Believe me, I fully recognize that a guy pretty much has to be a moron and a glutton for punishment to criticize Diablo Cody at this point. Either that or he has to be a very, very brave man, a man with the stones of Anton Chigurh.
I'll plead absolutely guilty on the first counts. As to the second, well, yes, ma'am, I do believe I'm your man there as well.
Let me get some things out of the way before I move ahead with my ill-advised temerity (and I'm willing to acknowledge that I have no idea whether temerity is always, by its very nature, ill-advised, but I'm aware of the possibility).
I know Diablo Cody is a very smart woman, and based on her work I would know this even if she hadn't let slip in interviews that she has the stratospheric IQ of the average postal service Mensan. She's a sharp, smart character, and almost all of her writing that I've seen has been very sharp, very smart, and frequently funny.
The writing in Juno is often very sharp, very smart, and very funny. The problem is that it is not the way real people talk; it's the way people talk on television sitcoms, and I guess I hold films to a slightly higher standard, at least films that get nominated for Academy Awards --films like Kramer Vs Kramer, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, and Titantic. I promise you that I wouldn't have a single complaint if Juno were nominated for an Emmy, particularly if they had a category for the snappy Post-Modern After-School Special.
I understand that the legend has it that Ms. Cody birthed the Juno screenplay in the restroom at some suburban Target, washing down fistfuls of truck stop speed with two-liter jugs of RC Cola or some such while hunched over a laptop balanced precariously on the diaper changing station. Fine, I'll buy that if you really want to make a stink about it. I also believe, however, that she had some help from a handful of down-on-their-luck former Different Strokes and Family Ties writers (Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that any of these people were in the women's room with her). And I'm also pretty damn sure that somebody from The Simpsons or The Family Guy sprinkled a little fairy dust on the thing before she turned it over to Jason Reitman.
I have other problems with the movie, yes, but I guess I also have a few problems with the mythology that I should get out of the way first. I don't, for instance, believe that Diablo Cody was ever a stripper. I just don't. I know she wrote a memoir about the "experience," but I also know that that doesn't prove a damn thing. Wouldn't you think if this story were true, we'd have been inundated with backbiting and lecherous accounts from former co-workers and the habitués of the establishments where she purportedly worked? Maybe I'm not paying proper attention --although I think I am, and I think it's hard not to-- but I haven't heard a peep.
I can't blame her for coming up with a colorful back-story. We all love colorful back-stories. They make the strangers we obsess about all the more interesting, and they're somehow even more interesting if they allow us to imagine the strangers we obsess about bare-assed naked and covered with tattoos. I'll admit it: if I had a biography or a resume I certainly wouldn't hesitate to pad the damn thing with all manner of outrageous fabrications. All the same, I don't believe a word of this particular tall tale --don't believe Cody was a stripper, don't believe she was a coal miner, and don't believe that she was the night janitor in a crematorium. I don't even believe she's from suburban Kentucky. I mean, seriously people, do you honestly believe there even is a suburban Kentucky?
There isn't, but if there were, I can pretty much guarantee you that sixteen-year-old suburban Kentucky girls wouldn't be listening to Patti Smith or the Stooges or Mott the Fucking Hoople. And I hope to God they wouldn't be listening to Kimya Dawson and the Moldy Peaches, either, because if so than the place as I imagine it just got a whole lot more hellish.
My real problems with Juno, I suppose, can be boiled down to this: If it's trying to be subversive it doesn't work. And if it's not trying to be subversive it doesn't work either.
There's too much telling and not enough showing, too much lazy shorthand about virtually every character, and by the end I don't feel like I really know or care about a single person in the entire movie (well, maybe I cared a little bit about the dad and step-mom, even if they didn't seem remotely real to me). The stammering, dorky boyfriend --played by the same stammering dork who played the same stammering dorky character in Superbad-- is, we are told, "cool." He's in a band. He also, I presume, likes the same sort of impossibly hip music Juno likes. Yet all we see him do is run around in shorts and a sweatband. The poor, improbably fertile dork does nothing but run and run. Is this supposed to be a metaphor? And, yes, one canned moment of sweetness passes between Juno and the dork, but other than that the kid doesn't much seem to understand the gravity of the situation, and we get absolutely nothing in the way of character development that would allow us to see him through Juno's eyes. She just tells us that he's the coolest guy she knows, and we pretty much have to take her word for it.
I'd also love to know what's up with Juno's best friend. Who is this girl? Does she not seem like exactly the sort of vacuous nobody that someone like Juno would openly mock? At any rate, she's ultimately nothing but what she seems, because we get exactly nothing about her to form anything but a surface impression.
And does not Juno have a little sister in this film? Am I imagining that? And if I'm not imagining it, why does Juno have a little sister? Why is this kid in the movie? Get rid of her. Let some other movie adopt her. She serves no purpose.
I'm pretty sure I could go on and on (just as I'm pretty sure that Diablo Cody --whoever she really is-- is going to have a long, fine career and that her pending horror film will be exactly the sort of riot she's most suited to write), but my ultimate problem with Juno was that in the end, in what felt like a terrible cop-out to me, the cute-as-a-button smartass turns her baby over to the one pathetic person in the entire film who is most ill-equipped to live in the world Cody's characters inhabit.
And as long as we're on the subject of the Oscars, and since I know you come here expecting regular, sharp criticism of the current state of the cinema, I may as well offer some impressions of a couple of the other nominated films I paid eight dollars to see and did not much enjoy.
I love Cormac McCarthy. I generally enjoy the Coen Brothers. And I wish like hell I hadn't seen No Country For Old Men. It's like McCarthy and the Coens teamed up to write an episode of the Andy Griffith Show for the End Times:
Deputy rushes into the room, clearly agitated: Sheriff! A truckload of Mexicans turned up just outside of town and they've been shot all to blazes! You wanna drive out to take a look?
Sheriff is sitting at a table in a diner, squinting at the newspaper and shaking his head incredulously. He hesitates, and doesn't look up from the paper: No sir, I don't believe I do.
In No Country, just as in this country, the world is going to hell in a hurry. Evil, inexplicably represented by a man with a bad haircut and a pneumatic cattle zapper, is an unstoppable force. The poor, old, beleaguered Sheriff just can't be bothered anymore to do anything but mope around and offer homespun philosophical ruminations. The crafty Vietnam vet who finds the satchel of cash comes up with all manner of crafty maneuvers to outfox his pursuers, yet never thinks to transfer all that money into a slightly less distinctive --not to mention cumbersome-- carrying case. Woody Harrelson shows up and displays remarkable skills of clairvoyance in locating both the man on the run and the money, but then --just like that-- he's dead. Then --just like that-- pretty much everybody else is dead as well, except for Evil, which still walks among us dragging his pneumatic cattle zapper, and the poor, old, beleaguered Sheriff, who right up to the bitter end offers homespun philosophical ruminations to anybody who's still alive to listen.
That's about it. The whole thing looks awfully nice, though, I'll give it that.
Ratatouille also looks awfully nice, but it also sucks. I'm sorry, but I just think it's a tall order to make the whole rats-in-the-kitchen thing palatable, particularly when we're talking about obnoxious rats, and scads of them. I had a huge problem with the lazy, jackhammer way Brad Bird and his associates named their characters --the snobby food critic is named Anton Ego! Get it? There's also a Gusteau, a Linguini, a Pompidou, a Django, and a Skinner. Could you maybe take more than five fucking minutes to name your characters before we hand you a Best Screenplay nomination? Is that really asking too much?
And, finally, there's the sheer ignorance of the main human character, Remy. Throughout the entire stinking film the guy has a rat on his head pulling his hair and putting him through all manner of contortions making the same damn dishes over and over, yet somehow, when the rat disappears, the moron doesn't know how to recreate the recipes he's made hundreds of times? What the hell?
Somebody in Hollywood --and it might as well be Diablo Cody-- better send me a check for $24, pronto. I'm for damn sure not going to drag my ass out to see Atonement until they do.
DC is an alt-media Dybbuk. First she worked for an agency, the usual gritty birthplace of all rough-and-tumble women of the world. Then she "wrote" for City Pages. Then she "wrote" a book and now her lipless rat face is "writing" for Hollywood. And she's only 29?! Gosh, when did she have time to be a stripper? In between getting her brand new rubber stamp tattoos? Between City Pages editors slapping an Easter bonnet on her shitty drafts--Brad, you liar, you know she's not smart or talented, but you are a gentleman--and ditching her ever-lovin' Midwestern husband once she landed in LA, well, she had time to shove to the front of the line past all the authentic strippers, writers, daredevils, round-heeled doxies, snaggle-toothed Venuses and rock hard intellects (like, oh say, Emily Carter).
Why should we be surprised? Every alt weekly in the nation has strutted out some "sassy" feminist writer, sent her to the sidewalk, the pole or the overnight spa job and demanded a first-person look-see. "I was a homeless prostitute!" "I was on welfare!" "I did drugs!" "I wrote a book!"
Watching Diablo Cody's mother insist on calling her daughter by her given name on Oprah was priceless. I'll wager that will be the last time Brook Busey-Hunt winces for being outed.
Who gives a crap if she was a stripper? She's most surely a whore today.
Brad, stoop no longer. Please continue to stride in the halls of giants.
Well gosh, how did we end up with the exact same thought? Saw Juno this week and my first thought was, "What a great after school special, albeit a snappy one." I think Jason Bateman seals that deal.
Well I am glad you fleshed out your criticism of Diablo Cody and Juno.
You may very well be right about everything but the intensity is off.
There is something personal in how big this is and it makes me think of what I call backwash, a reaccuring wave of emotional old stuff.
Never mind though, I am sensitive to my own stuff, where creative men diss and devalue creative women. It has happened to me all my life.
C
I wouldn't say Brad is dissing and devaluing Diablo Cody, given that he said "She's a sharp, smart character, and almost all of her writing that I've seen has been very sharp, very smart, and frequently funny." He just doesn't like a particular screenplay. Not to mention that he went on to criticize creative men for two other movies. Accusing people of isms when they're criticizing substance is a cop-out--if you don't like what they're saying, come up with counterarguments. Or get some therapy.
What bothers me the most about this fucking review, if you can call it that, is its utter dishonesty. Dee Cody not a striptease champion? No? Well, Mr. Zellar, how can you explain this daily exchange, held by yours truly and the staff of the Skyway Lounge:
ME (slapping my money down): How about booth 3?
CLERK (usually a bored girl who wasn't topless): 3? You mean Sweetart's booth? [NOTE: That was code for Diablo Cody]
ME: That's what I said, you know what I want, let's get this show on the road...
CLERK (shaking her head): You'll have to wait. It'll be over an hour. At least...
ME: Over an hour?! It's only ten minutes a pop.
CLERK: Well, she's... with a regular...
ME (shouting): Zellar!
That's right, you love-staved rube, you fucking dominated that poor girl's time. Every Wednesday it seemed. Go on Friday, there's Mr. Ivanhoe (this was your City Pages days, so you thought you were being sneaky, but you blew your cover, pal). Soon it was Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I guess Tuesday was prayin' day.
And those idiotic references to Mott the Hoople and Patti Smith are your doing, chum. There's Mr. Ivanhoe, with a mix of songs for poor Dee to do her lovely bump and grind. Who the hell strips to the Feelies? To P J Harvey? One day, poor Dee left a cd behind and we listened to it, me and a stripper named Honoria. My God, you had Dee peeling to Ed "Kookie" Byrnes.
You are one fucking pervert, my friend.
Now, I'm not throwing stones--I loved the girl, too, but the chick wouldn't give me the breaks like she gave you. Tried to get her to show her stuff to music of my own, and I'll admit that John Philip Sousa and Bernard Herriman leaves a bit to be desired, but come on, my money's good. But, damn, man, you must have put that girl in her laptop the way you shelled out the dough.
Anyway, I can't complain about your review. Juno sucks. Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ I oughta sue for false advertising. Former stripper writes about two nubile things, one dressed as a cheerleader, the other pregnant? And no nudity? I thought it was going to be a sex romp.
As for the Rat and the movie about Killers, well, once again, no nudity. You did see these movies, right? You could've mentioned that...
Yeah, Zellar writes totally out of the side of his asshole. The worst side, not the best side. I'd like to see him prove half of the scatological spew that flows from his mouth. Like, for instance, prove to anyone or all of us who did major rewrites to JUNO before Reitman and who they used to write for because there would need to be an arbitration hearing with regards to the Oscar nomination if she didn't write the script.
But I suspect Zellar doesn't know half the shit he makes up in his writing. His writing is always suspect, whether he is writing about Diablo Cody or Andrew Zimmern - he knows little about what he speaks and speaks as if he knows more than he words can prove.
Get some real writers on this Rake Rag. And some quality control... because it is rubbish writing
Again, you speak from that which you do NOT know. If you had a legitimate interest in having Cody's Oscar nom taken away from her you would know exactly who you would approach for a credits arbitration. And all those with a legit claim of having written JUNO have been vetted by the Academy.
But you don't have legitimacy. And you know nothing about that which you speak.
So just STFU! and go away. Get a job more suitable to your abilities.
You sound like a over-wrought teenager -- move to Russia, yeah right.
And you are a Senior Editor of the Rake Magazine. They must be desperate. You'd think with all the out of work StarTribune staffers they could find a qualified Senior Editor.
If these aggrieved people have a legitimate complaint, there are absolutely clear cut procedures for getting a hearing and pursuing justice. Arbitration has little to do with deaf ears or having ears at all. It is a legal procedure to contest a credit and, especially in LA, there a countless numbers of lawyers who make their living taking taking on new clients and seeking justice. If the file a legal grievance to contest a given film credit established in contract long before a movie goes into production and overseen by teams of lawyers, agents, and managers. Getting a screen credit in a film is like buying a house with bankers, lenders and lawyers all standing by to make sure all the "i" are dotted and the "t"s are crossed. It is no minor matter left to the idol speculation of the employees at Target.
Even Ivan Reitman cannot stop an arbitration hearing for a contested film credit but get real dude.
You are what many would call a gutter-snipe. A talentless chap who resents the success of others and make baseless and charges behind the guise of self-righteous indignation. Mostly it is out of envy. There is someone hanging around every film set, mumbling under their breath, "That was my idea, I said that first, I wrote that script 20 years ago."
Prove it.
Give me a F*#king break.
There is nothing particularly legal or "technical" about what I am saying, it is all within the realm of human relations. Arbitration (not a technical or legal term) is the process through which any two or more individuals resolve a difference or dispute.
Whenever there are millions of dollars invested in a venture of any type, before the financing can be secure the rights are cleared, double checked, tripled checked, notarized and witnessed, signed and bonded. There is too much risk if property, whether it be intellectual or otherwise, is not cleared in advance. If you've ever bought a house or secured any kind of capital as an investment, you'd know how closely all this is scrutinized for even the most mundane acquistion.
And this is not rocket science. Regular people do this everyday to buy houses, buy cars, build a garage, or finance their education and all the normal larger expenses of life.
Ivan Reitman may be a monster in the eyes of a shivering mouse in the corner but he's just anther chump with his hand out looking to invest other people money for his follies.
Your fanciful theories of a single all-powerful mastermind, pulling the strings and making people fall to the knees is insane. You need stronger meds if that's the paranoia that consumes you. Anyone who is so scared that they do not have the personal fortitude to stand up for their rights (if they have proof) deserves no sympathy. And most often, the are simply lying.
You are simply using "I am simple-and-dumb defense" because you stepped out of the realm of your knowledge and made absolutely idiotic claims and accusations against a writer and her creative work. The whole process of establishing authorship is documented and codified in contract. If you have a case and you are a responsible journalist, follow the paper trail and document your facts.
Ms. Cody's victims are:
"...living in a trailer in Landfall..."
"...vulnerable adults..."
"...diabetic, obese..."
"...confined to a wheelchair..."
"...suffering from post traumatic stress disorder..."
"...met at Hazelden..."
"...struggling to put their lives back together..."
"...decent, shattered people..."
And they wrote the Oscar-nominated JUNO?
and your proof is:
"rumpled Post-It notes"
Alright, I think I've heard enough...
I take it you are not familiar with of delusions of grandeur? A delusional or psychotic and erroneous belief in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary? This mental state is common to recovering drug addicts trying to "get their lives back together" and living in trailers in Landfill. Ivan Reitman, I'm sure. is right outside their trailer door holding the cudgel and keeping them paralyzed with terror. He's got nothing better to do!
Who writes this stuff? Is anyone at the Rake screening these stories of the psychotic and delusional?
Sounds like you have way too much faith in the system (not to mention spellcheck). You really think no one in Hollywood has ever gotten away with taking credit they don't 100% deserve? If Brad is paranoid, let's peg you at the other end of the spectrum in the naive category.
And arbitration is indeed a legal term, if not exclusively. Since you were referencing legal action when you used it, I think that it's fair to claim that you were using it as a legal term.
So the fact that they're obese, recovering from substance abuse, living in a trailer, confined to a wheelchair, wrote their ideas with pen and paper, etc, somehow bolsters your claim that they could not possibly have provided "some help" with the script (the term Brad originally used, not "major rewrites" as you misquoted)? What, losers have no creativity or talent? Every person who has anything to contribute to a Hollywood script has never abused substances, lives in a nice house, is able-bodied and thin, 100% mentally healthy, and writes everything on a laptop? I think not.
I haven't even seen the movie and don't give a rat's ass about Cody or Brad's acquaintances, but it really irritates me when people make poor arguments. So shut up already.
JUNO is not a work of genius and I would argue not worthy of being considered as one of the best movies in 2007. However, that has nothing to do with this crap Zellar is spewing right now.
I have no faith in the system that's why I ask for idiots like Zellar and yourself to provide f*%king proof of your ridiculous claims. YOU are the FU*KING SYSTEM asshole. BTW, the more information you provide about your claims, the more unreasonable and improbable they become Zellar. You're a real local yokel crackpot.
And if these claims are merely farfetched and bazaar beyond what any psychotic mind could manufacture (while smoking crack) than I'm totally interested. But come on, everybody has heard this stories on Jerry Springer and all those crackpot daytime sensationalist TV shows.
Is that what the Rake has become -- the printed version of day time chair throwing "I'm carryin' his baby" accusation TV?
And, incidentally I've put hundreds of post-it notes on people scripts and seen them added or taken as advise. That doesn't give me any claim whatsoever to a film credit or points of the net or participant in the gross. Talk about naive, you haven't a clue about what you are taking about and best YOU shut the frick up.
I don't care if these people are rat infested, scab entrusted, bruised and bleeding needle junkies -- if they TV wrote for Steven Bochco and were kissing the ass of Gary Coleman, Bob Saget, and Meredith Baxter Birney, they know what they are doing and if they ever had any rights or claim to any part of the script JUNO they would have known how to protect them regardless of their psychotic state of personal destruction.
This is not a sob story, or a heartfelt weepie that I'm buying into because it is so over-the-top ignorant and naive. It is like when your crazy half-cousin takes you aside at the family reunion and starts telling you he hears voices because a space ship picked him up on a cold autumn night in October and took him to the place where humans are used as test species for high spectrum communications and he has a chip planted in his brain.
"Yeah, I think I hear your mother calling..." Go suck your thumb and cry yourself to sleep.
Oh yeah, now you play the FICTION-card and "I was only joking... Can't you take a joke?"
Listen rube, you should not writing for publication. Any publication.
And the next time I catch you pulling this bullsh*t, I'll track you down and lay a beating on you.
As Bjork would say,
"And if you complain once more
you'll meet an Army of Me..."
Boy, he didn't take that well, did he? He's probably just mad because he was knee-deep in a half-frozen marsh near the Root River looking for glowing geese when he realized that irony and sarcasm are elements of fiction too.
I wonder if McIdiot understands that the comment he was responding to, the one that got his bile in a lather in the first place, was also *fiction*. That's right, there's no such Guy Fresno, who never yelled Brad's name in a titty bar, just as there are no nutcases demanding credit for Juno. It was intended to be fun, not taken seriously by some goof celebrating birthday number 41 in his parent's basement with his dog-eared copy of the Screen Writers Guild bylaws at hand. But congratulations for informing everyone on the subtleties of screen credit and arbitration, Bjork, and brain-dead gullibility.
Apparently Zellar cannot take a little dose of his own FICTION medicine. Rakish Critic took him apart. I laugh my ass off reading the whole string and Brad Zellar never got it...
Talk about idiot!
Agree! With everything! Especially No Country for Old Men. But you left out The Savages, which currently gets my vote for most depressing and most overrated movie of the year.
"...I am sensitive to my own stuff, where creative men diss and devalue creative women. It has happened to me all my life."
Well, get a new rack then! Problem solved!