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mygif

So does my girlfriend. Been going on about her for awhile now.

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mygif

Huh. I’m pretty sure silicon sex toys aren’t toxic.

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mygif

“I like my fake name. It’s engraved on an Oscar. Yours isn’t.”

Love.

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mygif
Required Name Here said on September 18th, 2008 at 11:47 pm

i dunno, it seemed kinda bitchy to me. “blah blah blah, i won an oscar, so all you critics can shove it. how dare you criticize my movie, it won an oscar, yours didnt. so nyah nyah nyah on you guys. because i was a stripper and you werent.”

my two questions: what the hell is a “zeitgeisty-demo-lifestyle pod”? i mean, what kind of psychobabble bullshit is that? its like the john mayer song “your body is a wonderland.” great to read/hear, but you try saying that in real life and you get laughed at.

and how the hell can anyone claim to be the “Mark Twain of extemporaneous jerk-off fiction” with a straight face. gee, it sure is hard to get a guy who called a phone sex line to orgasm. quick, give it to cody, she once wrote a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Ass, she can give him the jun-oh face!

then again, i didnt like Juno as much as everyone else. however, i dont go into froths of rage whenever i hear her name.

steps off soapbox, deposits two cents in jar.

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mygif

Yeah, apparently a lot of voters in the Academy liked her inauthentic dialogue and phony characters, too. Fake-independent film really helps critics establish street-cred. See? I’m hip! I’m down with the Cody! Honest to blog!

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mygif

*Shrugs*

I can definitely understand why she’s doing this; she has received a lot of vitriol that she hasn’t earned. I mean, I have issues with Juno, but they’re more around the hype than the actual film. The dialogue and the soundtrack kinda killed it for me, and I’ll never watch it again; but it actually did have a surprisingly strong emotional core.

I mean, yeah, this article sounds a little bitchy. And, yeah, the stripper/phone sex references are kinda weird. But that’s who she is. She’s got the right to brag, about her past and present; even if Juno didn’t speak to everybody, she made a movie that appealed to a lot of people that wasn’t a complete* rehash of what came before.

*”complete” being taken literally…

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mygif

She’s the Dane Cook of screenwriting: 90% hype, 10% talent.

Obviously the criticism’s starting to get to her. If she REALLY couldn’t be bothered about the “haters”, she would have written a bloody screenplay about it and wouldn’t have made that post.

Someone else summed it up best though:

“Holy Flippity Flap Batman, she can’t go one MinuteMaid without throwing out some type of pop culture reference or shitty Electronic Catch Phrase.”

Honest to blog.

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mygif

… okay, who is this person?

(Really, I had to get to the ’30 year old woman’ line to learn her gender. My lawn, get off it.)

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mygif

The screenwriter for the movie “Juno”…

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mygif

It really bothers me when people complain that the dialogue in Juno is “inauthentic,” because it tells me that people weren’t paying close enough attention to the movie. Juno’s dialogue is inauthentic because Juno is an inauthentic person. She distances herself from serious interpersonal relationships because her mother abandoned her, so she tries real hard to keep everyone else at a distance. Speaking the way she does is one way to do that. The only people in the film who talk that way are Juno, her best friend, and the store clerk who’s only in the movie for like one minute, so who cares what he sounds like. The whole point of Juno is that Juno learns that there are some experiences that she can’t bluff her way through (childbirth) and that some relationships are worth the risk of getting hurt (Bleaker).

I liked Juno, really liked it, but I will say that the script is really only the third best thing about the movie. The cinematography and acting are what really sold me the picture.

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mygif
mightybaldking said on September 19th, 2008 at 9:37 am

First: Have you ever seen a screen-writer given this much attention ever?

Second:
“Yeah, apparently a lot of voters in the Academy liked her inauthentic dialogue and phony characters, too. Fake-independent film really helps critics establish street-cred. See? I’m hip! I’m down with the Cody! Honest to blog!”

Not every movie needs to be realistic. If you want authentic dialogue and realistic characters, I could stream a web cam from my work. The thing about Juno was that it portrayed high school the way we would like it to be, not the way it is. I’m betting a lot of women wish they had been like Juno, and the guys wish they had known a woman like her. It’s called fiction, and usually fiction is a baldfaced lie used to expose simple truths. Or sometimes, it’s just pure fantasy.

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mygif

And yet, no one talks about whoever wrote the screenplay for Epic Movie or Meet The Spartans. Surely, they are more deserving of hate speech from movie fans, right?

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mygif

“she has received a lot of vitriol that she hasn’t earned”

Probably because a lot of people think she’s received a lot of praise/awards she hasn’t earned, to which I’d wager the amount of vitriol is directly proportional.

And no one talks about whoever wrote the screenplay for Epic Movie or Meet the Spartans because neither movie won any awards/received much praise.

Somehow, I don’t think becoming the self-proclaimed Mark Twain of anything is really going to help her case any, but then again: not like she needs to make it. One would think that the Oscar on the mantle would be validation enough to prevent semi-random rants on a MySpace blog. Didn’t a lot of people dislike that Shakespeare in Love won best picture because they thought Saving Private Ryan deserved it more? Not like Marc Norman wrote an op-ed defending his writing in LA Weekly.

The whole thing strikes me as rather odd.

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mygif

Honestly, I still haven’t seen Juno because of the hype surrounding it and the writer.

Also, because of its distinctly white hipster point of view and distinctly white hipster post-sarcastic dialogue. They think they’re funny, but they’re not. Regular sarcasm isn’t good enough for you?? It just seemed very… smug.

Also, while Cody did win a lot of awards that may or may not have been really deserved, the hype surrounding her is solely because of her stripper/phonesex past and because she is a woman. She’s like a snarkier version of what everyone implies Sarah Palin to be, and is loved for it (which doesn’t bode well for this election).

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mygif

I didn’t think JUNO deserved a Best Screenplay Oscar, but Cody was utterly charming onstage so I forgave it.

The film has its problems, but it’s not *bad*. (As has been frequently pointed out, the “honest to blog!” level of hipsterism is mostly confined to the first 15 minutes or so, and then it settles down and we start following the story.) It’s a good early effort- I think Cody will eventually do something much better. She herself admits she’s green.

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mygif

“Fake-independent film really helps critics establish street-cred.”

Dissing a fake-independent film really helps internet commenters establish street-cred.

“If she REALLY couldn’t be bothered about the ‘haters’, she would have written a bloody screenplay about it and wouldn’t have made that post.”

But “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” has already been made.

“One would think that the Oscar on the mantle would be validation enough to prevent semi-random rants on a MySpace blog.”

If awards soothed the nerves, we wouldn’t have nearly as many insane famous people.

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mygif

I think this sums it up rather well:

http://www.the-editing-room.com/juno.html

I would like to clarify that I did not think it was a “bad” movie; it was just okay. I don’t think it deserved as much rancor as it did, it just did nothing to elevate itself into something I would watch again.

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mygif

I love the way all the Cody haters who pop up immediately dive into the kind of resentful whining that proves what she’s saying.

Some guy:
“how dare you criticize my movie”
Nowhere is this said, or anything even remotely equivalent.

Will E.:
“Probably because a lot of people think she’s received a lot of praise/awards she hasn’t earned, to which I’d wager the amount of vitriol is directly proportional.”
No, not even close to proportional. Wildly, dementedly, over the top overreaction, out of all proportion to the importance (which is _miniscule_) of the whole issue, period.
I have yet to see Juno, but it’s just a plain fact that if your reaction to something being overrated that you think isn’t “all that” (as the kids say) is to fly into a rage, there is something wrong with you.

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mygif

Really, most of those who talk about Juno being terribly written remember a couple of stupid hipster phrases Juno herself uses, and I guess Rainn Wilson’s bit part. I don’t see how anyone could look at Jason Bateman’s and the Dad’s parts and say that.

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mygif

All I know is from the commercials, which sucked, and did not entice me to go to the cinema, rent the DVD, or buy it. The movie could be pure untapped genius. But I don’t know, and I’m not going to buy it to find out, and I’m not the one with the DVD rental program.

That’s not being a hater. It’s not giving a shit.

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mygif

I think I may be a lot better at not giving a shit.

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mygif

@Jack Norris (Ed): To be quite honest, Jack, if I’m misinformed about the proportion of vitriol to praise, it’s mainly because I haven’t followed the whole thing even a little bit, which is why I argue the implication that I’m engaging in ‘resentful whining.’

To be blunt: I couldn’t care less of a shit about Juno. I’ll probably never watch it; so far as I’m concerned, the only thing that actually interests me about it, in any way, is that Jennifer Garner is in it, and I like her dimples. She was cool in 13 Going on 30. Besides Garner, though, it’s just not the sort of movie I’m generally much interested in; I’d rather watch Transformers again, personally.

I think, perhaps, you might read my intention more accurately if I reverse the clauses there: “A lot of people think she didn’t earn the praise/awards she received.” Which doesn’t at all imply I don’t think she earned it, nor that she didn’t earn those awards/praise; just some people don’t think she did. I’m not saying Juno is overrated, mainly because I don’t care enough to watch it to say either way.

I think my only point, in fact, was that Cody did win the Oscar, and earned or not, it’s on her mantle, so instead of addressing random Intertube critics, she might put her already-recognized writing talent to better use by writing more screenplays.

So yeah, I’m with Genevieve. Not a hater, just don’t care and don’t understand why Cody does, either.

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mygif

Will E.:
It’s kind of funny that you talk about “reading intentions more accurately” when I thought it was obvious that the “resentful whining” bit wasn’t about you, seeing as it’s two sections before the bit that I specifically addressed to you. It was in reference to a smattering of comments from around #3 to about halfway along. I suppose it could be mistaken for some sort of “heading” with the next lines specific messages to the aforementioned “whiners” but it wasn’t.
Likewise, I was fully aware that you were referring to the reactions of others, and it’s them whose reactions I was referring to as over the top overreactions. I wasn’t even saying that “Juno” didn’t deserve the “overrated” tag, just that it seemed you were giving the overreactors an out with which to justify themselves with the “directly proportional” thing.
As I said, I’ve yet to see “Juno” myself, I’m just a backlash backlasher, and nothing pisses me off more than angry people.

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mygif

Ah, Jack, yes, sorry, I totally misread you. Not so much that your first line was a heading, exactly, but I took the bit you addressed to me as a continuation, i.e., that the disproportionate vitriol was related to the resentful whining. And no, I wasn’t meaning to give anyone an out; I just meant that the more hype/praise she received, the more likely people were to throw vitriol her way. And you might call it a wildly demented over-the-top overreaction, but the people complaining would say the same thing about the Oscar she received.

But still, the real issue here: Oscar winner addressing Intertube critics on a MySpace blog?

Then again, there was the time Annie Proulx got her nose in a snit when Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash for Best Picture, so I suppose it’s not unprecedented, exactly (although I doubt Proulx would have had her snit had she won an Oscar). These moments make me think “Shouldn’t you be writing,” at which point I realize, hey, wait, I probably should be, anyway.

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mygif
21stCenturyFox said on September 19th, 2008 at 11:28 pm

Cody is like Sara Palin. They’re both a product of hype and good marketing, that don’t stand up under closer scrutiny.

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mygif

Except that Diablo Cody is not asking to potentially be in charge of the entire country and doesn’t want to outlaw abortion (as far as I can tell.)

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mygif

“the real issue here: Oscar winner addressing Intertube critics on a MySpace blog?”
The funny thing is she’s posting something addressed to people who don’t like her on her Myspace page. The funnier thing is that a lot of them will probably read it.

The problem with praise-vitriol proportionality is that getting angry at someone for making a movie you don’t like simply isn’t healthy behavior.

Sarah Palin would never make it in Hollywood.

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mygif

Just because I’m not talented enough to even write one of the pieces of shit screenplays that gets made into a Hollywood movie doesn’t mean I’m not smart enough to recognize one when I see one. Hell, I’m not even talented enough to write Meet the Spartans. But I can still tell from shit. Her defensive logic of “I can do it but you can’t so shut up” doesn’t hold up too well.

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mygif

Will E:
“the real issue here: Oscar winner addressing Intertube critics on a MySpace blog?”
As far as that goes, if everyone else can bitch about things in their lives on their blogs & the like, what’s the difference here? The fact that more people know who she is than Joe Schnitz on blogger? I would argue that that is a non-factor as far as what it’s acceptable to ramble about on the web.

Some guy:
“Her defensive logic of “I can do it but you can’t so shut up” doesn’t hold up too well.”

Maybe it would be, if it were there, but it’s just not. You’re totally projecting.

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mygif

I really liked Juno, and I was expecting to hate it. I was expecting a sort of female version of Napoleon Dynamite, and at first that’s what I thought was going to be delivered. OMG I’m drinking juice, looking at a couch while yelling at a little dog! How random!”

But I think people are right in saying if you think the dialogue is not authentic, it’s because Juno is a teenager trying to be cool. She is trying to come off ‘white hipster’ because that is her ‘image’. But then glimpses of the girl behind the facade show the real emotion.

What I really liked about it was that it was a simple story, but really well written. Just when you think it is going to go off on a dramatic tangent, it comes back to a more real outcome.

I really wonder sometimes if there would be all this fuss if the script was written by a middle aged man whose previous job was a tax account, as opposed to Diablo Cody.

Having said that, I don’t know why she would feel the need to vigorously defend herself from the anonymous ramblings of internet

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mygif

@Jack:”Some guy:
“Her defensive logic of “I can do it but you can’t so shut up” doesn’t hold up too well.”

Maybe it would be, if it were there, but it’s just not. You’re totally projecting.”

But it is there, isn’t it? Am I misreading? She says: “Incidentally, if you were me for one day you’d crumble like fucking Stilton. I am better at this than you. You’re not strong enough, Film_Fan78. Trust me,” and I’d say that’s merely the most explicit she gets while being implicit all over the place.

Which seems to pretty much be the point of the whole screed, besides to note that she spent her summer vacation riding roller coasters and to thank Toni Collette for her most recent gig. Besides that, it’s pretty much “I’m middle class white trash who used to strip, operate phone sex lines, and shove enormous dildos up my arse, but my fake name is on an Oscar and yours is an Internet handle, and so you might have gone to film school but I’m still better than you and you shouldn’t say mean things about me.”

The lady, methinks, doth protest too much.

Also, I’d call her “In summation: you try it,” condescending at best and ignorant at worst; I’d wager that a large portion of the people criticizing her work and method in the first place have, in fact, tried it, but unfortunately were never able to take up stripping to quit their dayjobs, an experience from which they drew a quirky, acerbic memoir they could sell to Penguin and which would, given some prodding from their manager, help them break into the industry with no previous screenwriting experience whatsoever.

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mygif

Exactly, Will. There’s a significant amount of luck– one in a million shot– at achieving fame and fortune in the movie biz. Of course, almost everyone who gets into the business knows this. It’s not a shock, and you’re accepting that gamble whenever you dedicate your life to writing screenplays or shooting microbudget flicks in a convenience store. But still, people work damn hard creating some damn fine material in this nearly-hopeless pursuit. It’s natural to feel jealousy and disdain for someone so untalented receiving such broad acclaim for writing material they would have dismissed as forced and unnatural.

People toil their whole lives, only to watch hacks like Cody coast by with her “Pretty Woman” rags-to-riches feel-good story. She’s undeserving of such praise, and that’s been the story with award shows going down in history. But she really needs to spare me the schoolyard “where’s your statue, smart guy” routine, as if that proves anything. The media latched onto her “former stripper makes good” story like a junkyard dog. She hit the jackpot in mass-coverage and managed to pander votes out of an out-of-touch Academy who thought she was provocative and edgy. She’s neither, and the worst thing she can possibly do at this point is start buying into her own hype. She’s on borrowed time, and man, those fifteen minutes of fame are counting down, because she’s going to get exposed as a fluke with her next attempt at a screenplay.

Bet.

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mygif

I don’t see how the hack label fits at all, though. JUNO was overrated, but it wasn’t terrible, and the idea that her next screenplay will inevitably be something horrible is dubious even if you think JUNO *was* a terrible movie.

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mygif

“But I think people are right in saying if you think the dialogue is not authentic, it’s because Juno is a teenager trying to be cool. She is trying to come off ‘white hipster’ because that is her ‘image’.”

Look at Cody’s writing style on her blog. THAT’S how she writes. She wasn’t writing a character, she was injecting her hipster BS into characters. It’s part of her “vagenda”.
That sounds like a hack to me.

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mygif

No, a hack is someone who doesn’t care how good their work is, who just wants to get it done and get the paycheck. Cody obviously has some passion for what she writes, she acknowledges that she’s not mastered the craft yet, that she’s “green”, but she wants to keep getting better. I have to respect that.

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