Juno Has Another Baby (Emmy)

“Here’s my unsolicited advice to any aspiring screenwriters who might be reading this: Don’t ever agonize about the hordes of other writers who are ostensibly your competition.  No one else is capable of doing what you do.”
Diablo Cody
Introduction/Juno
The Shooting Script

“The internet is a miraculous things. Just share as much as you can, self-publish, blog, podcast whatever you need to do. Just make sure you are not withholding your gifts from the world. Because you have so many opportunities now….We’re in a new frontier.”
Diablo Cody

I woke up this morning with a strange lady next to me. We just met last night and I was glad to see her still sitting on the night stand this morning. She’s gold, has wings and seems to be holding some kind of science project. I won her last night at the regional Emmy Awards in Minneapolis. It was a great way to end a good week.

The Emmy is for the Screenwriting from Iowa blog that I started earlier this year just a few days after seeing Juno. Of course, I didn’t know back in January that Cody would win an Oscar, but I thought her story was a great example of a writer emerging from fly-over country.

Nor did I think back in January when I started my first blog that it would lead to an Emmy 9 months later. (But that is good timing since this Emmy is an sort of an offspring of Juno.) So thanks to Ms. Cody for the inspiration and thanks to all the readers and friends who’ve encouraged me to keep chipping away at this concept.

Yesterday as I drove up from Cedar Falls to Minneapolis I thought about how this thing had come full circle.

Cody lived in Minneapolis when she wrote Juno just a few years after graduating from the University of Iowa. So to fully complete the circle this afternoon I visited the Starbucks inside the Target in Crystal, Minnesota where much of Juno was written. (Reportedly in just seven weeks.)

Adam Vanderlinder was working this afternoon when I walked in with my Emmy award (in a backpack, thank you) and ordered a chai latte and he confirmed that I was at the right Starbucks. He remembered Cody and even pointed out the table she sat while writing. I asked how he remembered the exact table and he said it is the only place with an electrical outlet.

This may not be a news flash, but I haven’t seen any newspaper, magazine or blogs showing any pictures of this part of the Juno back story. So in all its glory here are a couple photographs of my new angelic lady friend at the spot where Cody spent a little time before she made her way to the red carpet at the Academy Awards. (Complete with the soon to be famous electric outlet that somebody will probably steal and sell on ebay.)

So for all those screenwriters outside L.A. who think they could jump start their career if they could only move to L.A., I offer this photograph of Cody’s exotic former office (not to be confused with her former exotic job) far from Hollywood as a practical and inexpensive example of where your ideas and dreams can grow. (Just substitute your town or suburb.)

Vanderlinder also said he remembers Cody also drinking chai lattes. This symmetry is starting to move beyond full circle and into The Twight Zone…oh, while we’re speaking of classic TV — I wonder if Cody will ever get a statue like spunky Mary Tyler Moore (seven time Primetime Emmy Award-winner) has at the Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis.

If you’ve never seen The Mary Tyler Moore Show (the story was set in Minneapolis) do yourself a favor and hunt down some episodes and watch the program that was ranked #11 in “TV Guide’s 50 Best Shows of All Time.”

The Coen Brothers are currently back in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area shooting a new movie (A Serious Man) on their home turf. I was pleased to hear all the Minnesota-rooted boys (Dylan, Prince and Garrison Keillor) on the radio during my short trip to the twin cities. I also learned that the current film Quarantine is the product of two St. Paul filmmakers (and, yes, brothers) Drew and John Erick Dowdle.

In an interview with Colin Covert in this Sunday’s Star Tribune, John explains their horror fixation, “We blame the long winters sitting home wishing we could get out. We’re the latest in a long list of Midwestern filmmakers and artists with a very dark side.”

So the Minneapolis–St. Paul area continues to show serious creative clout to go along with their serious cold weather. (Yes, it did snow in Minneapolis yesterday –a week before Halloween!)

This is as fitting a place to give you the link for Diablo Cody’s Tips for Blogging Your Way to Hollywood Success as written by John Scott Lewinski. And if you haven’t read The Juno-Iowa Connection it is still the number one read post on Screenwriting from Iowa.

And here are two little bonus Cody Q&A’s, the first with Steve Marsh I found at mspmag.com and the other with Oprah Winfrey:

What inspired Juno? 
”I was kinda sitting in my kitchen in Robbinsdale, and thinking about the image of a teenage girl sitting across from these uptight yuppies in their living room. They’re basically auditioning to be the parents of her unborn child. And I was like, that’s possibly the most awkward thing I could imagine, and it is therefore hilarious. And I wound up building the film around that image. And then I just based the character of Juno on myself as a teenager, although I was never that cool.”

Oprah Winfrey: How did you get it (Juno) to be so fresh? “I don’t know, I guess, you know, when you’re coming from the middle of the country and you’re not part of the industry and you’re just telling your own story, I think it’s easy to be more original.”

text & photos 2008 Copyright Scott W. Smith