Checking In With Diablo Cody and Ellen Page

By Katey Rich

As Diablo Cody and Ellen Page continue making the rounds through the publicity circuit for Juno, the details on their next projects are already emerging. The two have swiftly become icons of girl power, and with their upcoming movies about cheerleading vampires and roller derby skaters, they don't seem to be giving up the mantle any time soon.

It was announced a while ago that Cody's next script in production would be Jennifer's Body, a satire about a cheerleader who becomes posessed by a demon spirit and leaves her best friend to try and stop the carnage. Now CHUD.com, a.k.a. Cinematic Happenings Under Development, has a review of the screenplay, which will star Megan Fox as the titular teenager who develops a taste for blood. CHUD writer Jeremy Smith, an admitted fan of Juno, compares the screenplay to Heathers and Joss Whedon's work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Though the story is packed full of jokes and pop culture references, much like Juno, Smith says "Jennifer's Body falls somewhere in between character piece and commercial entertainment."

The movie begins with Jennifer's best friend Needy, the nerdy unpopular girl to Jennifer's beloved cheerleader, admitting that she killed her friend, and she only regrets not doing it sooner. We flash back to a rock concert, where Jennifer was invited backstage with the band, who attempt to use her for a virgin sacrifice but... well, she's not a virgin. The sacrifice backfires, which results in Jennifer inheriting the demon spirit from the skeezy band. As you can probably guess, it's all downhill from there.

Though he has his issues with the screenplay, Smith seems pleased overall : "It may not work all the way as satire, but it's briskly paced and very, very funny." He indicates that humor comes largely from the same snappy dialogue that made some viewers' ears bleed in Juno, but he's rightly concerned that a different cast might not be able to pull it off. "I'm especially happy that I saw Juno before I read this script; Cody's dialogue has the tendency to sound stilted on the page. This makes me wonder if lesser actors can handle her stylized banter; it's not every time that you're going to get spoiled with the likes of Ellen Page, Allison Janney, J.K. Simmons and so on."

Speaking of Miss Page, she's just committed to her next project, a story of roller derby and beauty pageants and the area in-between called Whip It! It will be Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, and it's based on a novel by Shauna Cross, whose derby name was Maggie Mayhem. Unfamiliar with roller derby? It can be best described as rugby on wheels-- impossible to understand the rules, but so physically demanding and rough you can't help but be mesmerized. The story follows a young woman whose mother pressures her to enter into the beauty pageant circuit, but whose heart lies with throwing elbows and skating with the derby. The title refers to a signature move in roller derby used to propel one teammate ahead of the pack, which, trust me, is crucial to scoring points in the sport.

It's a fair argument that Page is running the risk of being typecast, but since her choices up to this point have also included a vigilante movie (Hard Candy) and an X-Men installment, the two-in-a-row "smart, sassy teenager" movies shouldn't be held against her. Variety reports that Barrymore had been interested in the script for a while, but that development only picked up when Page expressed interest. She's doing the smartest thing a smart young woman in Hollywood can do: making sure more movies about smart young women get made. It's the same thing Cody is doing with her screenplays, and something that really can't be done often enough.