Chris Klein's debut film. He was a student at Millard West High School in Omaha when he was discovered by director Alexander Payne while looking for a school to use for filming (another one was eventually used). Although other actors auditioned for Paul, Klein stuck in Payne's mind.
When MTV Productions sent Alexander Payne the novel in 1997 to gauge his interest, he told them he did not want to produce a teen comedy. After talking with them, they convinced him that the story in essence was a dark, adult comedy disguised as a teen comedy. Buying that argument, he agreed to do the movie.
The classroom scenes were filmed in Papillion-La Vista Senior High School in Omaha, Nebraska, which is a real high school. During filming, adjacent classrooms had real classes being conducted. In the soundtrack, some background noises come from real teachers and students. Director Alexander Payne decided to leave those noises into the final film, as to give it a more realistic sound.
In the gym scenes, since the extras were real high school students, director Alexander Payne faced the problem of not having enough of them because of the SAT season, and many of them having already found out the sometimes tedious process of working as an extra. As a solution for the shots requiring a full gym to be seen, Payne asked the extras to move two or three times from their seats to look as if there were more people with the help of editing. The wide shot showing both sides of the gym was done in less than twenty minutes when the teachers of Papillion-La Vista Senior High School asked more students to join the film shooting.
Reese Witherspoon disapproved of director Alexander Payne's decision to include a freeze frame of Tracy with a contorted face.
L. Carmen Novoa: The Spanish teacher, who was actually a Spanish and French teacher where and when director Alexander Payne had previously attended high school.
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