Booksmart | Teenage Dirtbag TV Spot (Fan Made)

Update: Please check out Riptide Fugitive's work. They saw this and decided to use the song for their own Alita: Battle Angel video. They're also just an awesome person!

I ended my review of Booksmart saying "One more thing, before or after seeing it, I recommend listening to this cover of Teenage Dirtbag [by Jax]. They match up together pretty well." To put that to the test, I made a short ad powered by the song. Read more for a tiny bit more background and a "Thank You" section.

Two of the greatest gifts of college (SUNY New Paltz) were swing dance lessons and a re-introduction to music. Specifically swing covers of non-swing songs, like this. Before that, it was mainly the soundtrack to The Mask. It just opened up a whole new world, and not just instrument-wise. Whenever a song went from a male singer to a female singer, or vice-versa, they usually wouldn't adjust the lyrics. So gay relationships were finally being "talked" about the same way straight ones have been forever. That's what Booksmart does, too, with Amy (Kaitlyn Dever). Something about that, mixed with the universal relatability of surviving high school, and the personal relatability of not partying until college, struck a chord, made me actually tear up a little, and made the idea more than worth pursuing. Adding onto that, I wanted to replace the raunchiness and wackiness in the real marketing with sweetness that's also more relatable to all of us. And it may have helped lessen the Superbad comparisons.

Plus, while this has been in my head for over a year, I really wanted a quick bounce back after being told about the issues in The Devil's Advocate trailer. You shouldn't sweat the small stuff, but sometimes you just can't help yourself.

Again, the FanTrailer community on Discord and Reddit was a huge help. This time, William Eklöf took the lead and gave me fantastic advice about how to add some more shots and give the spot more life. His work can be found here. Additional feedback from TheMarvelStark and, again, Will Walberg.

This video, and others are collected, on-site, here.

Another Update: A couple years later, I made a little something for Wilde's second movie, Don't Worry Darling, starting from a Reddit Photoshop Battle.

  

The second one is an update, but I like both