Jason Reitman learned well from Dad, produces beautiful ‘Juno'

Teen pregnancy, to excuse the expression, would hardly seem fertile ground for comedy. But in the hands of a trio of Hollywood hottest new talents, "Juno" is indeed prolific.

Credit much of that success to its two leading Oscar contenders: writer Diablo Cody and actress Ellen Page. But don't underestimate the equally solid contributions of director Jason Reitman, the hirsute 30-year-old wunderkind who got his start in the film business at the ripe old age of 13, working as a production assistant to his father, Ivan, on "Kindergarten Cop."

Who said nepotism is bad? How can it be when the offspring has already directed two of the decade's best comedies with "Juno," and 2006's "Thank You for Smoking"? Think of him as Hollywood's version of Ken Griffey Jr. or Peyton Manning, the spawn of a Hall of Famer who's even better than Pops.

That's saying a lot, too, when you consider Dad's resume is flush with comedy classics like "Animal House," "Stripes" and "Ghostbusters." What gives Jason his edge is that, unlike his father, he ventures far beyond mere slapstick and delves into comedy that's rooted deep in the heart. An air of sophistication, if you will, that makes films like "Juno" -- a deeply felt meditation of what defines family -- both gut-busting and gut-wrenching.

Yet he remains incredibly humble and down to earth, just like his movies. In fact, getting him to talk about himself during a promotional visit to Boston recently was next to impossible. Ask him about Page and Cody, however, and he chatters on like a flack, especially about the latter, an ex-stripper who one day out of the blue decided to write a screenplay and voila!

"What's amazing is that she had no background in writing," the boyishly handsome filmmaker said between bites of his morning cornflakes and milk. "Her film school was basically going to a bookstore, buying one of those published screenplays, reading it and going, 'Oh, OK, I see how you do this,' and she went and sat down and over the course of seven weeks wrote 'Juno' in the Starbucks section of a Target in Minneapolis."

"It's angering," he added with a jealous laugh. "I mean it's really frustrating when you think about it, but she was touched by God."

Audiences, in turn, have been touched by "Juno," a refreshingly offbeat comedy about a 16-year-old girl (Page) coming of age as she's about to give birth to a baby she has unselfishly promised to a childless couple played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman.

It's raunchy in places, terribly sweet in others, much like Judd Apatow's recent set of twins, "Superbad" and "Knocked Up." In fact, many have called "Juno" the feminine version of those films.

It even shares a direct connection to "Superbad" in Michael Cera, who shows up here as a nerdy track star that Page's precocious Juno MacGruff lures into a sexual encounter never thinking that she might actually get pregnant.

"Heís startling good," Reitman says without a hint of hyperbole. But he saves his highest praise for Page, a 20-year-old Canadian barely 5-foot tall who announced big things ahead in a big way with her outstanding performance as a 14-year-old violently turning the tables on a child molester in the much praised but little seen "Hard Candy."

Lucky for her, one of the few who did see it was Reitman, who was instantly awed by her level of talent.

"Watching Ellen in 'Hard Candy' is like watching Jodie Foster in 'Taxi Driver,'" he said. "You just see all that potential, you see her whole career opening up. She's incapable of having a dishonest moment on screen. And when you can do that you can really do anything."

Heck, she even helped shape the film's terrific soundtrack by suggesting that Reitman check out an obscure band called The Moldy Peaches (sounding much like Liz Phair on "Exile in Guyville"), a pitch that he happily obliged after taking a listen. In fact, music plays a huge role throughout the film and not just on the soundtrack.

Cody, an avid punk rock fan, couldn't help infusing her own musical tastes into Juno, a garage rocker who thinks she's died and gone to heaven when she learns that Bateman's character used to play the ax in a once promising rock band out of Chicago. It provides the young girl and the prospective father an opportunity to forge an instant bond. The only problem is that while Page is a solid singer and musician, Bateman couldn't tell a fret from a G-string.

Reitman says he remembers Bateman calling him "and he was like, 'Iím not really going to play the guitar, right? You're just going to cut to a close up of my hand strumming or something?'" To which Reitman replied: "No, you're going to play and sing."

"So Ellen, Michael (Cera) and I had to teach him over the course of the shoot how to play, and he wound up doing a pretty credible job."

Filling out Reitman's outstanding ensemble are J.K. Simmons (most famous for playing an ultra-violent skinhead on "Oz") as Juno's hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside father; and multiple Emmy winner Allison Janney ("The West Wing") as Juno's stern but fair stepmother.

Reitman calls Simmons his muse, "the one actor every director ends up putting in all of his movies."

"After working with him in 'Smoking' and 'Juno,' I know him very well now, and he is just like Juno's dad -- a great big teddy bear," Reitman said. "I'm just thrilled that I get to be the guy to show that he's nothing like the character he played on 'Oz.'"

Janney, as we all know, is marvelous in everything she does. But Reitman thinks she unleashes some of her best work in a definitive scene in which she and Juno get their first look at the fetus during an ultrasound. What begins as a quiet, touching moment culminates with Janney going on a hilarious rant against a snooty, opinionated technician.

"I've learned a lot about how people feel about doctors in the making of this movie," Reitman says with a chuckle. "The biggest laugh in the movie seems to be when Allison Janney says, 'Doctors are sadists that act like God and watch the lesser people scream.' That gets such a strong reaction that I fear for our medical system."

Reitman says the scene is easily his favorite in the movie, but equally strong is another pivotal moment when Garner's seemingly uptight, self-involved career woman accidentally crosses paths with Juno in a bustling mall and for the first time gets to feel the baby kick.

"It's a very real scene," Reitman says. "What's funny is that it wasn't in the original screenplay. I called Diablo and said, 'I think it would be interesting if we had a scene in which Vanessa feels the baby kick.' And she goes, 'I have that scene.' And she instantly emailed it to me. She had already written it but had not included it. And I said, 'What are you doing just sitting on such a great scene?'

"It was a tough shoot, though, because you can't afford to close down a mall. So we had to shoot all night long (while the stores were closed), and poor Jennifer had been up like 24 hours before we got to that close-up of her that makes the scene.

"Imagine being up for 24 hours, it's 8 in the morning, your hands are on this piece of cold foam rubber that is Ellen's belly and she's trying to create this magical moment. And she's just amazing. I think it's one of the great moments of her career, and I'm very proud of that."

He's also proud of the film's subtle but reverberant pontifications on class and family, best illustrated when Juno and her decidedly blue-collar dad have their first meeting with the Lorings at the couple's posh home in a gated community just outside Minneapolis.

"That was the first scene Diablo ever came up with," Reitman said. "That was kind of the impetuous for the film: the auditioning of a family. It was something I lived through myself. My younger sister was adopted and when I was 12 we had a social worker that came to our home and auditioned us as a family.

"Diablo grew up in a house sort of like Juno's, and I grew up in a house like the Lorings, and that scene shows what we each brought to the film. It was each one of our experiences at the core, and it's because of that I feel it's an accurate portrayal of both sides that doesn't really judge."

Judgments, by the way, are one thing Reitman strictly wants to avoid when it comes to "Juno." But unexpected support from anti-abortionists has taken him a bit aback, but he doubts it will have any affect on the box office.

"Once people see the movie, politics will go right out the window," Reitman promises. "Because when you get to the end, there's no political statement whatsoever. But people like to project and I think it would be wonderful if (the pro-lifers) embraced it. In fact I think it would be wonderful if everyone embraced it."

Al Alexander can be reached at aalexander@ledger.com.