While it's true that most days I wake up thinking, "God I've got a great job," it's especially true when I meet those people that truly inspire me to just go out and do something creative again. I can list several filmmakers, musicians and actors who've given me that feeling already this year: Jay Duplass, Ronald Bronstein, David Benioff, Matthew Lessner and Pendelton Ward to name a handful. Tonight though marks perhaps the most giddy I've been in recent months. And, I attribute this entirely to Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody.

A few quick notes about Cody: First, if you've missed her 2005 interview with David Letterman about her book Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, much as I missed it before meeting her--and consequently sounded like a dum-dum--watch it. She's positively witty and intelligent here, a perfect Letterman interview. Second, she's both stunning and outwardly eccentric in person, her leopard print jacket oddly blending with a garish 'Hello Kitty' necklace. Third, she's nice as can be, and when she met the two musicians tonight who wrote the fan tribute song for Juno, she literally--not figuratively people, not figuratively at all--embraced them.

Juno chronicles the story of a punk-rock listening, innocently and quirkly subversive 16-year-old iconoclast (Ellen Page) who discovers that she's pregnant. Father is best friend and general sweetheart Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), a Tic-Tac obsessive and diffident track runner. Determined not to abort, Juno with the help of friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) finds couple Vanessa (Jennnifer Garner) and Mark Loring (Jason Bateman) to adopt the child. Over the course of the pregnancy, Juno befriends the couple, but questions of true romantic love and loyalty come into contention as Juno finds herself progressively closer to the delivery date.

Since its September premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, Juno press and buzz, particularly for Cody herself, has been overwhelmingly positive, Variety's Todd McCarthy writing, "The way the torrents of archly amusing, vocabulary-bending dialogue trip off the tongues of the characters, you know you’re in the hands of some manner of distinctive writer, and she would be Diablo Cody--a young scribe very handy at shotgunning bright teen quips, as well as catching the attitudes of two distinct types of adults." And, though Spout's Karina Longworth has her reservations about narrative structural points and the script's verbal gymnastics, she admits too that, "Juno stands out for successfully plumbing the subversively bittersweet depths that Knocked Up strove for but mostly missed. It’s a crowd pleaser, it’s a tear jerker, and even if it doesn’t completely reinvent the genre, it does move a few fairly familiar sitcomish situations in exciting directions."

Sitting in a packed house at Atlanta's Midtown Arts Cinema tonight, I knew from the first lines of dialogue that I couldn't claim any of the hesitations Longworth, and even to some extent later in his review McCarthy, had. Up and down, Juno speaks with a comic energy and emotional truthfulness that makes it a laugh-out-loud, feel-it-in-your-heart indie. It doesn't take itself seriously, and yet it's serious. It doesn't pretend to be overly intellectual, but it's smart. It doesn't harp on the emotional, but with its solid ensemble cast the performances hold a great and easily relatable sensitivity. Page, to quote her character Juno, really does bring 'charisma to the table,' with her quips thrown away, her emotions thrown too, the result of which is a seemingly effortless performance. Likewise, Cera makes it simple to believe in pure, true and first love again. He's awkward, honest and completely endearing. Supporting roles from Garner and Bateman can't go unnoticed, although in Garner's case, there isn't a huge creative leap. She plays the same one-note, completely likable character that audiences often expect from her. Actors J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney's performances as Juno's father and step-mother respectively are so perfectly tuned into narrative momentum that they move the story without the least bit of exertion. Director Jason Reitman moves from Thank You For Smoking to Juno in stellar transition, developing his authorial mark without copying over too much stylistically from his feature debut. There's a steadiness in his vision, particularly with the hard cuts out of reality to voice-over aside or fantasy.

After the film's finish, IMAGE executive director Gabe Wardell, looking in what I now think of as his token expression, a distinct mix of excitment, exhaustion and kindness, introduced Cody and Page for the special screening Q&A. The mix of confidence and intelligence in Cody radiated as she answered questions with ease, quipping about the film industry and her own place in it: "I never thought I'd do anything of meaning for anyone, especially not my parents and friends..." Page, meanwhile, played off the high energy, at one point losing focus and in responding to a few escaped notes from the theater's loud speakers, said, "I just had this image of breaking into song right now." The question-and-answer session, as most public ones do, devolved into structured silliness. "Did I ever want to bone Patrick Wilson?" Page repeated the question back to the flamboyant fan sitting behind me. She was so good-natured about it that she laughed, answered in the negative and passed the microphone on. There was a palpable sense with Page and Cody that they were glad to be together and happy to be with this audience; this despite the fact that after visits to Toronto and D.C. in less than 48 hours, both Page and Cody should rightly have been exhausted.

As the Q&A wrapped up, I shuffled the editorial schedule in my head. This is my desktop right now, and each of these files is live work:

Namely, it's a lot, and there's actually more of it than that. But, when you're lucky enough as a journalist to meet a Cody though, you say, "I'll add that other file. I want this interview," because you get the sense that you'll damn well learn something at the end of it, that this interview will be fun and informative and not seem like work at all. So, I handed Cody my card on the way out, telling her to touch base with me any time she's free. She doesn't have a card of her own, she said, and at that moment, I was actually gladdened because it means the ball is in her court. With as much press work as she's had to deal with recently, I'd hate to bog her down. But, man oh man, that inspired part of me, that part that had to come home and write this immediately, that part thinks, "Oh, please, please write back sometime, Diablo Cody!" Because you know, what? That minor action, like Cody herself, would be boss too.

Juno opens in limited release December 14. Go. Go. Go!

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form