Erica Albright

Here's what the stage direction says in the script.

He logs onto Facebook, puts her name in, and the name is Erica Albright, was the pseudonym that I used for the real person.

Puts the real name in.

And he smiles a little bit.

Would you like to read the next one? Yes.

This is from Erica.

Erica's a great name.

It's underused, I think.

It is a good name, yeah.

The only Erica I can think of is the one from Friends who gives her babies to Chandler and Monica.

Or the grass gym leader of Celadon City in the first generation Pokemon games.

Yes.

It was a combination of insecurity, ambition and self-justification.

The film did boil down somewhat to his jealousy of the finals club or the fact that you know, Erica Albright, Rene Mars character didn't want him.

But here, Strong's version is presented with so little ambiguity.

There's no room left for discovery or for that character's journey.

code.

Erica.

You're obsessed with finals clubs.

You have finals clubs, OCD, and you need to see someone about it.

that's good.

He's trying to make a name for himself, and he thinks he can do that through the final clubs, not finals clubs, and...

What Erica does in that moment is she sees right through it of, oh, you're selfish, self-obsessed.

He tells her, I'm going to be bringing you to these things and you're going to be meeting people you wouldn't normally meet, so...

I'm just like, so what I'm hearing is that at the end of this movie, this woman got a restraining order, right? Because she does not want to be.

And mind you, there was no Erica Albright.

She's a fictional construct.

She's not real.

And it was, it was really fascinating to see the things that didn't resonate with this day and age.

And then the things that still do, which is also kind of eerie to have experienced in the film.

Like there's a, there's a conversation that Erica has later with Mark where she says like, ultimately you're just a sad guy in a dark room typing on the internet.

And That line, like I think in 2010, wouldn't have hit me the same way as it does now where we see the problem of like hate and online cyberbullying and that becoming a very real problem for kids that are growing up and for adults that are existing in the world and how much that has not changed and in fact has just gotten bigger in a way that back in 2010, we had no idea the the problem that that would unleash that kind of started with this one man who created the platform for that.

Again, uh, never happened.

And also, Erica Albright, the character, never existed.

She was completely an invention for the film.

So she never even existed in the real world.

but Sma- Facemash did happen.

Yeah, Facemash did.

I'm saying Erica Albright was never-

Yeah

...

Erica Albright.

Yeah.

Great cameo role.

And it opens up with a very brilliant shot, like, no cuts, no nothing.

It's like it follows him to where he's going to be, and he ends up getting dumped by, you know, his girlfriend at the time, which was Erica Albright.

you know, I think this is a very good movie.

It's very, like I said, very dialogue heavy.

Wait, that, no. [laughs] That would be funny then.

Erica Albright's a [censored].

Oh.

Do you think that's because her family changed their name from Albrecht?

So you were called in front of the ad board?

That's not what happened.

Back at the bar with Erica Albright, she said all that.

Bar.