually a hard one (I thought), but someone answered quickly, "graphic designer,"

So I'm interested (and bored, because I'm not starting school for the first time in my life) so I scroll down and, of course, there are bunch of phrases that teachers say they hear the most at work.  There's your standard, "This is too hard!" or "When is the period over?" which, admittedly, I've heard from time to time. 

However, I would never classify those statements as ones I hear "the most" on my job.  Obviously, they happen with more frequency than, "Could you make that 'pop' a little more," (which I have never heard in my time as a teacher), but to say that's the most frequently heard statement?  Just off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure I hear "Hi Mr. Wong" a hundred times more than "This is too hard!"