Yes, it's standard high school party-before-graduation stuff but it disrupts almost every one of those usual types and tropes along the way. It also has superbly strong female protagonists, is hilarious, and doesn't condescend to anyone, not the 'school slut' nor the 'beer-swilling jock'. Highly recommended. Thanks to MTV and Crystal Bell for this write-up:: Katie Silberman likes to describe herself as a Molly sun under an Amy moon with a Jared rising, "but little elements of all of them," she adds.

The Booksmart screenwriter is calling me from her apartment in Santa Monica, where she is staring at a Jane Eyre poster she stole from Amy's room, just above the fictional teen feminist's desk. It now hangs above her own desk in an homage to a film — and an experience — that she calls truly special. These teen characters are so much a part of her that she now talks about them like astrology, which to any Millennial is to say that they are ingrained in her very soul.

But Booksmart is more than a modern teen classic, a tale of two precocious overachievers (played by Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever) who try and cram four year's worth of teenage debauchery into one unforgettable night. It's a touching, frequently hilarious story of female friendship and, essentially, a breakup movie rolled into one. But it's also what happens when you let women tell the kinds of stories they want to tell. Helmed by actor Olivia Wilde — her directorial debut — Booksmartboasts four credited writers, a handful of producers (including Silberman), a production designer, an editor, a post-production supervisor, and a sound mixer that all have one thing in common: they're women. "There was something special about designing a teenage girl's bedroom with someone who had been a teenage girl in a bedroom," Silberman says.

Below, Silberman talks about how Booksmart honors the teen movies of the past while carving out a unique space of its own, what the actors brought to their roles, and why the film's most outrageous scene is so essential.

MTV News: I'm curious, what were you like in high school?

Katie Silberman: In so many ways this is a very autobiographical story for me. I would say in high school I was probably closest to a Molly in that I really prioritized school and wasn't super social. I didn't really experiment or try or have the kind of wild fun that I think high schoolers should have. And I had convinced myself it's because I was focusing on school and I was focusing on the future and I was making the responsible choice. Then when I got to college I realized that everyone that I thought had chosen to have fun instead of focusing on their future were just as smart — if not much smarter than me — and doing much better than me in all those ways. It wasn't responsibility that was stopping me from doing all those things, it was fear and insecurity.