JUNO WRITER DIABLO CODY REVEALS INSPIRATION

Juno writer pens script loosely based on her own high school experience.

Juno writer Diablo Cody was a blogger by day and stripper by night who was discovered by producer Mason Novick while surfing the Internet. Impressed with her humor and unique voice he got her a book deal for her critically acclaimed memoir Candy Girl: A Year In The Life of An Unlikely Stripper and her next assignment was to pen a spec screenplay which became Juno.

Diablo talks about what inspired the story about a teenager who gets pregnant in high school and decides to find suitable parents through a magazine ad.

“I thought to myself OK what’s a story that’s never been told. Then one day I’m sitting at my kitchen table and it’s this light bulb moment and I’m like ‘Oh my God the 85 bears and their road to the super bowl.’ But then I was like, ‘no, no, no,’ how about a girl who gets pregnant and decides to give her baby up for adoption and what it’s like for her. And let’s not make it a totally maudlin story. Let’s take it to the other edge and do a dark comedy so that’s how it started. She’s a lot like me but she’s a little tougher and a little more self aware than I was certainly at that age. I was just like a big dingaling.”

Michael Cera embodies Paul Bleeker, the high school track runner who impregnates Ellen Page’s Juno. Diablo based the character on her real life best friend.

“He’s strongly based, strongly, strongly based on my best friend in high school who was kind of my whipping boy in a sense which is something that I deeply regret because he was such a wonderful, wonderful body bruiser. I mean he was Pauly Bleeker. And eventually we did have sex and there was no such consequence for us but if there had been I think it probably would’ve played out like this.”

Diablo is trying to quit blogging cold turkey but in the meantime she’s incredibly busy writing the screenplay Jennifer’s Body which she’ll also co-produce with Juno director Jason Reitman. She also hopes to someday turn her stripper memoir into a television series but until then she’s already caught the attention of Steven Spielberg who is producing her original series The United States of Tara starring Toni Collette as a multiple personality mom set to shoot for Showtime.