Friday, February 01, 2008

Juno'd out (ration be damned!)

This is undoubtedly transferred frustration from other areas of my life manifesting itself, but I find myself feeling thusly:

I am over Juno.

It was a reasonably clever little pseudo-indie movie that caught on bigger than it should have. A month ago I reacted to that thusly: Good for it.

And it even got an Oscar nomination. It has no chance of winning Best Picture, but with such a movie, it really is a victory to even be thought of. That's should have been zenith of its buzz, and left at that.

However, now I am sick of it. It's not that the movie itself changed, but the ridiculous over-marketing that is being done has turned me on it. Not only have the commercials for it become way too ubiquitous, but they're making way too much of the fact that, wow, it got nominated.

This evening on the walk home I saw a flatbed truck that was painted orange with the Juno logo and the back was a big diorama of her bedroom, complete with a cardboard cutout of Ellen Page, and the Moldy Peaches song over a loudspeaker.

Not merely a mobile billboard. A freakin' life-size diorama!

And that put me on the edge. I'm not entirely sure why.

But then when I got home and saw Ellen Page on the cover of the new Entertainment Weekly, with the issue's cover story devoted to "The little movie that did," I lost it. I grabbed the magazine and flung it across the room. I then subjected my fiancee to an impromptu profanity-filled rant about how sick I was of Juno (including the recommendation that the marketing people should be shot in the head immediately).

When I remarked on how it wouldn't win anything, she suggested it had a chance at Best Screenplay. I retorted that I was now actively rooting against it in that and every category. All because the over-marketing had taken a good thing and ruined it.

I know that's the role of marketing people! Don't think I don't know that! Doesn't mean I can't be annoyed by it once in a while.

There's so much in life that starts out sucking. Must everything that doesn't suck initially get sucked into that vortex?

Of course. But I guess I didn't need to be reminded of that by a passing truck.

And as this earlier post of mine noted, the movie had already been ruined for me by another non-creative source when I saw it in the theater. One should only have to suffer a movie being ruined once.

~

I did pick up the magazine and place it back on the table.

My fiancee is a wonderfully patient woman.

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