Emma Stone Has a Pocketful of Sunshine
The actress can't get enough of Natasha Bedingfield's inescapable 2000s hit song in "Easy A."
*Quick note: I’m excited to take part in The Authors for Voices of Color auction benefiting We Need Diverse Books! You can bid on a signed and annotated copy1 of either Dava Shastri’s Last Day or Advika and the Hollywood Wives, plus the opportunity to name a character in my next book.2
Click here to bid and also check out the many amazing bookish prizes. Auction ends Tuesday, Oct. 3 at 9 pm EST.
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Ever have a song that you can’t stop listening to? And even when played on an endless loop, you still don’t get sick of it? That’s Emma Stone in Easy A.
Over the course of a weekend, her character Olive goes from disdainful to hilariously obsessed with Natasha Bedingfield’s “Pocketful of Sunshine.” A song that plays in a greeting card is easy to mock, but as Olive learns, it’s also just too damn catchy to be denied.
Easy A was Emma Stone’s breakout role, but the 2010 teen comedy hasn’t exactly aged well. But this scene remains a classic, and always worth revisiting if you need to sing-scream “take me away!!!!” at the top of your lungs.
Reading recs:
*I cherish my author friends, so I really enjoyed Isle McElroy’s essay in Esquire about literary friendships, and why they are now more important than ever. (And their new novel People Collide is now out in bookstores too!)
*Anna Vangala Jones wrote a wonderful short story called “The Legend of the Convenience Store Cashier” that I found so sweet and nostalgic and moving. It’s featured in Short Story, Long, a Substack that publishes “longer short stories.”
*Orcas. Livers. Sharks. This is the most weirdly horrifying and fascinating story I’ve read in a long time. Once you click this link, you can’t unknow this. You’ve been warned!
And this week’s fun fact:
The eye of an ostrich is bigger than its brain.
(And how big is that eye? Apparently, the size of a billiards ball.)
Thanks for reading! If you know of someone who might be interested in Free Happiness, please share this newsletter. And if you have any recs, comment below.
Have a great week!
By annotated, I mean I will fill the book with handwritten notes in which I’ll share fun, behind-the-scenes details, the inspirations for characters and scenes, etc.
Naming characters in one of my favorite things to do, but happy to outsource it for a very good cause!