Juno

I was up late last night reading the screenplay for Diablo Cody's Juno. It was no surprise that I found as little to admire in the script as I did in the film itself. The humor is simply quite different from mine -- I don't find a lot funny about characters who always have unrealistically well-thought out comebacks and speak and act as if they're winking at the audience, reminding them, "Isn't this funny that I'm supposed to be 16 and pregnant but don't really care and am as precocious as hell yet say things like 'this is way beyond my maturity level' ?"

And yet, Ms. Cody has won an Oscar for this screenplay, and has thousands, perhaps millions, of Juno fans, so I am more than likely in the minority. Although I downloaded the script from a website, it claimed it was the production script and as such, I was shocked by how many errors there were in the text... it makes me wonder just how polished any of my "polished" scripts actually are!

In short, I learned a very valuable lesson last night (Monday) after having spent last week and weekend obsessively reading Keats' letters and poetry: Do not read Diablo Cody right after reading Keats. The outcome is volatile and, while it varies from person to person, the prognosis is almost always the same -- a gaping maw over the aesthetics of current art.

That said, I had the opportunity to meet Diablo Cody last spring, and after clubbing with her, I can tell you that she is a lovely, intelligent, well-educated lady who I'm sure can do better than Juno.