DIRECTORS STATEMENT: Jason Reitman
When I was twelve, my parents decided to adopt a child. I grew up in a very Loring-like residence with incense sticks, plexiglass enclosed tchotchkes, and framed portraits of my family posing all dressed in white (yup, that was us). One morning, we assembled in the living room where my sister and I were informed that we would be visited by a social worker that would deem whether or not we were an appropriate home for an adopted child. It was an audition of how good a family we were.
Of course, now I look back and realize we were a shoe-in… a happy loving affluent family who were adopting for all the right reasons. But at the time, I remember the pressure. Spending hours in front of this social worker, acting like I was in the British novelization of my own life. Hello sister, would you like to share my orange juice?
The story of Juno comes from Diablo's childhood when one of her closest friends in high school became pregnant and decided to take the baby to term. Often, she is asked what gave her the idea to make this into a movie. The first scene she ever thought of - the kernel of Juno - is that meeting at the Loring house, where Juno meets the potential parents of her child.
There is something incredibly complex about the character dynamics of that scene.
-A middle class father who would normally only enter one of these homes to service the heater is now being treated like royalty.
-A thirty-year-old man, terrified by entering the chapter of parenthood, is balancing between the placation of his wife and his fascination with this unique teenager.
-A thirty-year-old woman, incapable of having a child of her own, has turned to the teenager she would normally ignore at the mall. She walks on eggshells, hoping to earn the trust of a girl that thinks of pregnancy as an inconvenience.
-A tiny sixteen-year-old girl who would normally be egging the community gates is now auditioning the adults.
At the end of the day, Juno is not a movie about teenage pregnancy as much as it is about the delicate balance of these relationships. Somehow, Diablo's script is able to approach each and all of the characters with sophisticated realism and respect.
There are so many things that make a film work. The mechanics of filmmaking are too complicated to single out any one thing. However, when I think of that scene and the approach to these characters, I can't help feel that Diablo and I, in one way or another, have sat on either side of the living room in that scene. It is that combination of experiences. That collaboration of perspectives that made the film resonate not only with humor, but with warmth.

With two feature films under his belt, Jason Reitman has established himself as an original, smart and funny storyteller known for his keen pitch-perfect satirical commentaries on our society.
He made his feature film directing debut with the 2006 hit THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, based on the acclaimed novel by Christopher Buckley, which Reitman adapted for the screen. The film had its world premiere at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival, where it was acquired by Fox Searchlight. The film went on to screen at the 2006 Sundance and SXSW Film Festivals, and earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture and an Independent Spirit Award for best screenplay and a WGA nomination for best adapted screenplay. In 2006, Reitman was named best debut director by the National Board of Review and U.S. Comedy Arts.
Reitman was born in Montreal on October 19, 1977. He was on his first film set (ANIMAL HOUSE) 11 days later. The son of director Ivan Reitman, he spent most of his childhood on or around film sets. At 15, the budding filmmaker made an AIDS public service announcement with actors from his high school that went on to win awards and play on network television.
At age 19, his first short film, OPERATION, a comedy about kidney stealing, premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. This began a string of shorts, including H@ (premiered at SXSW 1999), IN GOD WE TRUST (premiered at Sundance 2000, went on to play Toronto, Edinburgh, New Directors/New Films and won best short at many fests including Los Angeles, Aspen, Austin, Seattle, and Florida), GULP (premiered at Sundance 2001), and CONSENT (premiered at Aspen 2004). Reitman's short films have played in over a hundred film festivals worldwide.
Reitman has directed commercials through Tate USA since 2001. He has received honors from the Cannes commercial awards, the Addys, as well as the One Show. Clients include Miller Light, Heineken, Honda, Nintendo, BMW, Kyocera, Asics, GM, and Burger King.
In the wake of the success of SMOKING Reitman and his producing partner, Daniel Dubiecki, formed a new production company, Hard C, based at Fox Searchlight. Hard C is developing a number of projects, including "Bonzai Shadowhands" with Rainn Wilson and the spec script "The Ornate Anatomy of Living Things." Hard C will also produce, alongside Mason Novick, "Jennifer's Body," Diablo Cody's latest script, for Fox Atomic. Production is planned to start early 2008.

WRITERS STATEMENT: Diablo Cody
My name is Diablo Cody-- well, not really. But who cares? Artifice is typically encouraged in Hollywood, even rewarded. This is a town where our "all-natural" golden girls are (literally) peroxided to the teeth and tanned into non-putrescible leather. A place where sworn enemies swallow their bile and swap "power hugs" on Highland. Even the sky looks like a matte painting on blue-hot afternoons, when the clouds are as firmly set as Jayne Mansfield's hair and the sun blazes immodestly. It's all pretty cool, but it sure as hell ain't real.
That's just one reason why I'm still slack-jawed with shock that JUNO-- a funky little movie that wears its heart on both sleeves-- ever came into being. I wrote the script back in Minnesota, a circumstance which should have logically counted as a strike against me. Sometimes I wrote at my kitchen table, sometimes I wrote at the local Target, sometimes I'd sneak a few blocks of dialogue during my precious 15-minute breaks at work. JUNO became my secret passion, and I anticipated our time together like a horny schoolgirl. I don't know if anyone believed that I could actually write a movie, and neither did I. Unlike the moist-browed screenwriters pimping their wares in cruel Burbank, I wrote in a comfortable vacuum.
Ironically, the person who brought this wholly Midwestern script to life was a quintessential Hollywood boy: Jason Reitman. I mean, he's the scion of a friggin' filmmaking dynasty! This is a guy who grew up knowing the Ghostbusters personally (and if you were a kid in the '80s, you know that's fucking rad.) And yet, when we first met above a gun shop on Sunset, he radiated a warmth and authenticity that's in short supply out here. He just seemed way too cool-- too real-- to be an A-list director's son. Put it this way: I spent my college years watching MTV and leeching off my poor middle-class parents. Meanwhile, Reitman, the so-called "child of privilege," sold ad space in calendars at USC to fund his first short films. His work ethic belies his pedigree.
Reitman and I connected instantly, even though he jokes that he was scared of my tattoos. Frankly, I was scared of his talent. I'd mustered up some confidence in the script by then, but I couldn't have anticipated that someone like Jason-- an incredible writer in his own
right-- would put his own shit on hold to direct JUNO. But he did, and within months, we were rolling in Vancouver. It was fully ridiculous.
There are no words to describe what it's like to watch actors like Ellen Page and Allison Janney breathing life into the inert "blue baby" that is an unproduced screenplay. I'd hang by the monitors for hours, mentally freaking the fuck out. It's hard to say what was more joyful...actually writing JUNO, or surrendering the script to these talented people.
I've written other screenplays since JUNO and I hope, God willing, that I get to write more. But as Jason has frequently reminded me, you only get one first film. And like Juno MacGuff, who (improbably) finds true love at 16, I was fortunate enough to have been "deflowered"
cinematically in the nicest possible way. The entire process-- from writing, to production, to release--was so warm, so exhilarating, and most of all, so real. In Hollywood, that's rarer than the sashimi at a CAA party.

Writer Diablo Cody penned her debut screenplay JUNO while working as a phone sex operator/insurance adjuster in Minneapolis. She did not attend Harvard.
Cody has been featured in Entertainment Weekly, Playboy, Elle and JANE, among others, and has appeared on CNN, the FOX Morning Show and Late Night with David Letterman. In 2004, she authored the infamous and critically acclaimed memoir "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper." Most recently she wrote and co-created a half-hour series, The United States of Tara, to be executive produced by Steven Spielberg for Showtime. The pilot is beginning pre-production with plans to shoot later this year. Cody is also working on her second book and various top-secret spec scripts.

WHO EXACTLY IS THIS GIRL?
Born in the imaginative mind of novelist-turned screenwriter Diablo Cody, Juno is a unique character unlike any of her screen peers from coming of age films in the past. She's frank yet funny, charming yet self-confident. Whether sharing with Leah intimate details of losing her virginity or breaking the news of her pregnancy to her parents, Juno commands attention with her brutal honesty and sharp tongue. After being pressed to write a screenplay, Diablo did a survey of recent teen films and found there was an opening for a little girl with a big attitude. "I was sitting in my house in Minnesota and I was thinking to myself, what's a story that I haven't seen," detailed Diablo. "So much of the stuff I was watching was totally derivative."
Putting Juno on the page took Diablo back to a place she had experienced in her own youth. "It was incredibly natural," Diablo said of pulling together the pieces of the story and the nuances of each character. "It was like breathing. I did see Juno as an extension of myself."
Not to mention an extension of the conversations and situations she saw while growing up. Part of the film's appeal is the frank and funny dialogue Juno and her friends have about sex, inspired in part by Diablo. "My friends and I were like Juno and Leah. We talked about sex all the time. That was an actual discussion I had with a friend of mine when we were 16. It may be shocking to some people but it's quite realistic."
Sex aside, there is more to Juno than the underage action that gets her pregnant in the first place. For the film's talented star Ellen Page, Juno is an atypical teen. "The part of Juno is an extremely well-written teenage girl, which is not the easiest thing to find. She is honest but original, completely devoid of stereotype, which is the most fantastic thing for an actress. My work is really just about connecting to her and trying to make her way of speech and her dialogue -- and her relationships -- authentic. I've found that comes through when you trust the people you're working with, and you just dive into it."

THE BIRTH OF JUNO
JUNO would not have made it to the page in the first place if it hadn't been for the team of filmmakers who worked tirelessly to bring her to the big screen. It started with producer Mason Novick who, while surfing the Internet, discovered an Internet blog penned by Diablo Cody. He was immediately struck by her humorous writing, hailed for its singularly feminine, ultra-contemporary and utterly candid nature. "As a movie producer I read a lot that is supposed to be funny but is usually pretty terrible," Novick explained. "So every day for about six months I read her blog, and every day it made me laugh. So, I called her out of the blue, and said, 'hey, I'm a producer, I live in Los Angeles, I read your blog every day and it makes me laugh. Have you ever thought about writing a screenplay?' And she said, 'I've thought about it, but I've never, you know, never really done it.'"
But what she had already done is write a memoir titled "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper." The two discussed the tome and Novick sent a "Candy Girl" draft to a New York book agent who in turn sold it to Gotham Books. "By then we were talking about Diablo adapting CANDY GIRL for the screen," Novick recalls, "and I pointed out that she would need a sample screenplay so the studios could see that she could do it. A couple of months later she called and said 'The sample script's ready,' and she sent me JUNO. I read it in one sitting and I was blown away. The script we are shooting today is pretty much the script I read back then, which almost never happens. The heart of the story and the characters just all popped off the page."
Novick brought the project to Mandate's creative executive Jim Miller in May, 2005 and it was the recognition that this was a screenplay of extraordinary originality that spurred the commitment of Mandate Pictures' Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane through all stages of production.
It was Kahane, who along with Drake and Novick, brought the project to Mr. Mudd Productions' Lianne Halfon, Russell Smith and John Malkovich, whose previous work on GHOST WORLD seemed to make them a perfect match to Diablo's similarly distinctive voice.
Together, Mandate, Novick, and Mr. Mudd joined forces to find a director who would be the perfect complement to Cody's screenplay, in the kind of exhaustive search usually reserved for casting an actor in a lead role. Finally, in August, 2006 Jason Reitman was brought on to direct.
"We were approached by Mandate because they knew they had something special in the screenplay. And they wanted producers that would keep that intact on the screen," said Lianne Halfon. "Though studios were wowed by Diablo's script, they were leery of the subject matter and a director's ability to render that story with the necessary authenticity and emotion. We met fifty directors looking for the right match and when we met Jason, it was immediately clear we'd found the right person."
"The decision to work with Jason was easy. His passion for the project was immense. What we discovered was a funny, soulful filmmaker who was wildly talented," says Mr. Mudd partner Russ Smith.
Kahane stated, "Diablo's voice was one that resonated deeply with all of us at Mandate, and Jason's leadership from script to screen fulfilled the promise of the material."
Diablo Cody is definitely thrilled that Reitman brought her script to the big-screen. "I didn't expect it," she said, "which is why I was so incredibly thrilled when I heard he was interested, because THANK YOU FOR SMOKING showed what a talented, self-assured filmmaker he is. I just knew that when I handed this over I was going to feel this wonderful sense of security, and that's been the case. I don't know what appealed to him about this script, but I'm really glad that it did."
Novick concludes that the film is ripe with feelings and situations that are very current and relevant in today's world. "Diablo really taps into how kids talk, and how grownups talk around kids, and she nails specific characters in their own worlds without it ever feeling phony. I think it's her voice that makes JUNO a teen movie that doesn't talk down to teenagers."

CASTING JUNO: BREAKING THE MOLD
Casting is always a crucial component of successfully translating a script to the silver screen. With JUNO, the filmmakers had a tough task of finding the right actress to step into Juno's narrowly complex shoes. The fit had to be perfect for audiences to not only know who she was but also to welcome her - flaws and all - with open arms. Reitman knew that Ellen Page - known to indie audiences for her ferocious performance opposite Patrick Wilson in the controversial HARD CANDY - was the right choice for such a major challenge. Even if she makes it look easy.
"When you have great actors you want to get in there and let their faces tell the story. Ellen in particular does unbelievable, subtle little things with her face. I can give her 120 notes on each take and she hits all of them perfectly," Reitman explained.
"A lot of actors are good mimics, or they are method actors and do a lot of research, or they are naturally very charming," noted Reitman, while comparing Page to Meryl Streep. "What's different about Ellen, is that she knows what Juno would do, say or feel at any given moment, and she can turn it on and off like a light switch. It's incredible to watch."
Her co-stars unanimously agree. "She's just a beautiful and incredible actress," praised Jennifer Garner. "She's gonna just blow people out of the water; with this and again and again and again and again. She's going to be a very important actress."
Another important actress comes to mind when Allison Janney thinks of Page. "She reminds me of a young Audrey Hepburn. There is something beautifully feminine about her and yet she's playing this incredibly tough, cool character," she said. "She's fearless. I've just been so impressed with her and I adore her. I wish I got to work with her longer; she's amazing."
Jason Bateman concurs that the filmmakers got it right when they gave Ellen Page the part. "The movie sinks or swims based on how interesting Juno is," he said, "And fortunately they've got Ellen Page playing her and so you kind of sit back and watch her and she's our tour guide. She's a very non-acting actor and she sets a very, very good and consistent tone and we all take our cues off that."
It probably helped that Page led the way by falling in love with Juno and letting her character truly affect her. "I wanted to be Juno so badly, I was in awe of her," Page said before borrowing a bit of Juno's hip language. "The script rocks…I'm so grateful to be a part of JUNO."
She's also thankful for the upward swing her career has seen since HARD CANDY. "I've been really, really lucky lately. I've gotten to play so many different roles, even just this last year. It's been great. The opportunities have been amazing."
Chances are more than likely that her diversity of career choices will continue long into the future.

NEXT PAGE: THE CHARACTERS, THE LOOK OF JUNO, AND JUNO'S JOURNEY

THE ART OF ORIGINAL FILMMAKING

HOME