Juno

Casting to "Type": A Mini Sort-of-Review of Juno


Girls Are Getting It Together

I've finally managed to catch up with the rest of the Unites States and see Juno.

It's very good, and sort of elevated me a little, at a time when I felt like I needed it. So, anyway, here're my thoughts on all this:

1) Diablo Cody, I think, is America's J.K. Rowling. Same difference, right? While - in real life - J.K. was a single mother sitting in a cafe writing the fantasy story of an underdog teenage boy, we have D.C. the stripper sitting in a cafe, writing the single-mother story of an underdog teenage girl. Both women wildly successful, both turning their inner demons into outer dollars. Message to J.K. and Diablo: send me the instruction manual on this, please.

2) Ellen Page, I think, is our new Carrie Fisher. There is something a little unearthly about Ellen Page. She just seems too centered for her age, with that same precocious, sardonic gravity that Carrie Fisher first exhibited all those years ago, slugging it out in the Trash Compactor. Of course, Carrie turned out to be a wild drunk, which she later turned into a smashing success by writing a fictional tell-all of growing up the daughter of a famous but nutty mother. Maybe Carrie belongs with the others in point #1 above. Message to Ellen Page: I love you, don't change - unless you are secretly a raging depressive drunk, in which case you better start learning how to type.

3) The movie was so sweet. It was nice to see a tale about someone in trouble who takes it all with a grain of salt, who has a vaguely supportive, non-moralizing family. The movie doesn't end up being about bad choices and how life can tragically unravel (which is the story I would probably write), it ends up being more about the (in)stability and craziness of love, and just finding someone in this world who makes sense for you and nobody else. Message to God: hello, still waiting.

4) It makes me think I should become pregnant - an impossibility, really. Or at least getting myself into some sort of female trouble - still an impossibility. Whatever. But, between J.K., and Diablo and Carrie Fisher and even Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame (and - fuck it - let's also throw in the adorably successful I-survived-my-drunken-mess-childhood Drew Barrymore), it really seems that there is some secret roadmap for women to turn adversity to advantage. Message to all: call me, I could really use some pointers on turning my trash into treasure, even if - as Juno would say - I have the wrong kind of junk.

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