Juno CommentaryBy: Director, Jason Reitman

and Writer, Diablo Cody

Interesting Facts• Throughout the movie the director chose to add season titles at the last minute to make an important point of time in the story. • The opening animated title sequence was done by title studio which took the entire time as it took for the director to make the film. • In the commentary, Diablo notes that she doesn’t feel that Reitman followed her original storyline all that closely but she’s okay with that. • Director really wanted Juno’s room to feel real and “legit” rather than all those fake high school cliche rooms in other movies. • Reitman wanted to use a lot of mixed colors with cool outdoor light but also indoor light sticking out. • Reitman states he “uses the brandy bunch in a lot of his work” • The whole abortion clinic scene was just green screen.

Important Factors• Just one factor throughout the movie determined the PG-13 rating. • Reitman and Diablo together made a decision in the beginning that they wanted to make sound effects very loud and noticeable. • Painting in flowers, using bags of leaves to drop, all contributed to them shooting in Spring when it was supposed to be Fall. • One major symbol for characters personalities in the film were chairs. They made sure that every lounging scene a specific character was in, they had their own chair that reflected themselves.• Reitman admitted that when looking for actors, he wanted really big, expressive eyes to really play out the intensity.• Reitman states how he can tell what kind of audiences watch his movie from the different points of view he set up within the film.

Adoption Meeting Scene Throughout this scene, Juno (Ellen Page) is starting to bond with her soon to be adoption parents. The director makes a comment that this is one out of three scenes that they ever shot with a

handheld camera. They also talked a lot about how they wanted to make Vanessa’s house (Jennifer Gardner’s), very conserved and

quite perfection. Diablo, the writer states that in this scene when Vanessa comes up to interrupt their “jam session”, this was one of the first points she wanted to make that their marriage was headed downhill, just by the fact that they don’t interact well with each other. They did a very good job of making the shots

contribute to the awkwardness of the couple.

First Winter SceneIn this Winter seen, they were not expecting to

actually shoot these for like two to three weeks, but there was an out of the blue storm so they took out

all their cameras and just blobbed everything together with this one snow storm. They ended up getting basically all the snow scenes they needed in that one day. Reitman stated how grateful it was

that he didn’t have to use fake snow because that’s what they were planning on doing.

Ultra Sound SceneIn this scene, Juno, her best friend, step mom and doctor are all huddled around this monitor looking at how the baby is growing. Reitman makes a point on how hard it was to shoot this scene

because he really wanted to get everyones different perspective on the baby shown on the monitor. While the doctor

is wiping off the ultra sound goo she starts to be quite judgmental about Juno being a pregnant teenager and

something the director commented on was how much Diablo came out in her story writing for this scene. “The stepmother who has been played as such an enemy since Cinderella came out to defend and protect her stepdaughter.” - Reitman It’s good to

see a positive family with step parents for once in a movie.

Flirtation SceneThis scene is one where Juno and the soon-to-be adoptive father just finished watching a movie and are just sitting on the couch

talking. Reitman said that you have to have two very good actors to just be able to have one shot throughout the whole scene and he said them two pulled it off. Juno and Vanessa’s husband are just talking and Reitman said he wanted the audience to feel a little flirtation but not too much. There was a specific amount he wanted and because of that, he actually had to position them in a certain way for this scene

and he didn’t for any other. The end of the scene when the characters have met complete eye contact, the sound of the garage door

opening very suddenly made the husband jump up immediately, showing that he knew deep inside he at least felt a tiny bit out of

place and like he was doing something wrong.

Painting SceneIn this scene, Vanessa and her husband are deciding on what color they’re going to to paint the nursery. One of

the small details that Reitman said he really wanted to put in was that she’s wearing one of his favorite band

shirts as a painting shirt. He also said that he really didn’t want them to completely follow the lines but

just.. let them act and be IN the story and really feel the awkwardness they have in their relationship.

Juno Visit SceneJuno is visiting Vanessa’s husband once again in this scene. They go over comics together, talk about more music at at one time in the scene, Mark puts music on and Juno and Mark

start dancing. “You want it to be dangerous, but not to dangerous.” - Reitman stated “We wanted to make this scene

uncomfortable, but not so uncomfortable to push the audience out of the way.” In the end, this scene didn’t end up being a romantic flirting scene but a scene where they are flirting with each other’s time periods. Mark wants to stay a child and Juno wants to be an

adult. Then Mark tells Juno he’s leaving Vanessa and Juno flips out and everything just bounces in every wrong direction.

Splitting up SceneThis is the scene where Mark and Vanessa are discussing them splitting up and who’s gonna go where and what’s going to happen. One very major yet minor detail is that

even though these two are divorcing, they’re not fighting, they are both taking this in a really calm anger type of way.

Then Juno knocks on the door, drops a note and drives away in a halt. Mark picks up the note but Vanessa grabs it automatically knowing it was for her saying “If your still in, I’m still in.” Meaning even though they’re splitting up,

Juno still wants to go through with the adoption.

Labor SceneThe scene starts off with Juno driving a little matchbox car up and down her tummy then she realizes her water

broke and everyone rushes to the hospital. Reitman mentions how his own child was born a couple of months

ago and after being in an actual labor room and seeing it all happen, he could really make the truth and pain within the

seen come alive. After she had the baby, Bleek, her boyfriend came running from his track meet and just laid

with her, holding her on the hospital bed.

Closing SceneThe closing scene, the whole crew decided to call it a “return of innocence”. She rides her bike on a warm

Summer day over to Bleek’s house with her guitar on her back and they both start playing and singing the suet

together with a very long pulling out dolly shot which was shot on the last day of shooting. Reitman insisted that

they be singing it live so they hid microphones all over and they used that performance right there, raw and all.