Juno is pretty cool

"You're like the coolest person I've ever met," Ellen Page says to a knobbly knee'd Michael Cera at the climax of Juno. "And you don't even have to try, you know."
"I try really hard, actually."

Juno was Fox Searchlight's sleeper hit of 2007, grossing over $85 million in the US (after a modest budget of only $7.5 million). It comes out in the UK on February 8th and I was there at its VIP screening at the Soho Hotel in London last week.

Why am I dressed like a dork?

(If you're reading this through my RSS feed, you might not get the accompanying picture. In any case, it's probably a sensible question to ask - and on most occasions.)

My housemate Bill and I were there to help out a friend, whose event management company was putting on the screening. She needed a couple of geeks to dress up as characters from the film, greet guests and pose for pictures.

"You're like the geekiest guy I know," she said. "You don't even have to try." She was right. I couldn't claim, like Michael Cera's character in Juno, that the accolade was the result of any sort of effort. So, of course, I agreed to do it.

Not knowing much about the film however, I was somewhat unprepared for my costume: a sports vest and shorts, pull-up socks, a wrist and headband. Nevertheless, I left my shame with my trousers, in the cloak room, while Bill joked that stripping down to a pair shorts for £50 might be construed as the behaviour of a couple of "smack heads." We emerged from our dressing room all the same, regretfully sober and ready to face a room full of celebrities.

I joked with British soul singer, Beverley Knight, formed one point of a hip-hop love triangle with So Solid Crew's Lisa Mafia, even went for a post-screening drink with star of zombie film, 28 Weeks Later (and new best friend), Imogen Poots.

But the real star of the night - it's not difficult to say - was the movie itself. A sophomore effort from Thank You for Smoking director, Jason Reitman, Juno is a smart, funny and charming teen comedy, with real affection and wit. Go see it when it comes out here on February 8th (or catch it while you still can, if it's already showing in your country).

It's got an awesome soundtrack (that I reckon will do for The Mouldy Peaches what Garden State did for The Shins); it moves the plot along without being intrusive (take note, Sondre Lerche). And at one point, at the end of the movie, it sort of becomes the plot.

I won't ruin the ending for you. But when the film had finished, and we changed back into our own clothes, Bill joked that it felt good to be 'cool' again. As he did, I caught myself in the changing room mirror, one hand pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose, the other, buttoning the cardigan that snuggled under my second-hand blazer. I thought to myself that however hard I try, I'll never quite be cool. But that was okay.

In the film, Michael Cera's character got the girl. And there I was at the end of an awesome party, having met some pretty interesting people, £50 better off and about to go for a drink with a movie star? I suppose that is pretty cool.

Catch Juno in the UK on February 8th; find out more on the link below.

• Juno: Official Site - [Fox Searchlight]

 

'Talk' on sale

I don't often give special shout outs on this here blog. Let's face it, I don't post a great deal either. But there's a sale over at my mate's blog and talk, it turns out, is cheap. You should check it out on the link below or via my blog roll.

Talk It Is Cheap is the true story of a single, chauvinistic, twentysomething, English man in New York.

Head on over and leave comments.

• Talk It Is Cheap [Peter Woods]

"May contain traces of boyfriend."

"I can't do this," she says, pulling away.
"Why?" I ask.
"I've got a boyfriend."

So, this is the conversation that marks the end of so many of my dates. It's become as familiar to me as picking up the cheque, saying goodnight and poking on Facebook. (It's usually the only poking I do that night.)

And it's making me wonder what it is about me - or my dates - that makes this conversation so familiar. Do they think I'm gay? A "Will" to their "Grace"? Are they shopping for a new boyfriend (but "just browsing, thanks")? Or, like Schrödinger's cat, does the boyfriend only appear at the end of the date, when I take a gamble and try to open the box (so to speak)?

In any case, it terrifies my friends in relationships. "It makes me wonder what my girlfriend was really doing on Saturday night," my housemate says. "Come to think of it, what were you doing on Saturday night?"

Well, I was probably having that conversation, like a disclaimer tagged onto the end of a radio advert, muttered quickly and incomprehensible, a list of possible side effects - "may cause mild embarrassment, sudden loss of date and that sinking feeling that this is all too familiar..."

15 minutes

Since the Stephen King/Rob Reiner chillfest, Misery (1990), having a "number one fan" is an altogether terrifying prospect. (A number two or three is fine.)

In the film, a novelist, played by James Caan, is rescued from a car accident in a blizzard, by a particularly fat Kathy Bates. Wait, it gets scarier...

It turns out she's his "number one fan" and has no intention of letting him go. She also lops off his feet with a hammer (don't click this link if you're squimish!).

It's no wonder then that I had cold feet (or any feet at all) when I agreed to meet one of my fans last week. ('One of' suggests there are more; 'one and only' may be closer to the truth.) She'd read my blog, saw that I'd moved to London and wanted to meet up.

Why the hell not? I thought.

Well, there was one prettyyy big reason why not:

• Kathy Bates.

But anyway, I chose to look beyond the Bates and found instead a very charming, not at all psychotic, PhD student.

And it got me thinking, perhaps prematurely, about the notion of fame (and the fifteen minutes of it promised us by Andy Warhol). I realise that it hasn't yet touched me in the same way that it did, say, Princess Diana, but it has sort of tickled me on the nose.

The PhD student knew only a persona, pixelated and preserved on this blog; a "true story of a single, metrosexual, twentysomething, British Indian male."

And while one fan does not a fan club make, I imagine it's just a matter of time before I'm shaving my head and checking into rehab, dangling a baby over a balcony ledge, or dying in a high speed car chase in Paris.

That's a lot to cram into my fifteen minutes.

"Day 47 in the Big Brother house."

Big Brother is back on the telly tonight. And little brother, Ben - one of my four new housemates - will be, I imagine, quite pissed off that I'm taking that fact as inspiration for this post.

I'm contractually obliged, he said, to write about my new abode on my blog. And perhaps he's right. (I never did read the contract.) But I'm pretty sure he won't be happy that, despite all the good times we've shared, its the return of Channel 4's beleaguered reality TV show that has compelled me to write.

I've made up my mind. And I'm going to run with the analogy.

15 Kingsgate Road, my new house, is not unlike that of the compound at Elmstree Studios, where tonight a dozen fame-seekers will wheel in their suitcases and roll out their desperation.

Here, at Kingsgate Road, there are fewer fame-seekers but no less desperation. If this were reality TV - and it very nearly is, with all this digital equipment - Bill would be playing up to the camera, Adam, playing it down, Nic, the gobby posh one and Ben, a young boy on the verge of manhood.

Think Glyn from series 7.

And me? An agoraphobic, web-cam wielding recluse? I'm the perfect housemate.