Juno (film)

Juno
File:Junoposter2007.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jason Reitman
Written by	Diablo Cody
Produced by	John Malkovich Lianne Halfon Mason Novick Russell Smith
Starring	Ellen Page Michael Cera Jennifer Garner Jason Bateman Allison Janney J. K. Simmons Olivia Thirlby
Cinematography	Eric Steelberg
Edited by	Dana E. Glauberman
Music by	Mateo Messina
Distributed by	Fox Searchlight
Release dates	September 1, 2007 (Telluride) December 5, 2007 (limited) December 25, 2007 (wide)
Running time	96 min.
Countries	Canada United States
Language	English
Budget	$6.5 million
Box office	$229,911,304

Juno is a 2007 American comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. Ellen Page stars as the title character, an independent-minded teenager confronting an unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her. Michael Cera, Olivia Thirlby, J.K. Simmons, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner, and Jason Bateman also star. Filming spanned from early February to March 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The film premiered on September 8 at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, receiving a standing ovation.

The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and earned three other Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Page. The film's soundtrack, featuring several songs performed by Kimya Dawson in various guises, was the first number one soundtrack since Dreamgirls and 20th Century Fox's first number one soundtrack since Titanic. Juno earned back its initial budget of $6.5 million in twenty days; during the first nineteen of which the film was in limited release. The film has gone on to earn more than 35 times that amount, becoming the highest grossing movie in distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures's history.

Juno received numerous positive reviews from critics, many of whom placed the film on their top ten lists for the year. The film has also received both criticism and praise from members of both the pro-life and pro-choice communities regarding its confrontation of abortion.

Plot

Sixteen-year-old Minnesotan high-schooler Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) discovers she is pregnant with a child fathered by her friend and longtime admirer, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). While at first she intends to have an abortion, she changes her mind and decides to make a plan for the child's adoption. With the help of her friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby), Juno searches the ads in the Pennysaver and finds a couple she feels will provide a suitable home. Along with her father, Mac (J. K. Simmons), Juno meets the couple, Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), in their expensive home and expresses a desire for a closed adoption.

Vanessa is extremely anxious around Juno and their initial interactions are uneasy. However, Juno and Leah happen to see Vanessa in a shopping mall being completely at ease with a child, and Juno encourages Vanessa to talk to Juno's baby in the womb, where it obligingly kicks for her. On the other hand, Juno more easily forms a friendship with Mark, with whom she shares tastes in punk rock and horror films. Mark, who has set aside his rock band youth (now confined to memorabilia displayed in the one room of the house allowed him by Vanessa), works at home composing commercial jingles. Juno hangs out with Mark a few times, ignoring a warning from her stepmother Bren (Allison Janney) that she should not spend time alone with a married man.

As the pregnancy progresses, Juno struggles with the emotions she feels for her baby's father, Paulie, who is clearly—although passively—in love with Juno. Juno maintains an outwardly indifferent attitude toward Paulie, but when she learns he has asked another girl to the prom, she is hurt and angrily confronts him. Paulie reminds Juno that it is at her request they remain distant and tells her that she broke his heart. He also suggests that she has feelings for him she is unable to admit.

Not long before her baby is due, Juno is again visiting with Mark when their interaction becomes strongly emotional. Mark then tells her that he will be leaving Vanessa. Vanessa arrives home, and, to her shock, Mark tells her he does not feel ready to be a father and that there are still things he wants to do first—dreams Vanessa does not share. Juno watches the Loring marriage fall apart, then drives away and cries by the side of the road before coming to a decision. Returning to the Lorings' home, she leaves a note.

After a heartfelt discussion with Mac, Juno accepts that she loves Paulie. Juno then tells Paulie that she loves him, and Paulie's actions make it clear that her feelings are reciprocated. At his track meet, when Paulie notices Juno is not in the stands and realizes she must be in labor, he rushes to the hospital to be with her (she had not told him because she did not want him to miss the meet). He arrives to find Juno has given birth to their son, and comforts Juno as she cries. Vanessa comes to the hospital where she 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—addressed only to her—which reads "Vanessa: If you're still in, I'm still in. —Juno." The film ends in the summertime with Juno and Paulie playing guitar and singing together, followed by a kiss.

Themes

"You can look at it as a film that celebrates life and celebrates childbirth, or you can look at it as a film about a liberated young girl who makes a choice to continue being liberated. Or you can look at it as some kind of twisted love story, you know, a meditation on maturity."

Diablo Cody

Along with Knocked Up and Waitress, two other 2007 films about women facing unplanned pregnancies, Juno was interpreted by some critics as having a pro-life theme. Ann Hulbert of Slate magazine believed that Juno "[undercut] both pro-life and pro-choice purism," while Jeff Dawson of The Sunday Times believed that the film was inevitably placed in the "unwanted pregnancy sub-genre" with Knocked Up and Waitress due to its subject matter, but thought that its interpretation as a pro-life film only "muddied the waters." Hadley Freeman of The Guardian criticized Juno for "complet[ing] a hat-trick of American comedies in the past 12 months that present abortion as unreasonable, or even unthinkable—a telling social sign," though she noted, "I don't believe any of these films is consciously designed to be anti-abortion propaganda." A. O. Scott, writing for The New York Times, agreed that Juno has "an underlying theme, a message that is not anti-abortion but rather pro-adulthood." Ellen Page commented, "What I get most frustrated at is when people call it a pro-life movie, which is just absurd... The most important thing is the choice is there, and the film completely demonstrates that." Both Cody and Page have openly stated that they are pro-choice; Reitman thought that it was "fantastic" that both pro-life and pro-choice groups were embracing the film. He said that "Juno seems to be a mirror, and people [on both sides] see themselves in it."

Other critics labeled Juno as feminist because of its atypical portrayal of Juno as a confident and intelligent teenage girl. Antifeminist Phyllis Schlafly wrote that Juno's theme "isn't love, romance, or respect for life, but the triumph of feminist ideology, i.e., the irrelevancy of men, especially fathers." Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe noted that "Juno serves cool, intelligent girls something they rarely see in a movie: themselves." Cody said about writing the film, "Women are clever, women are funny, women are sharp, and I wanted to show that these girls were human and not the stereotypical teenage girls that we often see in the media" and "There was a lack of authentic teen girl characters ... I saw writing this screenplay as an opportunity to create an iconic female." Page praised the film for its positive depiction of teenage girls, describing Juno's character as "really refreshing and allow[ing] for new possibilities in what young women can be" and "honest but original, completely devoid of stereotype," while also highlighting that "Girls haven't had that sort of character before. We don't have our Catcher in the Rye." She criticized the media perception of her character as a "strong woman," arguing that if Juno were a male character, the "strength" of the character would not be considered remarkable. Reitman was interested in the personal/political conflict for Vanessa's character: "Feminism has paved the way for Vanessa’s career, but ultimately Vanessa wants to be a full time mother."

Production

Development

Diablo Cody wrote the film based on many of her own high school experiences.

Diablo Cody was first approached to write a screenplay by film producer Mason Novick, who had previously landed Cody 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, and 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 the film, 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 Minneapolis, 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, had not been released yet, so he did not have any feature film credits. Other directors, including Brett Simon and 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 the film ("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, and it was later brought to production company Mandate Pictures by co-producer Jim Miller.

Casting

Jason Reitman pictured Ellen Page as Juno when he first read the script.

Having previously admired her performance in Hard Candy, Reitman cast Ellen Page in the lead role, saying that as he read the screenplay for the first time he pictured her as Juno. He visited her on the set of a film on which she was working to offer her 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 35 mm film against a black backdrop. He presented this footage to Fox Searchlight as the initial cast. He 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, and 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 DJ Cut Chemist.

Filming

Eric Hamber Secondary School stood in for the fictional Dancing Elk High School.

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 spanned from early February across to 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 re-schedule 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. However, 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 Ellen Page and Michael Cera while they were practicing the song.

Music

The movie features several songs performed by Kimya Dawson in her solo, Antsy Pants and The Moldy Peaches guises. This was due to a suggestion by lead actress Ellen Page. Director Jason Reitman explains:

"At one point, I asked Ellen Page before we started shooting, ‘[W]hat do you think Juno listens to?’ And she said [‘The Moldy Peaches.'] She 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."

Kimya Dawson provided both solo songs and songs from two of her former bands.

Reitman contacted Dawson, and, after reading the film's screenplay, she agreed for her songs to be used in the film, sending him a packet of CDs containing about 120 songs. The songs were almost entirely self-published by Dawson, who says she wrote nothing specifically for Juno and that all the songs had been performed and recorded before she was contacted to work on the film. Reitman asked her to additionally re-record instrumentals, which included humming over the lyrics of some of her songs. He also contacted composer Mateo Messina, with whom he had previously worked on Thank You for Smoking, to compose the film's incidental score. He gave Messina a collection of Dawson's songs and asked him to create "the sound of the film" through an instrumental score that replicated the recording quality, tone, feel and innocence of her music. Messina decided to implement an "acoustic guitar feel that was jangled and was really loose, like Juno." Experimenting with different guitars, he ended up using "Stella," a second-hand guitar belonging to guitarist Billy Katz that he described as "kind of tinny, not perfectly in tune, but [it] has all kinds of character." Katz was hired to perform acoustic and classical guitar for the movie's score, using "Stella" extensively throughout.

Page also suggested Cat Power's cover of the song "Sea of Love", which Reitman was initially hesitant to include as it had already been featured in the 1989 film Sea of Love; however, he decided that its inclusion would mark a "new take" on the film's cinematic references. He felt that the Sonic Youth cover of "Superstar" defined Juno and Mark's relationship—Juno preferring the classic 1971 version by the Carpenters while Mark preferred Sonic Youth's 1994 cover. "A Well Respected Man" by The Kinks was a song Reitman had associated with a character from another of his screenplays and says it was "heart-breaking" when he decided to include the song as an introduction for Paulie instead, despite feeling it suited the scene perfectly. He found children's songwriter Barry Louis Polisar's "All I Want Is You" after "surfing iTunes for hours on end" using different words and names as search terms and thought that the handmade quality was perfect for the opening titles, which were afterwards made to correspond to the song.

Initially, Reitman had conceived of Juno being a fan of glam rock, but rejected it as too inauthentic, and he said he wanted to construct Juno to be "into music very real and authentic", making her a fan of punk rock, including The Runaways, Patti Smith and Iggy Pop and the Stooges.

Advertisement writer Chris Corley, with whom Reitman had previously worked on a set of commercials for Wal-Mart, composed the "Brunch Bowlz" jingle that Mark writes in the film.

Design

The film was set out in a sequence of the year's seasons, which, director Jason Reitman explains, "really resonated with me when I read it, because they mirror the three trimesters of Juno's pregnancy." Because filming took place over only 30 days, fake flora was used to give the impression of different seasons while other flora was edited in post-production. Brown leaves were composited onto a fake tree outside of Juno's house and cherry blossom trees outside of Leah's house were touched up in a lighter shade of pink to depict autumn; a fan was used to blow leaves around in some scenes as if the leaves were falling from trees. Fake flowers were used in front of Paulie's house at the end of the film to give the impression of summer. Reitman used different colors to inform character, such as the burgundy and gold Dancing Elk High School track uniforms and an early scene with Juno in a red hooded jacket "walking through a world of somber greens and browns."

Writer Cody was impressed with the production design team's creation of the set from only a few sentences in her script, calling Juno's bedroom "a very emotional set for [me] because it reminded me so much of my own little habitat when I was a teenager." The walls of Juno's room are covered with posters of bands, while Leah's room includes a mural of older men whom she finds attractive, and Paulie's room is designed to be overly childlike to indicate his innocence. Production designer Steve Saklad designed Mark and Vanessa's house with the assumption that "Vanessa has probably read every home magazine and tried to copy what's in them as best she could." Costume designer Monique Prudhomme was nominated for a Costume Designers Guild Award in the "Excellence in Contemporary Costume Design for Film" category. She dressed Vanessa in clothes that were "simple and very tasteful" but with an "anal-retentive quality," while dressing Mark in conservative clothing that complements Vanessa's taste. It was Page's suggestion that Juno wear flannel shirts and sweater-vests. Page also had to wear two sizes of prosthetic belly fitted like a corset in the back, as well as a third "real" belly that is seen when Juno has an ultrasound and a variety of sizes of fake breasts. The footage displayed on Juno's ultrasound monitor is of supervising sound designer Scott Sanders's son Matthew and was embedded into the scene in post-production.

Opening title sequence

900 hand-cut images were composited onto a background to create the opening title sequence.

Juno's opening title sequence, depicting a cartoonized Juno walking through her town while drinking a bottle of SunnyD orange drink, was put together over 7–8 months by a small design studio, Shadowplay Studio, based in Los Angeles. Reitman had met the studio's co-founder Gareth Smith in Japan on the short film festival circuit where they each had shorts screening. Shadowplay created the opening title sequence for Reitman's previous film, Thank You for Smoking, and he contacted them again when he found out he was going to direct Juno. With vintage 1970s punk-rock posters as inspiration, Smith and artist Jenny Lee decided to create a sequence that "had texture and a little bit of edge, but also imparted the warmth and heart of the screenplay". In the last days of filming in Vancouver, Ellen Page was photographed with a high speed camera from a number of angles walking on a treadmill and drinking SunnyD. 900 still images of a walking and drinking Page were printed out and repeatedly run through a Xerox machine to degrade their quality until the pictures appeared hand-drawn. The pictures were cut-out and scanned back onto the computer then layered onto the background drawn by Lee with compositing software to create a stop motion animation sequence that corresponded to "All I Want Is You" by Barry Louis Polisar, the song Reitman had chosen. Shadowplay also designed the titlecards for each of the seasons for the film, hand-made a custom typeface for the opening title sequence and the closing credits, and collaborated on the design of the soundtrack and the DVD.

Distribution

Theatrical release

With a well-received preview first screened on September 1, 2007 at the Telluride Film Festival, Juno premiered on September 8 at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival and received a standing ovation, which prompted film critic Roger Ebert to say "I don’t know when I've heard a standing ovation so long, loud and warm." It went on to feature at the Austin Film Festival, Rome Film Feast, London Film Festival, Bahamas International Film Festival, St. Louis International Film Festival, Stockholm International Film Festival, International Thessaloniki Film Festival, Gijón International Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam, earning awards and nominations at several.

Although Juno was originally intended to open in theaters on December 15, 2007, it was moved forward to take advantage of the positive reviews and buzz preceding its release, and opened in limited release on December 5, playing in only seven theaters in Los Angeles and New York City. It opened in an additional thirteen cities and around 25 theaters on December 14, expanding further on December 21 before entering wide release on December 25.

Promotion

Anthony Breznican of the USA Today said in a 2008 article that Juno is one of three films that were "orchestrated to start off as word-of-mouth favorites among devoted moviegoers."

Following Juno's release, Fox Searchlight sent hamburger phones styled similarly to that used by Juno in the film to journalists and critics to entice them to review the film. Though the phones were originally distributed in small numbers to viewers at promotional events, companies not affiliated with Fox Searchlight began to produce and sell the phones on eBay and other online stores. In the month after the film's release, sales of the phone on eBay increased by 759 percent and it was named one of the "10 Cool Gifts for Film Buffs" by Entertainment Weekly. In Japan Juno-themed Be@rbrick toys were released in June 2008. The toys were released as part of a contest; the deadline to enter the contest was June 6, 2008.

Home media

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray disc on April 15, 2008. It is available in a single disc DVD edition, which includes the movie along with an audio commentary by director Reitman and writer Cody, eleven deleted scenes, a gag reel, a 'gag take' (including a profanity laden blow-up by Rainn Wilson), a "Cast & Crew Jam", and screen tests. The two-disc DVD edition includes the same extra content and four additional featurettes ("Way Beyond 'Our' Maturity Level: Juno – Leah – Bleeker", "Diablo Cody Is Totally Boss", "Jason Reitman For Shizz", and "Honest To Blog! Creating Juno"), while the second disc is a DRM-encrypted version of the film for portable players. The Blu-ray version includes all the two-disc DVD edition extras and two additional featurettes: "Fox Movie Channel Presents: Juno World Premiere" and "Fox Movie Channel Presents: Casting Session".

Reception

Box office performance

In limited release and playing in only seven theaters in Los Angeles and New York City, Juno grossed US$420,113 over its debut weekend, averaging $60,016 per screen. When Juno became Fox Searchlight's first film to surpass $100 million at the box office, the company's president Peter Rice issued the statement: "This is an astonishing feat for us and the film has surpassed all our expectations. We knew this film had crossover potential and it has resonated with audiences all across the country." The film has grossed $143,479,191 in the United States and $84,578,385 in other territories for a total worldwide gross of $228,057,576. It was also the highest-grossing of the five Best Picture nominees for the 80th Academy Awards.

Critical reaction

The movie benefited from an extremely positive critical reception; as of March 15, 2008 on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 183 reviews, and was the best reviewed comedy film of 2007. On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 81 out of 100, based on 37 reviews. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars and called it "just about the best movie of the year. [...] Has there been a better performance this year than Ellen Page's creation of Juno? I don't think so." Ebert went on to place Juno at number one on his annual best of list. The film also ranks at number 463 in Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.

However, not all critics share the positive view towards Juno. David Edelstein of New York magazine felt that the film was desperate to be "a movie that confers hipness on teens, that makes kids want to use the same slang and snap up the soundtrack". Music reviewer Jim DeRogatis criticized the film's stylized dialogue and what he saw as a casual take on abortion and Juno's naïveté in becoming pregnant, claiming: "As an unapologetically old-school feminist, the father of a soon-to-be-teenage daughter, a reporter who regularly talks to actual teens as part of his beat and a plain old moviegoer, I hated, hated, hated this movie."

"The Juno Effect"

In 2008, 17 students under sixteen years of age at a Gloucester, Massachusetts high school became pregnant. The figure was acknowledged by Time as "more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1200-student school had last year (in 2007)" Time stated that some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip while others accused movies such as Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing teenage pregnancy. Kristelle Miller, an Adolescent Psychology Professor at University of Minnesota-Duluth stated that "[t]he 'Juno effect' is how media glamorizes pregnancy and how it's also... pregnancy is also redemptive of any past problems."

In September 2008, after Senator John McCain named Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket, it was revealed that Gov. Palin's daughter, Bristol, aged 17, was pregnant with the child of another teenager. News reports and editorials termed Bristol Palin's pregnancy as the latest episode in the debate over teen pregnancy of which Juno was a part, while commentators made comparisons between Bristol Palin's pregnancy and the film. Noted New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, "The Republicans wanted a new conversation, and they got one. Juno in Juneau!" Fox News' Roger Friedman wondered, "Juno at once violated and vindicated conservative values. The question is, will the public rally ‘round Bristol Palin the way it did Juno? Or will it reject her for getting in this situation in the first place?"

Juno actor Jason Bateman defended the movie. "Unfortunately," he said, "we’ve had these instances where guys kill people because of what they hear in rock ‘n roll lyrics or some garbage like that. Look, if you’re going to blame a movie or song for your actions, whether they be good or bad, I think you’re looking at the wrong things to influence your life. I think people should look to other areas of their life for lessons and guidance, mainly parents, or teachers, or friends, or whomever. That should probably be where you should point your eyes and ears."

Top ten lists

The film appeared on critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007:

• 1st – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
• 1st – Paste magazine staff
• 2nd - USCCB Office for Film and Broadcasting (tied with Bella)
• 3rd – David Germain, Associated Press
• 3rd – Moviefone staff
• 4th – James Berardinelli, ReelViews
• 4th – Lou Lumenick, New York Post
• 4th – Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
• 6th – Claudia Puig, USA Today

• 6th – Desson Thomson, The Washington Post
• 6th – Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
• 6th – Liam Lacey and Rick Groen, The Globe and Mail
• 6th – Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle
• 7th – Corina Chocano, Los Angeles Times
• 7th – Carrie Rickey, The Philadelphia Inquirer
• 10th – A. O. Scott, The New York Times (tied with Knocked Up and Superbad)
• 10th – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone (tied with Knocked Up)
• 10th – Stephen Holden, The New York Times

Awards

The film received four 2008 Academy Awards nominations: Best Original Screenplay, which Diablo Cody won, Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress for Ellen Page.

Reitman expressed disappointment that Juno was ruled ineligible for the Canadian Genie Award nominations: "It's a Canadian director, Canadian stars, Canadian cast, Canadian crew, shot in Canada—how are we not eligible for a Genie when David Cronenberg's film about Russians living in London shot in England with a British crew and British cast is eligible? I'm sorry, but somebody is going to have to explain that to me; I don't get it." Sara Morton, the head of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, issued a statement explaining that the film had never been submitted for Genie Award consideration by its studio. The Hollywood Reporter explained that Genie rules define Canadian films as financed at least in part by Canadian sources, and because American companies Mandate Pictures and Fox Searchlight were the sole funders, Juno was ineligible. Nonetheless, Genie spokesman Chris McDowall said that while the film wasn't evaluated for eligibility since it wasn't submitted, "Financing is one of the [rules] criteria, but it's not everything." Despite this, the film was eligible for the 2008 Canadian Comedy Awards, receiving two wins from three nominations.

Wins

• 80th Academy Awards
  • Best Original Screenplay - Diablo Cody

• BAFTAs
  • Best Original Screenplay

• Critic's Choice Awards
  • Best Comedy

• Canadian Comedy Awards (2008)
  • Best Actress - Ellen Page
  • Best Director - Jason Reitman

• National Board of Review
  • Best Breakthrough Performance - Female (Ellen Page)
  • Best Original Screenplay (Diablo Cody)

• Satellite Awards
  • Best Actress - Musical or Comedy (Ellen Page)
  • Best Film - Musical or Comedy

• Rome Film Feast
  • Best Film

• Writers Guild of America Awards
  • Best Original Screenplay (Diablo Cody)

• Independent Spirit Awards 2007
  • Best Feature
  • Best Female Lead - Ellen Page
  • Best First Screenplay - Diablo Cody

• The National Movie Awards 2008
  • Best Comedy

Nominations

• 80th Academy Awards
  • Best Picture (Lost to No Country for Old Men)
  • Best Director - Jason Reitman (Lost to Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men)
  • Best Actress - Ellen Page (Lost to Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose)

• 65th Golden Globe Awards
  • Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy (Lost to Sweeney Todd)
  • Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy (Ellen Page) (Lost to Marion Cotillard)
  • Best Screenplay - Motion Picture (Diablo Cody) (Lost to The Coen Brothers)

• 61st British Academy Film Awards
  • Best Leading Actress - Ellen Page (Lost to Marion Cotillard)

• 2008 Canadian Comedy Awards
  • Best Actor - Michael Cera; Cera received two nominations and did win the award, but for his work in Superbad.

• Critic's Choice Awards
  • Best Actress - Ellen Page (Lost to Julie Christie)
  • Best Acting Ensemble - Ellen Page, Michael Cera, J. K. Simmons, Olivia Thirlby, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner, and Jason Bateman (Lost to Hairspray)

• 14th Screen Actors Guild Awards
  • Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role - Ellen Page (Lost to Julie Christie)

• Independent Spirit Awards 2007
  • Best Director - Jason Reitman (Lost to Julian Schnabel)

Soundtrack

See also: Juno (soundtrack)

Juno's soundtrack, Music from the Motion Picture Juno, features nineteen songs from Barry Louis Polisar, Belle & Sebastian, Buddy Holly, Cat Power, The Kinks, Mott the Hoople, Sonic Youth and The Velvet Underground, and most prominently Kimya Dawson and her former bands The Moldy Peaches and Antsy Pants. Under the Rhino Entertainment record label, it became the first number one soundtrack since the Dreamgirls soundtrack, 20th Century Fox's first number one soundtrack since the Titanic soundtrack, and Rhino's first number one album, topping the American Billboard 200 music charts in its fourth week of release.

Rhino announced in March 2008 that Juno B-Sides: Almost Adopted Songs would be available through digital-only release, a second volume of songs that were considered for but not included in the film. The fifteen tracks include songs by previously featured artists Kimya Dawson, Barry Louis Polisar, Belle & Sebastian and Buddy Holly, as well as Astrud Gilberto, The Bristols, Jr. James & The Late Guitar, Trio Los Panchos, Yo La Tengo and Ellen Page singing "Zub Zub", written by Diablo Cody as part of the script in a deleted scene. It was released to other digital music retailers on May 13, 2008.

On November 25, 2008, a Deluxe Edition of the soundtrack was released, containing both the original soundtrack as well as B-Sides in a two-disc set, along with storyboards from the film and additional liner notes from Reitman.

External links

• Official website
• Juno at IMDb
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• Jason Reitman's Director's Blog at Fox Searchlight

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