Comments by Jason Reitman
Two months before we started shooting "Juno," Ellen Page was hanging out at my office, when I asked her "What kind of music do you think Juno listen to?" Without pause, she blurted out "The Moldy Peaches!" and within seconds she was downloading songs on my computer. The first track she played was "Anyone Else But You." I immediately called Diablo Cody, the screenwriter, and discussed the idea of ending the movie with a duet between Juno and Bleeker.
This song, more than any other, defined the sound of the film: a patchwork of homemade sounds made by teenagers whose senses of humor and honesty rang through the crappy tape recorder they used to capture their chicken-scratch lyrics. A few weeks later I was introduced to Kimya Dawson, the co-creator of the Peaches. I asked her if she had any other songs, and voilà, a care package showed up with over a hundred tracks across six album. The soundtrack had arrived at my doorstep.
By the end of the shoot we had gotten far enough ahead of schedule that the last day was reserved for pickup shots and the shooting of one scene - Juno and Bleeker's duet. Unbeknownst to Ellen Page and Michael Cera, Kimya Dawson was also making a surprise visit. While they practiced the song in the living room of Bleeker's house, Kimya was in the dining room, blushing.
It was kind of a complicated shot, in that we started so close on the characters and wound up on this wide shot of the house. The idea beinf that these two small characters had found each other in this giant world. A lovely thought - but where do you put the microphones? So we dug a hole in the ground and hid one there, then sneaked a couple into nearby bushes.
The shot starts with Ellen biking up with the guitar on her back, then sitting down with Michael to play the song as the camera backs up across the street. At the last second we added the Dancing Elke track team as a nice touch. But something happened while we were shooting. As we filmed what would be the last frames of the movie, the whole crew began to realize this was also the end of our shot - the end of our family. And as Michael and Ellen finished the song and kissed, members of the crew began to well up. I looked at Biablo and the producers behind the monitors, and all I saw were tears. I opened my mouth to say, "Cut," but I couldn't find the words.
Jason Reitman, November 4, 2007