Why did you cast Hayden Panettiere as Beth Cooper?
“I’d seen a couple of episodes of Heroes (she stars in the TV series) and I actually remembered her from Remember the Titans. I thought she did a great job in that picture as a little kid. I thought she’d be great in this film so she came up to San Francisco and we met for a couple of hours. And immediately I thought, well, she’s Beth Cooper. She actually made my job incredibly easy because she’s such a professional.” Q: What is the audience do you think for this kind of movie? A: “Well this is a teen film and they are a genre unto themselves. They’ve become almost as big as westerns or musicals. But in this film it was the characters that intrigued me and I am hopeful that the film will appeal to everyone because we’ve all experienced high school. So older people can go back and see this film and remember how awkward they felt in school, how insecure they were and what it really felt like to fall in love for the first time. They will remember what it was like to experience what they t
