SCREENWRITER FILES | "Young Adult" and the Evolution of Diablo Cody

Why Diablo Cody's Young Adult is one of the decades best films, and why Juno is overrated...

I know I am meant to like Juno, the 2007 screenwriting debut of Diablo Cody, directed by Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) and starring Ellen Page (now Elliot Page). On the surface, any film attempting to lessen the stigma of teenage pregnancy is something worth exploring, even though it is a cause easily hijacked by a frightfully powerful anti-choice movement. What lost me as a viewer however seemed to be what press and indie audiences adored - the witty and wry story of a pregnant teen girl. The thing was, in 2007 I was just shy of 21. Living in the small suburban town that I did, more than a few of of my female classmates had dropped out of high school along the way to have babies. They were excited, shy, clueless... and ultimately scared, hopelessly young girls daunted and alone as they spiralled headlong into a commitment even most adults aren't ready for. 

Many lacked a support network, no quirky endearing father-of-the-baby in sight, and parents that absolutely did not say the right thing (my childhood best friend Ally was chased out of her house by an enraged mother beating her with a slipper, screaming "Get out of my house you stupid whore!" She stayed with me for two weeks until she could move in with her boyfriend, who had six siblings). They certainly weren't cocky, confident teens that spoke like 30-somethings, giving away their babies to wealthy families. Juno's rapid-fire deadpan self-irony not only gave us a world where everyone always said the perfect thing... but a world where everyone always felt the right things. This (combined with the cutesy ukulele music that I have never enjoyed, sorry Moldy Peaches) made for a cinematic experience that left me feeling... exceedingly frustrated. Diablo Cody acknowledged at the time of the films release that the dialogue represented this "idealized" version of herself - who she wished she could be. She also stated in the I Think You're Interesting podcast in 2020 that when she wrote Juno, she was "as deep as a puddle".

This maybe touches on why many of those of us broken from a young age were unable to connect to the films heart - because it did have heart. For example, there is the scene in which Juno has a vulnerable moment with her father, where she says to him "I need to know it's possible that two people can stay happy forever". His reply; advising her to simply find someone that accepts all of her, is easy, sincere and delivered beautifully by JK Simmons. Another line spoken by Juno that touches on something real: "I just want things to be perfect. I don't want them to be shitty and broken like everyone else's family". In the brief moments her dialogue wasn't weighed down with cleverness, we get glimpses into where Diablo Cody's strengths lie as a screenwriter - exploring the humour and ugliness of our faults with authenticity. Ultimately these moments were lost, buried under snappy dialogue and Reitman's efforts to define his tone and style.

In 2009, driven by a desire to see female leads struggle with mental illness and sincere faults, Diablo Cody collaborated with Spielberg to create The United States of Tara, a T.V. series about a woman living with dissociative personality disorder. She would later express frustration when creative control was wrested from her, as the studio demanded she recreate her "snappy" Juno dialogue and she refused, leading to her being kicked out of the writers room as the show headed in the opposite direction of Cody’s intent. This same year, Cody released Jennifer's Body, a fun, B-grade horror high school movie. Personally, I don't believe the film deserved the criticism that it was levelled - Diablo's most criticised projects wind up being her best work. In the context of the society we live in now, Jennifer's Body would be better received among audiences today (in fact it's experiencing a revival of sorts). I would even argue her toned-down stylised dialogue worked better within the context of this world, as we were dealing with a stunning cheerleader played by Megan Fox who becomes possessed by Satan's succubus (she was kidnapped by a dude-bro musician as a virgin sacrifice to Satan for fame and fortune, only he didn't realise Jennifer wasn't actually a virgin...). So the succubus becomes one with Jennifer, gruesomely consuming "nice guys" and jocks at her high school (with glee), as her childhood best friend Needy sets out to save her. There is one moment, when we first see her standing in Needy's kitchen, covered in blood and utterly silent. The bloody smile Megan Fox silently delivers still truly creeps me out, all these years later. Overall, the film is wickedly funny, cheesy and twisted in the very best ways, and of course the douchebag dudebro musician gets his in the end (in a way that might surprise you). 

Regardless, I wasn't motivated to return to the world of Diablo again until ten years later. 

So... why do I come to her defence her now? Two reasons. While grateful for its indie and Oscar success, Cody now acknowledges she would never write Juno today. It's not who she is, or who she ever was (its also not often that a writer regrets their most critically acclaimed work, though I personally respect her for it). Diablo was a stripper-turned-writer who suffered numbing episodes of depression most of her life, even more intensely after she had children. She also hated how it was politicised by the anti-choice movement - as that was never her intention. The second reason lies in what is actually her best work to date - Young Adult (2011) and Tully (2014). Both of these films struggled to find audiences, as those who went in expecting the energy of Juno were disappointed, and in some cases, angry at Diablo's refusal to redeem the broken women on screen. Our comfort had stopped being her concern, and her work became all the more richer for it.

In a podcast with Joe Rogan earlier this year, friend of Diablo Cody Quentin Tarantino (who cited Young Adult as one of his favourite films in the last ten years), spoke about this tendency towards redemption in movies, highlighting the 1970's as a time when a characters salvation wasn't the driving purpose of the film:

 "In the 70's you had many movies where... characters weren't necessarily the hero, they were fucked up but they were interesting characters... everything was cynical, then in the 80's that was washed away, and the most important thing for a character was that they were "likeable". Even in a movie that pushed the envelope and tried to challenge things, well it could do it for about an hour, then the last 20 minutes would be (the characters) going back on everything they did, apologising for it and making everything fine. The most important thing was that the audience had to like everybody".

In both Young Adult and Tully, Diablo Cody took a page from Quentin's book and traded redemption for authenticity, creating invigorating and memorable characters in the process.

It wasn't until a bored, particularly heartbroken Monday last year in October of 2021, that I finally watched Young Adult. I was reeling from a falling out with my first love, who had assessed our precious once-in-a-lifetime attraction and our happiness alongside a life offered by someone who he could be his more masked self with, and had chosen her. He loved me, and I him, yet in this world Lula and Alabama end up alone as their Sailor or Clarence take that imperfect yet perfect life and give it to someone else. Were it not for my dog, I wouldn't have gotten out of bed. But I got dressed. I ate what I could. And I found distraction in movies - either strikingly violent (this girls got a little rage sometimes), or trashy rom-coms. Young Adult had been categorised as a romantic comedy - just the mindlessness I needed. What followed upon viewing however, was the emotional equivalent of seeing the ugliest parts of yourself on full display to the world. Under fluorescent lights. Naked.

We are introduced to Mavis, who is a ghost writer of a fading YA series of novels about teen vampires. She lives in a dim shoebox apartment, is an alcoholic by night who chugs Diet Coke by day, has a white fluffy Pomeranian named Dolce, and drowns out the silence with reality tv like The Kardashians. She will invest hours in cultivating and moulding the gorgeous woman that the world sees - an illusion that quickly unravels in the harsh light of day. Although she remains chronically single, we observe she has no shortage of very average dates (who she takes to bed anyway). All this seems fairly grim, but there is a dark comedic thread that runs through the story. Young Adult is bitterly, wickedly funny. As is the case with its younger British sister Fleabag (Phoebe Waller Bridge would be partly inspired by Young Adult), you are uncomfortable yet always amused. Mavis receives an email invitation for the baby-shower of her first love and high-school boyfriend, Buddy. Quickly, she attempts to decode what it could possibly mean, as they have had minimal contact since she moved to the city and their relationship ended over a decade earlier. Ultimately, she comes to the very unfounded conclusion that the invitation was Buddy's cry for help, and she sweeps up her Pomeranian into her Mini, and heads to her home town (all the while playing on repeat a Teenage Fanclub song she clearly shared with him).

Returning home, we see her disdain with the town around her, noting how little things have changed, and immediately begins her maneuvering in order to win back Buddy. We also learn she was married, for a time, and things fell apart with finality. Throughout the film, Mavis draws from her ongoing life experience to write the final book of her YA series, which comes in the form of Mavis's voiceover as she composes her novel as the cocky and confident Kendal, heroine of Waverley Prep. Kendal is clearly Mavis's idea of perfection, her observations giving us insight into how deep Mavis's disgust with the world runs. The key difference between the character Kendal and her narrating author Mavis, is that Mavis is filled with self-loathing and self-hatred, and Kendal is nothing but confident self-obsession.

But at the heart of this film, is Mavis' relationship with Matt, the "hate crime guy" played by Patton Oswalt. When in senior year, a group of jocks thought he was gay and beat him with crowbars, crippling him for life. When Mavis returns to Mercury, Matt strikes up conversation with her. He had a locker next to hers for six years... naturally Mavis doesn't remember him until his tragedy dawns on her after a few drinks. Matt lives with his awkward sister (who has carried a life-long torch for Mavis), working odd jobs and making Star Wars themed bourbon in his garage, has an awesome collection of vintage 90's band t-shirts, and is every bit the cynical middle-ageing (self-admittedly overweight) geek. Mavis, the closeted "social" alcoholic she is - bonds with him immediately. Matt's sardonic humour, bitterness and brutally honest observations help counter the deeply arrogant selfishness of Mavis. She consistently complains to him, without irony or self-awareness, how hard her life has been. When she drunkenly explains her plan to win back Buddy, Matt points out that he is actually happily married and she is conveniently forgetting something....

"Oh what the baby? So what! I mean, I have baggage too".

Throughout the story he remains on the sidelines, observing Mavis' failed attempts to win Buddy's attention with wry amusement lined with a shred of pity. Unlike my own connection with my first love (which wasn’t only defined only by shared history, but also by shared interests, a connection of the soul), Mavis thinks their romance is enough in its own. Matt tries in vain to illustrate to Mavis how her plan will never work, that she has absolutely no evidence to support her single-minded campaign, that she is selfish and this will end terribly. Likewise, he also laughs with her, as they commiserate over drinks and shared misanthropy. His ability to cut through her bullshit allow us in turn to relate to Mavis, even if we don't want to. It's an act of subversion when a writer is able to have their audience connect with an unlikeable character who is by all accounts, not a good person. I certainly fought the discomfort I felt on first viewing, before ultimately embracing it. 

On the surface, Mavis and I have nothing in common. She was a popular queen bitch in high school, I most definitely wasn't. She lacks tactfulness and self-awareness, I'm overly sensitive. She is bitter, I’m forever a cynical optimist pushing for the best of people, wanting them to be happy, but also being honest with them. She acts from a place of vanity, I act from vulnerability. She is a neglectful dog mother, I spoil my dog in a way that displays zero self-control. She is cold and judgmental, I am full of warmth and unconditional love. No, where I felt under scrutiny, was in her desperation to rewrite her past while also desperately trying to prove she was beyond it. The way she looked with longing at the life that by all rights should have been hers. She ignored sound advice, wrung out false hope in every encounter, and ultimately is consumed by delusion. We aren't meant to like her, however her honest treatment ensures we understand her. Although my first love actually reciprocated my feelings, it didn’t stop the longing I felt matching hers in intensity.

She also frequently uses the language of destiny and soulmates to justify her appalling behaviour, and her disdain for Buddy's new life. She desperately paints herself as someone wildly successful and happy who is beyond the small town she escaped, and we might even believe her too if we didn't see her numbness firsthand. Buddy himself is polite, stepping lightly so as to not offend, not realising how deep Mavis' delusion runs. He is also an insensitive fool, failing to understand how her' "mental sickness" and trauma might make his marital happiness difficult to witness firsthand. His wife Beth (a wannabe musician and special-needs teacher) is patient and trusting, awkwardly laughing through Mavis's detailed trips down memory lane intended to evoke jealousy, recounting intimate details of Buddy along the way. Mavis' bitterness at the town around her is largely unwarranted, twisted by jealousy as she can't understand why no-one else carries the same void in her heart that she does. Depression and alcoholism haunt her, and her high-school reputation as a "psychotic prom-queen bitch" is her only true legacy. Her friendship with Matt (who in small ways is much closer to my own first love than the insufferable Buddy) remains her lifeline in the film.

Eventually her mother catches up with her, and it becomes clear Mavis was avoiding her parents, and we quickly understand why when she has dinner with them. In a beautifully directed scene, Mavis enters her childhood bedroom, virtually left untouched since she escaped to the city years earlier. She wordlessly sweeps her gaze over childhood memories, a life lived, lingering on seemingly unremarkable items that for her, carry the emotional weight of memories. When she gets to her closet, she pulls out Buddy's old sweatshirt that he gave to her in high school, breathing it in before slipping it on. I know the heartache of that longing, of wanting to just feel his arms around me again (and my thoughts sometimes drift to his own - does he ever wish he could breathe me in again too?). It's quietly heartbreaking as we see that beneath her bitterness, there is a deep yearning to return home, to go back and start over. We also get further insight into her character during a telling exchange with her parents over dinner. When Mavis asks why they still have her wedding photos up, her parents reply that it's a nice memory...

"Of my failed marriage?"

"Well the wedding wasn't a failure dear."

It's insight into the detachment of her family, why she feels divorced from society. Later that night, seeing Mavis in Buddy's sweatshirt complaining about how hard her life has been - Matt finally loses his cool. He highlights her flaws and ugliness in brutal honesty, spelling out everything she is too afraid to face. Patton does beautiful work here, as he also relays his characters trauma in vivid detail. Mavis refuses to hear it, and attends the baby shower the following morning- looking demure and perfect in Chanel. When that inevitable rejection comes, as she at last comprehends that in spite of a drunk kiss Buddy hasn't thought about her since they broke up ten years earlier, we finally see her fall to pieces... and it's not pretty. She throws all her malice and pain back into the faces of the people that always hated her, but also the ones that didn't. Charlize is utterly perfect in her performance, obscuring vulnerability beneath a layer of spite. This scene breaks my heart every-time I watch it, as I remember my own rage at my broken body. I recall the hate I never give into - jealously over people who find it so easy to be happy. Regret, pettiness, love, envy and desire. But most of all, I know what it is to rally behind hope through your pain, only to have that hope disintegrate before your eyes. Life does that to us all indiscriminately - both to those deserving yet also to the innately good people of the world. 

She winds up on Matt's doorstep, who instantly knows something has happened. The arrogance is gone, the weight of everything she had been in denial of curling her shoulders inward as she admits she made a terrible mistake. He doesn't take the opportunity to cut her down or gloat, even though it would have been so easy. He simply looks at her with eyes full of understanding as she breaks down completely. What follows is a scene that sees broken people reaching out to one another after years of loneliness. It's refreshing, to see two characters who don't fit into ideas of perfection share a scene like that together (we also almost never see leading men with imperfect bodies be given scenes of intimacy with the female lead - if we do they are played for comedy, not sincerity). It’s a testament to Charlize’s performance that in a scene where Matt holds a particularly broken Mavis once they are both undressed, we still feel the vulnerability of them both in equal measure. 

Ultimately what makes this film so revelatory (and controversial) all these years later, lies in a final exchange between Mavis and Matt's younger sister Sandra, who obsesses after Mavis blindly, with an innocent yet unhealthy enthusiasm (her character also inadvertently does the most damage). The morning after sleeping with Matt, Mavis confesses to her depression and the void she has always lived with. It's here we would normally see a moment of redemption... yet Diablo Cody makes a decision that is both bold and realistic, and it is the reason this film remains her very best work.

In the ten years since Young Adult, we have seen content subverting expectations of not only what is expected of a female leads, but what is typically demanded of any lead character. Tully, Fleabag, Shiva Baby - these women are all inherently unlikeable, yet we can't help but empathise with them in ways that speak to our own anxieties and brokenness. Until Young Adult, the only female characters that truly came close to exploring how lost I sometimes felt in this world were Brenda Chenowith and Claire Fisher in the seminal series Six Feet Under a decade earlier (and I remember an infinity with Annie Blackburn in Twin Peaks). Watching these stories lessened the stigma, as I recognised it's okay that we don't always understand our mental health. It's normal to have shadows that leave you feeling divorced from the world, rather than a part of it, to have faults that are ugly or driven by anxiety and fear. Art like the films above, it gives us a space outside of ourselves to sit with our imperfection a while. As Tarantino pointed out, we learn that authenticity and understanding are more powerful than redemption. I will always have parts of me that are messy, intense, wild and beautiful. These stories matter deeply, and I hope we continue to see more characters that subvert expectations in the same way. In the meantime, there will always be those of us considered misfits or maladjusted, unable to find compassion for our faults. Perhaps one-day, our society will catch up with the art we hold close to our hearts, finally accepting us as we are. 

Until then, like Mavis we will continue to rally through our pain as we enthusiastically announce to the world...