Women on the surge: How Ellen Page and Diablo Cody made the smartest comedy of the season
"I might be the only accidental screenwriter in Hollywood."
Diablo Cody's assessment of her career path sounds conveniently pithy, but it rings true. The former proofreader from Chicago moved to Minneapolis, became a full-time stripper and wrote a book (Candy Girl) and a blog (diablocody.blogsplot.com) about the experience. Her writing attracted the notice of Hollywood producer Mason Novick, who suggested she try her hand at a screenplay.
The result is Juno, a sparkling comedy about a high-school student (Halifax's Ellen Page) who finds herself with child and, after an aborted attempt at abortion, decides to give the baby up for adoption to a pair of yuppies played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman. The director is Jason Reitman (2005's Thank You for Smoking).
The writer and the star are small but intimidatingly sharp. Page followed up her role as a disarmingly self-assured 14-year-old in 2005's Hard Candy with a part in X-Men 3 and three Toronto filmfest premieres this year: The Tracey Fragments, The Stone Angel and Juno. Cody (birth name: Brook Busey) is, at 29, the second-youngest person on Entertainment Weekly's just-published list of the 50 smartest people in Hollywood. (The youngest is Canada's Sarah Polley.) Meeting them in a Toronto hotel combines the most nerve-wracking elements of a date and a job interview.
Page, peering out from beneath a tattered woolen cap, turned 20 this year but could easily pass for the 16-year-old she plays in Juno. She looks bored, but comes alive whenever a question comes her way. Asked to name her favourite films, she rattles off Hairspray, Once and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as well as Terrence Malick's Badlands, Truffaut's The 400 Blows and City of God, before worrying aloud that she sounds too mainstream.
Page says that when she first read Cody's script, "I was absolutely blown away; best thing I ever read. I became obsessive about playing this character. When a role really speaks to me and makes my heart jump I want to play them."
Cody's idea for the script started with a single image and flowed from there. "I was intrigued by the idea of this teenaged girl who was pregnant, and of the parents auditioning." She's quick to share the spotlight for the film's raucous reception from film festival audiences. "I could not have written it as successfully as Jason Bateman delivered it," she says of the awkward dialogue between the pregnant teen and the childless couple in the film.
And putting Bateman in the role? "I would credit that to the genius of Jason Reitman. I trusted him [with casting]. I didn't want to assume that responsibility at all."
The words are hers, however, and they crackle. At a recent preview screening in Toronto, audience members were laughing so hard at times that followup lines couldn't be heard. "One of the biggest challenges for a novice writer is to keep the voices distinct," Cody says. She used the trick of reading through the script with the names blocked out and asking, "Is there anybody else in this film who could be saying this? And the answer should be no."
Reitman's commitment was as fast and forceful as Page's. "He read the script early on and wanted to do it right away," Cody says. Seemingly diametric opposites - Cody, the ex-stripper from Minneapolis, is the ultimate outsider; Reitman is the son of director Ivan, who has stars on Canada's and Hollywood's Walks of Fame - the two nevertheless meshed quite well on Juno.
"Not only was I permitted to be on set but I was welcome," Cody says. "It was educational and very emotionally fulfilling. A movie is collaborative by nature." Although she had never written the screenplay for a film, "if you watch enough of them you get the innate rhythms." Anyone can recognize a three-act structure that goes off the rails, she maintains, even if they don't know the jargon. Her own favourite films are horrors (Rosemary's Baby among others) as well as The Graduate, which she calls "an inspiration to everyone who makes small, dark comedies."
Cody has since written the pilot for Steven Spielberg's The United States of Tara, also directed by Reitman and airing on Showtime next year, and Warner Bros. is said to have an interest in whatever screenplay she concocts next. "It's probably the best place to be an ex-stripper," she says of Los Angeles, where she now lives. "There are some people who find it novel and delightful."
Page likes being able to play a teenage smartass - "There's an arrogance to being 16," she says of her role - but the woman whose nickname is "The tiny Canadian" clearly has issues with her youthful looks. "It's annoying in my everyday life," she says, "where I feel I suffer from ageism."
"Don't worry," Cody coos. "I'll write you a part as a 45-year-old chainsmoker."
Source: http://www.nationalpost.com/rss/story.html?id=146828
Robert Brealey
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