Can the rising son of a Hollywood heavyweight find true happiness —as a professional collaborator—with a loquacious ex-stripper from the suburbs of Chicago? Maybe. But it helps a lot if the son is Jason Reitman, spawn of Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman and acclaimed auteur of his own Thank You for Smoking, and the ex-stripper (who also worked as a phone sex operator and a peep show performer, and wrote a well-received book, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, about her experiences) is a hot young screenwriter born as Brook Busey, but known professionally as “Diablo Cody.”
Juno, the immensely engaging joint effort of these disparate collaborators, has been warming hearts, tickling fancies and making folks laugh out loud ever since it screened at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was greeted with the longest and loudest standing ovation in the festival’s history. In synopsis, even Reitman admits, the plot sounds like material for a teen-skewing TV drama: When Juno (the formidable Ellen Page of Hard Candy—see page 26), a sassily sardonic 16-year-old girl, is impregnated by a sweetly sheepish classmate (Michael Cera), she decides—with the loving support of her father (J.K. Simmons), stepmother (Allison Janney) and best gal-pal (Olivia Thirlby)—to give the baby up for adoption to a well-to-do yuppie couple, Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) Loring. From this less-than-promising set-up, however, Cody has spun a smart, surprising and generous-spirited screenplay—her very first—that Reitman directed with perfectly-in-sync savvy and sensitivity.
Reitman and Cody sat still long enough to discuss Juno during a mad rush of promotional chores at the Toronto festival. Maybe the buzz of the aforementioned ovation was still ringing in their ears. Or maybe they’d already been told what some of the critics were saying. Whatever the reason: They really did look happy together.
Joe Leydon (MM): Okay, let me start off with a softball, suck-up question: Every great once in a while, when I’m watching what I think is a really good movie, a scene pops up to let me know that, no, actually what I’m watching is a great movie. For me, that key scene in Juno is the one in the shopping mall, when Juno allows Vanessa to feel the baby kicking in her stomach. Up to that point, you may think Vanessa is a twit. But this scene humanizes her, beautifully. For me, it’s a turning point in the film.
Or am I reading too much into this?
Jason Reitman (JR): No, that was a specific scene…
Diablo Cody (DC): A very specific scene…
JR: We talked about that scene a lot, because that was a scene that was not in the original screenplay that I read. I talked to Diablo at one point and I said, ‘You know, we need a scene that solidifies why Juno decides to give the baby to Vanessa. And I think it would be great if Vanessa felt the baby kick.’ (laughs) Diablo said, “I’ve already written that scene; it was in an earlier draft.” Then she immediately e-mailed me that scene, and I fell in love with it.
DC: That was a tricky character, Vanessa. Because at first, you are seeing her from Juno’s perspective, so you’re kind of smirking at her a little bit. She seems like an uptight yuppie stereotype who maybe wants to acquire a baby more than actually be a parent. At least, that’s the way I think Juno sees her. But then as the film goes on, I really wanted people to become sympathetic toward her, and to root for her. I hope that scene helped.
JR: I always thought of the movie, as far as Mark and Vanessa are concerned, as having this wonderful cross. You begin by thinking, “Well, okay, Mark’s this easygoing guy, and he’s obviously instantly likable. And Vanessa seems like a pain in the ass.” What I was excited about doing is something like what I saw them do very well in The Queen: You start with two characters, and then at the moment you least expect it, you suddenly realize that you like one more than the other, and that while one seems interesting, the other is completely lost. One of the more encouraging compliments we’ve gotten is when I talk to someone who says, “Yeah, I never expected to like Vanessa, and I fell in love with her. I thought Mark was the coolest guy—but by the end, I was really frustrated with him.”
MM: It’s very much in the spirit of François Truffaut or Jean Renoir: No one is a villain, everyone has his reasons. Even characters you’re initially inclined to dismiss turn out to be substantial.
JR: That’s what I loved about the screenplay. I think you just nailed something that I’ve never actually been able to articulate: Every character in it means something. There’s no minor character in the film. Everyone has their moment, everyone is special—and everyone surprises you. It’s a film about subject matter that could easily be an “Afterschool Special,” and it contains characters that normally, in that kind of movie, could be very ordinary and just freak out at certain things. Yet somehow, every time there’s a decision to be made, every time a character is about to do the thing that you’d expect and do the boring thing so that it becomes the boring movie, Diablo takes them in a different direction and makes it wonderful. To me, the best example of that is Juno’s stepmother—the evil stepmother character that we see in every single movie—steps up, defends her stepdaughter, puts this obstetric technician in her place and you fall in love with her. Every character had that moment. That was the thing that made me go, ‘I’ve got to direct this movie.’
To read the complete interview, pick up a copy of MovieMaker‘s Winter 2008 edition on newsstands January 29. Or, order a copy here.
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