What is it about the Smiths that makes the melancholic 80s band something of a Bat Signal for cultured and cute vintage-wearing dream girls? In writer-director Stephen Chbosky’s new The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a wonderful film based on Chbosky’s own novel, the pixieish, Smiths-adoring love interest, Sam, is played by Emma Watson, in her first significant post-Hermione role. Sam’s suitor, Charlie, is played by Logan Lerman. Perhaps inevitably, he is a clinically depressed introvert who befriends Sam and her punky stepbrother, Patrick—the inestimable Ezra Miller—at a high-school football game. Charlie and Sam soon reveal their shared love of British glum-pop, including the Smiths’ “Asleep,” which is ironic, or appropriate, because the film details how Charlie finally wakes up thanks to Sam’s tender, nonjudgmental companionship. The metaphor is not as heavy-handed as it sounds.

If Hollywood were a high-school cafeteria—a tremendous stretch of the imagination!—the three young leads would most certainly sit at the center of the cool table. Watson and Lerman will next star in Darren Aronofsky’s big-screen adaptation of Genesis chapters 6 to 9, Noah, while Miller will play opposite Mia Wasikowska in Madame Bovary, providing an even greater service to teenagers than showcasing the triumph of the loner: giving them a way around reading Madame Bovary.…

School bells are beginning to ring across the country, but instead of boarding the Hogwarts Express this fall, actress Emma Watson will enroll at a Pennsylvania high school for “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”

The film, an adaptation of Stephen Chbosky’s coming-of-age novel (published by MTV Books), tells the story of loner Charlie (played by Logan Lerman) and his life-changing experience befriending eccentric step-siblings Sam (Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller).

MTV News visited the set recently to get a behind-the-scenes look at the drama … and pick up a few dance moves from the film’s stars as they boogied at the Sadie Hawkins dance.

“We’ve got this really catchy song, and we were just talking about it, like, every time we go, I still get pumped up because it’s one of those energetic songs,” Nina Dobrev (who plays Charlie’s sister, Candace) enthused about the Dexys Midnight Runners hit “Come On Eileen.”

“Ezra and I are not trained dancers, but we both love dance,” Watson said with a grin.

“I feel like I’ve been waiting for ‘Perks.’ I was waiting for this story, this script, this moment,” she continued. “I was a huge ‘Harry Potter’ fan even before I did the movies, and I thought I would never find a character or material I care about so deeply and personally as I did that, and then this came along and completely swept it all.”

“Perks” is just one of a number of increasingly mature roles Watson has signed on to of late, which also include “The Bling Ring” and “Noah.” But her co-stars say her “Perks” role will be the one that truly introduces audiences to the grown-up Emma.…

Adapting a beloved, obsessed-over novel is never easy, but it’s infinitely interesting when the person doing the adapting is also the author of that beloved, obsessed-over novel. That was the case for September’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and thanks to a quick trip to Pittsburgh, where Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, and Ezra Miller were filming the flick, Hollywood.com got a look at what that process looks like.

It was a muggy, overcast Pittsburgh day when myself and a group of journalists piled into a van and made our way to Peters Township High School, where Watson, Lerman, Miller, Mae Whitman, Nina Dobrev, Dylan McDermott, and Kate Walsh were filming their characters’ high school graduation under the watchful eye of writer/director Stephen Chbosky. From the sound of Watson’s surprisingly accurate American accent peeping through our headphones when filming began, to the fake snow puddled around the wheels of a school bus for another scene, the high school was all movie set. But from the crowds of local teens set up as extras, the proliferation of red and white balloons all over the football stadium, and a general air of excitement, Peters Township was all high school. The setting couldn’t have been more perfect — after all, Pittsburgh and its surrounding suburbs are where Chbosky grew up and where his novel takes place.

In case you were not a teen in 1999, it might be news to you that The Perks of Being a Wallflower was a life-affecting book for many of its stalwart fans.…

he film starring Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Kate Walsh, Dylan McDermott, Mae Whitman, Nina Dobrev, and Erin Wilhelmi opens in limited theaters on September 21.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, written and directed by Stephen Chbosky, who also penned the famous novel, is about an introvert freshman (Lerman) who is taken under the wings of two seniors (Watson and Miller) who welcome him to the real world.

Last summer, JustJared.com had the privilege of checking out the film set in Pittsburgh, Penn. Click inside to read our account of the day and our interviews with the cast!

When we stepped out onto the set of The Perks of Being a Wallflower on a warm summer morning at Peters Township High School on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, filming was already underway for the day. The cast and crew had been working on the flick for the past couple months and were nearing the end of the shoot. As we would later observe, the cast had formed extremely close bonds with each other while working on the film adaptation of one of the most beloved coming-of-age stories of recent years.

“The shooting schedule’s been kind of crazy and it’s such a great group of people and we’ve all got so close that we mainly just hang out at the Crowne Plaza [the hotel the cast and crew stayed in during the shoot],” Emma Watson told us. “I’m serious. And we play music and pretty much everyone as part of the cast is musically talented in some way so we spend most of our evenings playing music and just talking and just being silly.”

Emma is taking on the pivotal role of Sam in the film, the main love interest of the story’s lead character and the person who encourages him to be himself.…

Emma Watson plays Sam in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and when I was invited to the set of the film adaptation with a few other reporters, I was eager to talk to her about taking on one of her first post-Harry Potter roles (and using an American accent). We visited the high school set of the film, which is a coming-of-age tale about a boy, Charlie (Logan Lerman), who struggles with depression but finds a group of friends who make him feel accepted. I’m a huge fan of the book, so I was happy that everything I saw indicated that the movie will live up to its beloved source material. Director Stephen Chbosky is also the author of the novel, so each decision was painstakingly made, beginning with the setting of Pittsburgh, where the book takes place. On set, we chatted with a few of the cast members, including Lerman, Watson, Ezra Miller, and Mae Whitman. Read on for what they said about the movie — and how excited Emma’s costars were to be working with her — and stay tuned for the full interviews from the stars.

Have you read the book, and do you feel pressure to live up to it?
Emma Watson: I read the script first and then I read the book. It was so funny because I read the script and I came back to Brown and I told my roommates that I’ve just read this amazing script, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and my friends were like, “Oh, that’s my favorite book.…