Whoa, baby

Ellen Page, centre, stars as a pregnant teenager in the comedy Juno. (Doane Gregory/Fox Searchlight)

A certain amount of hyperbole is to be expected during any celebrity interview, especially the junket variety, where journalists are herded like livestock to their closely clock-watched, 10-minute audience with a sound-bite-spewing star or self-satisfied director. Expect to hear things like “brilliant” or “genius” or “the most talented cast in the world.”

A sit-down chat with Ellen Page and Diablo Cody, the star and screenwriter, respectively, of the charming new comedy Juno, is no exception. They praise, they gush, they swoon.

“I was blown away when I read the script,” Page says, her pixie-sized frame curled up in an armchair in a plush Toronto hotel suite. The 20-year-old actress plays the title character, a pregnant, teenaged misfit who decides to put her baby up for adoption. “I immediately fell head over heels in love with [Juno]. She’s the most honest and inspiring character I’ve ever had the good fortune to portray.”

Beside her, Cody beams from beneath the bangs of her Louise Brooks bob and says, “I never get tired of hearing you say that,” before launching into a compliment offensive of her own. “I was super freaked out about meeting Ellen. A lot of people find her intimidating because she’s very well read and well spoken and has this compelling talent. And the whole movie is on her shoulders. You get the wrong person and it becomes a fiasco. Ellen Page is the difference between a potentially horrible movie and great one.”

The pair is equally enthusiastic about their director, Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking). “He’s so incredibly lovely,” Page says before Cody jumps in to add, “and generous. [The film] is a real shared vision. Jason is arguably more feminine than I am, so he brought a lot of sensitivity and estrogen to the final product, whereas I’m a lot more cynical.”

As precious as all this may sound in the reporting, in person, it actually comes across as genuine. Maybe that’s because Page and Cody aren’t the typical West Coast players. Page is a Halifax native who’s been acting in Canadian films (Pit Pony, Marion Bridge) since she was a kid. In 2005, she made her furious American debut at the Sundance Film Festival with the indie horror thriller Hard Candy. A ringer for a young Sigourney Weaver, Page played a vigilante teen exacting some seriously emasculating revenge on a pedophile. Since then, the sought-after actress has taken roles in an upcoming X-Men sequel, as well as Bruce MacDonald’s twisty feature The Tracey Fragments.

Cody’s arrival in Hollywood is even more unexpected. A couple of years ago, the 29-year-old writer (née Brook Busey) was blogging about her experiences as a lap dancer at a Minneapolis strip club when her postings caught the attention of an agent, who got her a book deal and encouraged her to pen a screenwriting sample. It became the basis for Juno. After the glowing response to the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and its best-picture win at the Rome Film Festival, Cody’s now working on a Steven Spielberg-produced TV series for Showtime and has three film scripts currently in development.

In each other, Page and Cody seem to have found a kindred spirit. They’re both Tinseltown rising stars who find the idea of celebrity a little ridiculous, and they’re smart, independent women in an industry that still struggles to find something useful for female characters to do other than dangle off a hero’s arm. No one is more shocked than Page and Cody that their whimsical film is drawing comparisons to quirky indies like the Oscar-nominated Little Miss Sunshine and raunchy hits like Knocked Up.

“I am so surprised by the response,” Cody says. “In general, you take the subject matter of teenage pregnancy and adoption and combine that with the fact that this is a small story with no exploding robots and that it was written by a first-time screenwriter — it’s unbelievable. I knew we were making something special and I was proud of the film, but I was not expecting the magnitude of the reaction.”

Page, left, and screenwriter Diablo Cody attend the premiere of Juno at the Rome Film Festival in Italy. (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

It’s difficult not to love Juno, a hyper-verbal, indie-music-loving teenager whose sweet-and-salty anthem is Anyone But You by the Moldy Peaches. She’s a character who owes an equal debt to My So Called Life’s Angela Chase, Ghost World’s Enid and Rebecca and Superbad’s Seth and Evan. Michael Cera, who stars in Superbad, plays Juno’s babydaddy, Bleeker, a mild soul in wispy gym shorts and sweatbands. In fact, everyone is lovable in this film, from Juno’s deadpan parents (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney) to the yuppie couple she chooses to adopt her baby (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman). Juno’s take on adoption is humanely balanced — Garner, in particular, is sympathetic and convincing as a woman yearning to be a mother.

Cody’s real-life husband is an adoptee, and she spent a long time researching adoption and reading stories of adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents in order to make the story ring true. “My husband reunited with his birth parents last year, which was a really interesting experience, and he’s also extraordinarily close to his [adoptive] parents. I think I was able to be diplomatic and fair to everyone in the film because I saw it from all sides.”

What is likely to stir up some controversy is how the film handles abortion. At first, Juno plans to terminate her pregnancy, but she backs out once she gets to the clinic. That the decision is hers and hers alone is presented as a given. Director Judd Apatow frustrated some critics for skirting the issue in Knocked Up; having Juno, a savvy, liberated 16-year-old, first consider and then opt out of an abortion might rile those on both sides of the reproductive choice debate.

“Oddly enough,” Page says, “I didn’t even think about it. Maybe because I’m used to doing films that are outlandish or deal with certain taboo subjects. It’s only been since we made the film that abortion has come up as an issue.”

Cody says she didn’t consider any potential controversy at the start. “When I was writing the script, I was trying to capture the experience as authentically as I could. And I couldn’t imagine a girl Juno’s age and in Juno’s position not considering abortion. So it never occurred to me not to depict that in the film. But I wasn’t making a statement. I think her decision to carry the baby to term was not political, but personal.”

Now that they’ve found each other, Cody and Page are eager to work together again. “Jason [Reitman] calls me all the time to bat around ideas,” Cody says. “He always starts with, ‘OK, I have an idea for a movie for Ellen Page.’ None of his ideas do not involve Ellen. At this point, we’ve got an Ellen Page bank robber movie and a movie where Ellen Page is somebody’s aunt. I think Jason just wants to make Ellen Page movies for the rest of his life. And I’m more than willing to write them.”

Page looks over at Cody with a big grin. “That’s cool. Let’s do it. Let’s Christopher Guest it.”

Juno opens across Canada on Dec. 14.

Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.

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