Victoria Justice remembers Halloween

Nickelodeon star Victoria Justice remembers when Halloween used to be a kid thing. Growing up in Hollywood, Fla., the 19-year-old recalls, "There was a street I remember that was the place to be on Halloween night. Me and my friend always wanted to go on this street, where all the people were super-generous with their candy."

Halloween is still a kid thing, acknowledges Josh Schwartz, director of Justice's teen Halloween movie, "Fun Size," opening Friday. But now Halloween is also a Rorschach test. "It's amazing," he says, "how important a holiday Halloween has become for people in college, adults, every age -- this idea that on Halloween you can pretend to be someone else for a night."

And if that doesn't fit the theme of teenhood, a time when we try on different personae as we discover who we are, then nothing does.

For suburban high schooler Wren (Justice), who watches over her 8-year-old brother

(Jackson Nicoll) since their mom (Chelsea Handler) still acts like a teenager herself, that means becoming "The Wizard of Oz" heroine Dorothy -- albeit the one imagined by generations of stoners who watch that movie synced to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon."

For Wren's friend April ("Suburgatory" star Jane Levy), "who's much more concerned about her social status and being popular and being accepted," says Schwartz, "this is an opportunity to wear something a little sluttier, so she's going as Sexy Kitty. And Roosevelt

Thomas Mann], the nerdy kid, goes as the scientist E.O. Wilson," the biologist and theorist known as the father of sociobiology. "Wren's mom, who's dating an inappropriately younger guy, pretends to be Britney Spears from '...Baby One More Time.'"

As for Schwartz -- an executive producer of such fare as "The O.C.," "Gossip Girl" and "Chuck," making his directorial debut -- he isn't pretending to be a convenience-store clerk in this movie, no matter what the Internet claims. "No," he says, chuckling. "I get asked about it a lot, but that's an IMDb mistake. There are convenience-store clerks in the movie -- just none played by me!"