It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Scripter nod was a pretty decent clue that Zodiac was in play…
The Knocked Up nomination does not surprise me at all.
Will writers ultimately vote for Diablo Cody because she’s so successful, and because they can dream of her level of fame, or is the nom just a nod to her originality? You’d think they’d want to actually award someone who’s less amateurish and can craft a screenplay that doesn’t sound like actors reading excerpts from a blog.
Nice to see Knocked Up hasn’t been forgotten amongst all this Juno hype, and I hope that it will at least take away some if its votes and pave the way for Gilroy or Jenkins.
It would be ironic and sad if the only Oscar nom Zodiac manages to get is one for its screenplay, as it wasn’t one of the most notable aspects of the film.
I’m rooting for Gilroy.
I don’t know laz: maybe they’ll just vote for Cody because they actually like the script. They could be crazy like that.
As for Zodiac, if you’re operating under the belief that a screenplay is nothing more than what’s coming out of the actors’ mouths then you’re correct, the screenplay to Zodiac isn’t the most impressive thing about the film as the film is a procedural and most of what
“maybe they’ll just vote for Cody because they actually like the script”
If the members of the Writers Guild think her writing is the best work in the medium this year, they deserve every bad turn this strike has given them.
Also, ASD, I appreciate what you’re saying about Zodiac’s script, and certainly there’s credit due in terms of organizing that information and putting it into an engaging format. However, let’s not forget that a lot of people had a problem with this film (I personally loved it), and I think that blame rests more with the script than any choices made by Fincher.
Say what you want, laz, but Juno was far more entertaining and heartfelt than the overhyped Knocked Up.
TWBB and No Country have yet to open on this side of the Atlantic, so I can’t say with any personal opinion. But going on what I have read, Atonement faced pretty stiiff competition. Zodiac I think is amazing piece of work (the scrreenplays for Fincher’s films repeatedly get overlooked… Se7en was extremely good and Fight Club… “unfilmable novel”.)
Atonement was not my favourite film of last year… and it was not the best film I saw last year, but Hampton’s work was brilliant. The proverbial difficult (some saw unfilmable) novel. We all know he is an amazing writer… look at what he did with Dangerous Liasons, adapting his own play from anoher unfilmable book (the book is nothing but letters going back and forth!).
ManWithNoName, that Juno was more heartfelt and entertaining is subjective. Are you going to deny that Cody’s characters, at least for the first half, were talking in blogspeak, trying way too hard to be witty? Apatow threw just as many jokes at your face, but at least the characters saying them were believable. I found Knocked Up to be much more authentic, even if its actors didn’t sell the emotion in the final stretches of the film as well as Page and Garner did in their film.
Lazarus, you might be right about the first 1/4 of Juno (though your whole obsession with labelling it blogspeak is already tiring), but at least it grew into something more. Knocked Up was the same boring stupid drug/sex jokes from beginning to end. It felt neither authentic nor funny. While I don’t like Juno enough for a win, I agree that it’s waaay better than KU.
I honestly wished they would have cut Rainn Wilson’s lines – just terribly forced and unconvincing. Otherwise, I was fine with the film. Definitely better after the 1/4 mark, as Me said, but to think that shite in Knocked Up was funny or authentic is laughable. It felt like a bad sitcom, especially the is-he-or-isn’t-he cheating subplot.
I’m so happy that Judd Apatow got nominated. I’m not surprised (“The 40 Year-Old Virgin” was nominated previously, making him the only repeat nominee in his category). I really hope that either he, Tony Gilroy or Tamara Jenkins get the award.
I’m not a fan of “Juno” or “Lars.” The difference between the dialog of “Juno” and “Knocked Up” is that I believed the latter because went it came to the out-there conversations and quips the characters were trying to be funny–to get a laugh from other characters. They weren’t trying to make US laugh but we were laughing with them, when we weren’t laughing at how oblivious they were. I felt like a lot of the dialog in “Juno” was skewed to the audience and it just felt so written and awkward to watch a lot of the time (for instance, when “Juno” calls the abortion clinic). Rarely was there an occasion in “Juno” where the dialog was believable to the moment at hand.
Though “Juno” went sour for me in the third act, with making an easy target of Jason Bateman’s character. They set up him with this out-of-nowhere development that I didn’t buy for a second. And as soon as it’s revealed he’s dropped without further explanation. He’s the fall guy for the script, to send the characters off in the directions they need to be while the script makes him expendable. It’s just mean, like a lot of the scrip. How about that scene involving the sonogram technician and her most unauthentic comment? It’s so obvious that she was set up just so the writer can make the stepmom cool by bitching the technician out.
Yet I find “Knocked Up” far more believable and thoughtful than “Juno.” Just compare the characters that Paul Rudd and Jason Bateman played in each and you’d have a grand example of how “Knocked Up” is vastly superior.
I feel obligated to chime in because I, shock shock, liked both Juno and Knocked Up! Almost equally! At least, enough to not pit them each other just because they’re both about pregnancy!
Apatow sometimes has a slightly sitcommy sensibility, but he’s able to ground that in recognizable human behavior; the jokes his characters make aren’t really perfectly timed wisecracks. They sound like funnier-than-average people talking and fighting and all that.
But that doesn’t mean every smart comedy should sound that way and Juno is “less authentic” for not being like Knocked Up. The quippiness of a few of the supporting characters in Juno was mildly distracting, but for the most part I accepted that this is how Juno and her friends talked. It didn’t sound like “blogspeak” to me; it just sounded like wiseass dialogue — stylized, but appropriate to the characters. Do real hitmen talk about cheeseburgers and TV shows? I liked listening to those characters; I like listening to the improv-y dialogue in Apatow’s films, too. Any movie that actually gives attention to dialogue is already on my good side. Juno does it one better by actually making it relevant to the film’s themes.
Joseph, I thought the development with Bateman’s character was pretty brilliant and a logical extension of what are initially his attractive qualities. I felt bad for his character; I didn’t feel manipulated into hating him. As for him being “dropped”… the movie is from Juno’s point of view, so further scenes with him aren’t really necessary. I mean, Garner only has a scene or two more after he does.
The sonogram tech thing may be manipulative, but I don’t think the script or direction does what so many weaker films do in similar situations, which is to fully villainize the fake antagonist in that situation. What the tech says is only mildly insensitive, and Janney’s character does sort of “emotionally abuse” her, as Juno notes later. It’s touching not because she’s telling off some sonogram tech; it’s touching because of her protectiveness of her step-daughter. The humor, for me, was in that fervor she had, not that the sonogram-tech character really needed to be taken down a peg.
If anything, I’d give the actual writing edge to Diablo Cody — in this instance anyway — because (a.) Apatow’s movies are improv-heavy and, more importantly, (b.) I felt like Juno had a better narrative drive than Knocked Up, which, like 40-Year-Old Virgin (though not to the same degree) occasionally feels like the last few episodes of TV season rather than a well-told story. It works fine for those films, but it gives the script a shaggier quality. I prefer the Superbad script for a similar reason (though, again, I love all three of these movies and see no reason to declare allegiance to one in particular).
As I’ve said before, is it possible that Juno isn’t trying to sound realistic? Or is that some crazy far-fetched intergalactic idea?
The nom for Knocked Up isn’t surprising in the least (although Dave put it in “” for a reason) because they’ve previously nominated both 40-Year-Old Virgin and Mean Girls so they obviously don’t care about the stigma.
Billy Wilder’s movies – especially his later ones – don’t sound especially ‘realistic’ either, but they’re still great screenwriting, because Wilder and his collaborators _own_ the speech patterns of their characters, and because the movies are deep and insightful and meaningful. I’d say based on those criteria, Diablo Cody is about 2/3 there.
Sorry, Joseph, those plot contrivances are going to be ignored by the rah-rah crowd because Juno is written by a Strong Unique, Female voice in screenwriting! Because she’s turning the tables by making Jennifer Garner’s character the sympathetic one! Which would have been refreshing had they not dumped Bateman so unceremoniously. We could also talk about the hasty development of Cera’s character as well, but at least they bothered to keep him around for the climax. I half
That scene with the sonogram technician is one of those cheap audience shots that, if it were in some mainstream film, would get laughed away by many of the people trumpeting Juno’s quality. A cardboard villain verbally dressed down by a main character? YEAH!! You tell her, Alison Janney! Sorry, Jesse, but your rationalization of the scene doesn’t work for me. Had the technician actually elaborated on her position and had some kind of discussion, it would have given the whole film (and Janney’s response) a bit more weight. But they have her making some totally inappropriate, unprofessional, and unreleastic remark solely so Janney can lay into her.
I call bullshit. And the difference between Pulp Fiction (your comparison) and Juno is that the hitmen are simply talking about the mundane. Unlike most films with these characters, they aren’t talking about their profession, but day-to-day shit. They also aren’t creating witticisms out of thin air that seem completely inappropriate to their stations in life, unless you consider “I’m the foot fucking master!” as forced as “desperately seeking spawn!” or “honest to blog!” (quite possibly the most meta-phony and worst line I’ve ever heard), or “Phuket, Thailand”.
Also, Rainn Wilson should be drawn and quartered for that cameo.
I dunno, Lazarus… Aaron Sorkin indulges in the cardboard-dressing-down thing all the time, including in Charlie Wilson’s War, and I don’t feel that he’s particularly called-out for it by critics (well, I guess I’m doing it now, and he certainly has his share of detractors, but I don’t think it’s always something that gets policed when Juno gets a pass).
As I said, I think your argument is weakened by the fact that the sonogram tech’s comment is mildly, rather than wildly, unprofessional/inappropriate/etc. She basically says that it’s good this teenage mother-to-be has a plan worked out… which can obviously be interpreted in a snide way. Janney’s character overreacts in such a strong, maternal way that the audience cheers anyway — basically, Cody and Reitman get away with what *could* be something horribly manipulative because they *don’t* particularly make the tech a snarling villain waiting to be taken down. And Juno calls Brenda a dick (albeit affecionately) afterward! I don’t see how that’s not at least somewhat acknowledging the situation. I mean, it’s not my favorite scene in the movie. But the deck isn’t as stacked as you’re saying, not nearly.
I don’t think the “out of thin air” witticisms (which, again, see Sorkin and many other writers for examples of “inappropriate” witticisms that exist because, gasp, they’re actually fun to listen to) seem inappropriate at all. Isn’t part of the movie’s point to show the way that Juno deals with her situation at first? It sounds like you basically find the movie’s whole approach to its story fundamentally dishonest because it’s not Stephanie Daley or something. Characters finding laughs in a serious situation in a comedy! What’s next, a comedy that somehow also takes its characters seriously?!
I agree Rainn Wilson’s cameo sucked, but think about it. There was no guarantees with JUNO in terms of it finding an audience. You put someone with a bigger, hip name in the film, even in a cameo, and you have some more credibility to work with. Especially on the festival circuit and then later in commercials. He was in every early trailer, wasn’t he?
Come on, jesse, now you’re building a straw man argument. I didn’t say Juno should have been some kind of docudrama or that there isn’t an opportunity for humor, I just think they’re pulling these lines out of thin air, and you can practically picture Cody off camera feeding them the lines. Forget realistic, they’re not natural. Once the film tones that down it does manage to be moving; I’m not trying to rob the thing of all merit. But I think the actors really deserve the credit for selling what at times is a bit flimsy.
And I still think the handling of the male characters is weak, including the father. Where’s his sonogram scene? Garner’s character gets a lot more shading than Simmons’ “find someone who loves you for you” cliche. Hell, I’m surprised the film didn’t end with Cody and Page playing guitar on the front stoop instead of Cera and Page.
The movie is called Juno, right? So maybe it’s permissable for it mainly to be about Juno, and maybe a little facile to spend a lot of time wondering “where’s Jason Bateman?? Where’s a bigger scene for Juno’s dad??” I don’t really see anything wrong with the more shaded characters being female after seeing so many terrific movies that nonetheless barely have any female characters period, nevermind shaded ones! Cera isn’t as shaded because he’s the sweet love interest — you may recognize this part from the female role in roughly half or more American movies from the last bunch of decades.
I didn’t feel that the lines were being pulled out of thin air. The characters of Juno and Leah talk in a non-sequiter, wiseassy sort of way and you can see how two good friends who talk like that would feed off of each other. More than that, Page sells those lines.
There’s sort of a wisecracky way that Juno’s parents talk, too, which is laid on perhaps a little too thickly or similarly to the kids, but it’s still not precisely the same way of talking).
Nor do I feel that I’m constructing a straw-man argument by asking if the movie should be more realistic in your eyes. To me, the distinction that it’s OK for Tarantino’s characters to talk in a stylized way because they’re making small-talk but it’s not OK for Cody because it’s about more important stuff (even though the movie is about an unexpected shift into “more important stuff”). I’m not putting Cody on Tarantino’s level. But there’s a lot more to her than funny dialogue and there’s a lot more to her funny dialogue than mindless quips.
I feel like comedy with any kind of skill or style or individual sensibility really brings out the pickiness in people, maybe moreso than other strong filmmaking. Juno is too cutesy and overwritten, the Coen Brothers comedies are too shrill and condescending, Napoleon Dynamite is too condescending and derivative, Wes Anderson is too fussy and cute, Apatow is too sitcommy and overlong. There’s a kind of weird begging for more austerity in material that doesn’t call for it in the least.
Sorry, cut myself off there – I meant to say that the distinction you’re making between Tarantino’s and Cody’s characters is an arbitrary one.
My problem with the Bateman twist is that there’s nothing prior to it that would validate it. There’s no hesitation over anything. The one lone scene between him and Garner is about painting the baby’s room, and even then there’s nothing to it. He lives an all too comfortable life, working on his own time, that’s STILL greatly associated with his dream (meaning that if he was to pursue it still he’d easily have an in). If he was selling insurance 50 hours a week door to door I’d buy that. And WHY would the Bateman character want to hang around Juno and grow more comfortable with her when the plot twist should suggest the exact opposite. He shouldn’t be so at ease with her when she’s pregnant with his adoptive baby.
I get it, it’s “Juno,” about Juno, etc. But if a character throws a monkey wrench into the whole plot and the movie doesn’t validate their actions then it’s weak. It’s even weaker that they paint him as a stereotype, and show only one more scene featuring him that showcases him as a bastard. I wrote a blog about “Knocked Up” being the feminist picture and “Juno” being the sexist one, in comparison. But the more I think about the Bateman character maybe “Juno” is sexist all on it’s own.
You really think there’s *nothing* earlier in the movie that validates the “twist”? It’s not like he winds up having multiple personalities. Let’s see, there’s the scene where he talks about how Garner gave him “a room” for his stuff. There’s the scene in the baby’s room – how is there “nothing” to that scene? It shows hesitation – that’s all, but it does show it. How many more scenes do you want? If you honestly watch the movie and feel that the development with Bateman comes out of absolutely NOWHERE (I mean, even if you want to say his character is a stereotype, wouldn’t the development actually fit in with that stereotype??), then I don’t know what to say; I absolutely bought it. I was disappointed in him as a “person,” but I bought it.
The other stuff you’re calling out as inconsistencies makes sense to me, too. He likes Juno and isn’t hesitant to hang out with her because he reminds him of his youth (because she doesn’t really act like you’d expect a pregnant teenager to act), has cool taste, etc.
Do you mean the movie is sexist against men? Because I don’t think any of the important characters in Juno are ever painted in purely negative terms. The audience feels that Bateman is a bit of a bastard, sure, but I, at least, didn’t come out of it hating his character. I felt pity towards him. The other prominent men in the movie, Bleek and Juno’s dad, are depicted as… caring. Maybe you could argue that they’re too good to be true, but I don’t see how that’s sexist. So is the movie sexist because some of its female characters are more detailed? I’m interested in reading the post, though.
Couldn’t agree with jesse more on this issue. From the very first scene with Bateman, we notice that he doesn’t urge Juno to go back downstairs to discuss the serious issue at hand. Instead, he wants to hang with her in his room and play guitar. His wife has to come get him and bring him back to “reality.”
When Juno comes over the first time, there is mild interest in the baby and major excitement over discussing trivial pop culture.
Nobody else bought his line/excuse about not thinking the ad in the local paper would garner any responses? I mean, if you were reluctant to go along with this adoption scenario, you wouldn’t think an ad in the paper at least appeases the wife while allowing you to comfortably believe it will never happen?
Also, the bastard thing to do would be to stay with Garner, have the baby, and divorce her in ten years when he becomes ever more bitter.
In fact, ManWithNoName, in the scene where Juno and her dad first mention the PennySaver ad, my reading of Garner’s reaction was that she was a little surprised that they were responding to an ad – that she had wanted something a little more serious, and Bateman just carelessly placed an ad less likely to attract strong candidates. A subtle thing, but having seen the movie a couple of times, I’m pretty sure it’s there.
I think it
I guess I just never read Bateman as a bad guy, per se, and didn’t feel the movie was resorting to stereotyping to get me to see him that way (I’m still not 100% sure what stereotype you’re referring to – the man-child stereotype? That might be a *type* but I don’t know if it’s a *stereotype* and if it is, I think the Knocked Up template follows it just as closely: man-child learns to grow up when responsibility is thrust upon him. Is that really so much more revolutionary than a man-child *reverting* when responsibility is thrust upon him?).
Even when Garner says “aren’t you the cool guy?” — yeah, she’s being sarcastic, but it doesn’t sound mean. It sounds ribbing, and a little sad. But that really is the end to his story; the movie isn’t about what he does with his loft or whatever. He’s made his choice. I don’t know that we’re prompted to hate him or dismiss him for that.
The room thing out of context, sure, might not be a big deal. But you look at the rest of their house, and it’s all white walls and tasteful photos of them in white… it’s obvious that this was something she handled and he sort of went along with. The house isn’t decorated in a “fun” or quirky way – not like, say, Juno’s room (which is a messy teenager’s room, yes, but isn’t that sort of the point?).
Finally, as for the details of the ad, I assumed the previous mothers had been tried through other, more conventional means, and that Garner’s character felt some dismay with the Pennysaver approach. If he placed the ad without telling her — say they had mentioned it as a possibility but she didn’t know he had gone ahead and placed it without her sign-off — that to me would clear up a lot of your questions. He wouldn’t tell her precisely because he wouldn’t want her nitpicking it and obsessing over it.
As for Paulie: to my mind, they’re divided because Juno hasn’t really admitted romantic feelings for him — not because of what of others would think but because of her trying to stay cool and detached. Paulie does want something: he’s wanted Juno the entire time, but she’s hidden her feelings with a lot of casualness and defensive sarcasm. Honestly, if someone was to tell me that a particular movie is sexist because the female characters are there mostly for plot, I’d probably roll my eyes; the movie in question may be limited or underdeveloped or careless or cliched or dull, but “sexist,” to me, is kind of an extreme and loaded term. As such, I can’t accept the same charges for Juno, that it’s “sexist” because it “uses” the male character for plot (I don’t necessarily agree that it does… but even if it did, I don’t really see the problem… unless that it’s more sexist to use men that way than women!).
My apologies for getting into a lot of minor point-by-point stuff above. Now, I liked Knocked Up a lot, but I could totally see someone dismissing the Paul Rudd/Leslie Mann scenes as sitcommish. I wouldn’t really agree, mind you, because I agree with you that their scenes, especially later on, have real sting. But what do their scenes really amount to? He wants time to himself, she feels neglected, he realizes in Vegas that his marriage’s biggest “problem” is that his wife actually wants to spend time with him, and they are nicer to each other in the birthday party scene. Applying the same dissection you’re applying to Juno, one could ask: but how is anything actually going to change? They just magically act more reasonable to each other now? Why did it take them ten years to do that? Also, if you’re talking about sexism through stereotyping… you don’t think Knocked Up indulges in just a liiiiittle bit of that? (Women are scolds! Men like sports and goofing off!) Of course, I didn’t find it sexist because I believed those characters — as I did with Juno.
Just chiming in here: I didn’t really like Juno, but I thought it got a lot more interesting when Garner and Bateman arrived on screen. I didn’t this his character’s turn was arbitrary or unreal– in fact, I saw it coming, because he was clearly a little ambiguous about it all from the beginning. It was the one part of the movie that really worked for me.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite enough to counter the contrived dialogue, overbearing hipster indie aesthetic, or grating soundtrack.
Oops. “didn’t this his” = “didn’t think his”
Holy shit! Am I a hipster??? I immediately bought the Juno soundtrack when I got back from the movie. I like the occasional latte.
On the flip side, I don’t wear t-shirts with company logos on them to be ironic. Springsteen is far and away my favorite musician. I’m in law school and trying to BECOME the Man, not fight Him and his corporate ideals.
It sounds like you might be afflicted with hipsterism. Consult your physician.