Juno is a 2007 American comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. Elliot Page stars as the title character, an independent-minded teenager confronting her unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her. Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney and J. K. Simmons also star. Filming took place in February and March of 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia. It premiered on September 8 at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, receiving a standing ovation.
Juno won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and earned three other nominations for Best Picture, Best Director for Reitman, and Best Actress for 20-year old Page (who was presenting as female at the time, and is the sixth-youngest nominee in the category). The film's soundtrack, featuring several songs performed by Kimya Dawson in various guises, was the first chart-topping soundtrack since 2006's Dreamgirls and Fox Searchlight's first number-one soundtrack. Juno earned back its initial budget of $6.5 million in twenty days, the first nineteen of which were when the film was in limited release. It went on to earn $232.3 million worldwide. Juno received acclaim from critics, many of whom placed the film on their top-ten lists for the year. It has received criticism and praise from members of both the anti-abortion and abortion rights communities regarding its treatment of abortion.
Plot In Elk River, Minnesota, 16-year-old high-schooler Juno MacGuff discovers she is pregnant after sleeping with her friend and longtime admirer Paulie Bleeker. Originally intending to get an abortion, Juno visits a local women's clinic and encounters a schoolmate outside, who is holding a one-person anti-abortion vigil. Once inside, Juno finds herself unable to go through with the procedure and decides to give the baby up for adoption. With the help of her friend Leah, Juno searches the ads in the Pennysaver and finds a childless married couple she feels will provide a suitable home. She informs her father Mac and stepmother Bren of the pregnancy and her plan and they offer Juno their support. With Mac, Juno meets the couple, Mark and Vanessa Loring, in their expensive Saint Cloud home, and agrees to a closed adoption.
Mark works at home composing commercial jingles, having abandoned his rock band youth, which is now confined to memorabilia displayed in a single room of the house that Vanessa has designated for his personal belongings. Juno learns that she and Mark share tastes in punk rock and horror films, and starts visiting him frequently to hang out. One day, Juno and Leah run into Vanessa at the mall, where they watch her interact with children, looking completely content and in her element. Juno encourages Vanessa to talk to the baby in Juno's womb, which kicks for Vanessa.
As the pregnancy progresses, Juno struggles with her feelings for Paulie, whom she has maintained an outwardly indifferent attitude towards, but jealously arises after learning he has asked another girl to the upcoming prom. Paulie reminds Juno that she requested they remain distant, and tells her she broke his heart.
Shortly before her due date, Juno visits Mark again. Their interaction becomes emotional, culminating in Mark confiding that he plans on leaving Vanessa to figure his life out. Distraught by this, Juno implores him to change his mind. Mark questions her feelings for him and the intent behind her regular visits, revealing he is starting to develop an attraction to her. When Vanessa arrives home, Mark admits that he does not feel ready to be a father. Juno drives away and breaks down in tears by the side of the road. She then returns to the Lorings' home and leaves a note on the front porch.
After a heartfelt discussion with her father, Juno accepts that she is in love with Paulie. She confesses her feelings to him, and they share a kiss. Not long after, Juno goes into labor and is rushed to the hospital, where she gives birth to a baby boy. Despite having deliberately not told Paulie because of his track meet, he infers that she is giving birth after seeing her missing from the stands and rushes to the hospital, where he comforts her as she cries.
Vanessa comes to the hospital and joyfully claims the newborn boy as a single adoptive mother. On the wall in the baby's new nursery, Vanessa has framed Juno's note, which reads: "Vanessa: If you're still in, I'm still in. —Juno." The film ends in the summertime with Juno and Paulie, now in a happy relationship, playing guitar and singing together.
Cast
Elliot Page as Juno MacGuff, pregnant teenager and Paulie's girlfriend Michael Cera as Paulie Bleeker, the father of Juno's child and Juno's boyfriend Jennifer Garner as Vanessa Loring, Mark's wife and the prospective adoptive mother of Juno's child Jason Bateman as Mark Loring, Vanessa's husband and the prospective adoptive father of Juno's child Allison Janney as Bren MacGuff, Juno's stepmother J. K. Simmons as Mac MacGuff, Juno's father Olivia Thirlby as Leah, Juno's friend Eileen Pedde as Gerta Rauss, the Lorings' lawyer Rainn Wilson as Rollo, convenience store clerk Valerie Tian as Su-Chin, anti-abortion protester Emily Perkins as punk abortion clinic receptionist Ashley Whillans as Katrina De Voort
Production Development
American writer Diablo Cody was first approached to write a screenplay by film producer Mason Novick, who had previously landed her a book deal for her memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, after discovering her blog about stripping. He persuaded her to adapt the book for the screen, but suggested that she first write a screenwriting sample to show studios; that sample became Juno. After deciding on an adoption storyline, Cody collected the stories of adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents, including that of her then-husband, an adoptee who reunited with his birth parents after she wrote the film. She also found inspiration in the story of a close friend who had become pregnant in high school and used some details from her friend's experience in the film, such as mistreatment from an ultrasound technician. Much of Juno, however, was based on Cody's own high school experiences: She dated a tic-tac-loving boy similar to Paulie, she was best friends with a cheerleader like Leah, and she used a hamburger phone identical to the one that appears in the film. After writing the screenplay over seven weeks in the Starbucks section of a Target store in Crystal, Minnesota, Cody compared writing to breathing, seeing Juno as an extension of herself.
Novick sent Cody's screenplay to his friend Jason Reitman; by the time Reitman had read halfway through the script, he felt that if he did not direct the film, he would regret it for the rest of his life. Initially, Reitman found it difficult to acquire the script, because his first film, Thank You for Smoking (2005), had not been released yet, so he did not have any feature film credits. Other directors, including Jon Poll, were considered, but Reitman was chosen and he interrupted work on his own spec script in order to direct Juno. Cody says she had a cynical attitude when writing Juno ("I didn't ever think this film would be produced") and, indeed, the film was delayed by financial problems. After its controversial nature scared off a number of major studios, John Malkovich's production company, Mr. Mudd, took on the project. It was later brought to production company Mandate Pictures by co-producer Jim Miller. The funding originated from the United States.
Casting
Having admired his performance in Hard Candy, Reitman cast Page in the lead role, saying that when he read the screenplay for the first time he pictured Page as Juno. Reitman visited Page on the set of a film on which he was working to offer him the role. He also handed the script to J.K. Simmons, who had featured in his previous film, Thank You for Smoking, not telling him that he intended Simmons to play Mac. Simmons says that, after reading the script, he would have been happy to play even the high school teacher who has no speaking lines. Other cast members Reitman had "in mind right from the start" were Olivia Thirlby—who had originally unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Juno—and Michael Cera. He took them with Page and Simmons to a Panavision stage in California and shot 45 pages of the script on 35mm film against a black backdrop. He presented this footage to Fox Searchlight as the initial cast. Reitman highlighted the importance of doing a screen test instead of individual auditions, saying: "This is a movie that's all about relationships and the idea of auditioning people outside of each other, one-on-one with the casting director, didn't make sense."
Jennifer Garner, who accepted a lower salary than usual to prevent the film from exceeding its budget, was confirmed by Reitman to have signed onto the project in January 2007. After working with Jason Bateman on The Kingdom, Garner recommended him to Reitman when they first met; Bateman was cast as Mark, the last cast member to be signed. Lucas McFadden, better known as Cut Chemist, a DJ and record producer, makes a cameo appearance as Juno and Paulie's chemistry teacher. McFadden was doing scoring work for Reitman when he received the Juno screenplay and asked McFadden to appear in the film; Reitman thought that it was "perfect irony" for the chemistry teacher to be played by Cut Chemist.
Michael Cera stated that the film had "a lot of Canadian influence" due to the fact that he and Page were Canadian and that a lot of the other actors originated from Vancouver. Cera's comment was a response to a statement from Peter Howell of the Toronto Star: "I thought Juno was a very Canadian movie, even though it was set in the U.S."
Filming
Shooting on a budget of US$6.5 million, Juno was filmed in and around Vancouver, British Columbia, standing in for Minnesota, where production was originally intended to take place. Although films commonly use a Canada-as-America location shift for budgetary reasons, Reitman insists the choice of filming location was instead at his request. Filming locations included a house in nearby White Rock as Mark and Vanessa's home, Eric Hamber Secondary School as Dancing Elk High School, and South Surrey's Athletic Park track as Dancing Elk High School's athletics track.
After minimal rehearsal, filming took place in February and March 2007 on a six-week schedule, of which 30 days were designated to filming. The crew was planning to import snow for the film's winter events, but it snowed on location, and they were able to reschedule filming to shoot the winter scenes during snowfall, which second assistant director Josy Capkun says resulted in much wider snow shots than originally planned. Although the film was shot out of sequence, the final scene was scheduled for the final day and, after a long period of rain, the crew was intending to shut down production and resume months later to shoot the scene, set in summer, but the rain stopped and they were able to shoot the scene in the sun. That final scene depicted Juno and Paulie singing the Moldy Peaches' "Anyone Else but You", and band member Kimya Dawson visited the set to speak to Page and Cera while they were practicing the song.
Music The movie features several songs performed by Kimya Dawson as well as her bands Antsy Pants and the Moldy Peaches. According to director Jason Reitman, Page suggested the Moldy Peaches' work as fitting for Juno's character. Reitman recounts that Page:
went on my computer, played the songs, and I fell in love with it. Diablo and I discussed putting a Moldy Peaches song in it where the characters would sing to each other. I got in touch with Kimya Dawson of the Moldy Peaches and she started sending me her work, which was beautiful, and that became a lot of the soundtrack.