All About Jennifer’s Body
After writing “Juno,” which Diablo Cody describes as a warm, sweet, life-affirming movie, she wanted to venture into darker territory. “I wanted to write something that was about my fears, something that was a little edgy and eerie, but also funny,” Cody notes. As in “Juno,” Cody uses an offbeat writing voice marked by whip-smart dialogue and pop-culture savvy, to mine the precipitous terrain of adolescence. “I don’t know why teenagers are my muses…they just are!” she says. “Teenagers inspire me. I’m fascinated with teen speak…with youth culture. I love adolescents because they’re in a kind of purgatory. They’re not kids anymore, and at the same time they don’t have adult responsibilities. So they’re just experiencing life, but with all these heightened emotions.”
JENNIFER’S BODY for the first time,” Jason Reitman recalls. “I was really excited to read it because I knew Diablo was an enormous fan of the horror genre, and I go see every horror film that comes out. I see more horror films than I see comedies. I was just floored by the JENNIFER’S BODY screenplay because it really scared me, and at the same time, really made me laugh.”
Horror and humor may seem like unlikely bedfellows, but Reitman takes a different view. “They are very close siblings. I think they’re more related than other film genres,” he says. “Both horror and comedy require a storyteller who wants to manipulate the audience. You can sit back and watch a drama, and it’ll just kind of wash over you. The person who wants to tell a horror or comedy story is someone who wants to reach in and force the audience to do something, either to laugh or to be scared.”
Cody admits that even though there wasn’t a specific Jennifer in her life, she has certainly encountered her fair share of girls who cannibalized the people around them. “I think back-biting is a very accurate term, and in this case, it’s literal,” she quips. “This movie is a commentary on girl-on-girl hatred, sexuality, the death of innocence, and also politics in the way the town responds to the tragedies [of the bloody deaths of several young men]. Any person who dares to respond in an unconventional way is branded a traitor. It’s also just about fun – I wanted to write a really entertaining popcorn movie.”
“At some point in the process I realized that every type of boy gets it in this film,” says Reitman. “The jock gets it. The sweet nerd gets it. The Goth kid gets it. This may just be Diablo’s revenge on every type of boy she’s ever met. If ‘Juno’ is the film that speaks to her need for love, JENNIFER’S BODY is the film that speaks to her need for revenge.”
Reitman and “Juno” producing partners Mason Novick and Daniel Dubiecki, came together to produce JENNIFER’S BODY, with Karyn Kusama directing. “I think we all wanted a woman director from the beginning,” says Reitman. “This is a film that hopefully takes horror in a new direction. It’s a horror film told from a female point of view, starring women, and written and directed by women. I’ve been a fan of Karyn’s since seeing ‘Girlfight’ at Sundance in 1999, so it was really exciting for me to work with her on JENNIFER’S BODY.”
“We saw a lot of [directing candidates] and then I sat down with Karyn one day in the lobby of a hotel,” Cody recalls. “After speaking with Karyn for only about five minutes, I wanted to call the producers so badly and say, ‘Please hire this woman immediately.’ I was so excited. Karyn’s understanding of the script was so complete; I was just thrilled.”
Kusama remembers reading the script and falling in love with it. “It activated so many memories for me of adolescence and high school and a certain kind of girl friendship that’s somewhat obsessive and maybe a little toxic. It’s one of those rare scripts with a very strong voice as well as rich and nuanced characters. It takes horror movie conventions and turns them upside down – and I was excited by the opportunity to work on something so fresh and original.
“I think JENNIFER’S BODY is really about moving from childhood into adulthood,” Kusama continues. “It involves recognizing that the world is filled with dark forces and that as an adult you have to take care of and defend yourself… make your own choices and get through life on your own. I think what’s essential about the horror of JENNIFER’S BODY isn’t the presence of demons or the blood and guts of it; the true horror of the movie is how teenagers treat each other and how easily cruel and hurtful they can be.”
JENNIFER’S BODY tells the story of two life-long pals – Jennifer and Needy – who find themselves at a crossroads. “Psychologically, they’ve really outgrown each other,” Cody explains. “They don’t have anything in common anymore. Needy is this mousy, clingy, needy, insecure girl, and Jennifer is a bombshell who’s incredibly cool and confident. Yet their friendship has endured. They’re very close, but you sense the friction between them and it’s clear that Jennifer is bullying Needy.”
The narrative fuse ignites when Jennifer takes Needy to see a rock band from the city, which has a gig at a local bar in the girls’ rural hometown of Devil’s Kettle. The sinister rockers sacrifice Jennifer to the devil to ensure their success in the music biz, but what they don’t know is that they’ve royally screwed up the ritual. They were supposed to sacrifice a virgin – and Jennifer is no virgin. As a result, a demon is channeled into Jennifer, and she starts feeding on young men.
“I think a big issue in horror films lately is that the permission for the audience to conjure up their own monster has been taken away,” says Kusama. “To give that back to an audience and say…what if the most popular, beautiful girl in school is a demon….for real, is a brilliant premise. This idea can spin off into people’s heads in so many ways, because we’ve all known that girl in high school who’s impervious to criticism and who always appears so confident. There’s something that we worship about this kind of girl, but also something that we fear about her.”
Jennifer Check is that girl – beautiful, confident, fearless…and a monster. For real. “The way the character is written is supposed to be funny and it would be so easy to play Jennifer one dimensionally,” says Megan Fox. “It would still be funny if she was one dimensional, but we’ve added so much depth to her. She’s still superficial, don’t get me wrong, but there are moments when you see her legitimately hurt; she’s not always the aggressor or the predator.”
Fox had signed on to play Jennifer early in the pre-production process. “Both Diablo and I had said, ‘If there’s one girl on earth who is Jennifer, it is Megan Fox,’” recalls producer Daniel Dubiecki. “We had coffee with Megan and she said, ‘I love this story. I am this girl. I know how to do this. I can kill this role.’”
“This script is by far the funniest script I’ve read, ever,” says Fox, who shot to motion picture superstardom with her work in “Transformers” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” “It’s also the most realistic interpretation of teenagers I’ve ever read. Diablo’s really good at relating to how kids really are. I was in high school just a few years ago and it was a nightmare!”
“Megan is really interesting because she has this very beautiful, icy façade which is perfect for our initial perceptions of Jennifer,” Kusama explains. “But what was really impressive was her ability to go to a deeper place and expose not only Jennifer’s overconfidence, outrageousness or vanity, but also her sorrow, fear and regret.”
The scene of Jennifer’s sacrifice at the hands of a satanic rock band is pivotal and was one of the most difficult tonally to achieve. “At this point in the story Jennifer is the victim; she’s the prey,” Fox recounts. “I played it straight and dramatic, even though the scene has a strong comedic edge.”
Jennifer’s best friend Needy, a self-effacing, bookish young woman, has always lived in her friend’s shadow. “Needy is definitely smart and open-minded, but she’s a bit of a follower because Jennifer has all this power -or pseudo-power- because she’s beautiful and everybody wants to bed her,” says Amanda Seyfried of her character. “Jennifer’s confidence diminishes Needy, but she’s kind of comfortable in that zone. I mean it’s been that way their whole lives, and they’re loyal to each other, she feels accepted by Jennifer.”
Seyfried adds, with a laugh: “You’re going to want to see this film because, first of all, Megan Fox and I make out. Second of all, Megan Fox is in her underwear and lastly, you’re going to want to see it because…Megan Fox and I make out.”
“What’s lovely about Amanda is she has this expressive face that can be very still. She has so much going on behind her eyes,” Kusama notes. “Needy’s sort of frantic and at the same time, she’s very analytical and logical,” Cody adds. “You can see her putting together the pieces of the puzzle, facing this really uncomfortable truth about her best friend and coming to terms with it. It’s not an easy thing to do, and it’s just beautiful to watch Amanda play it.”
Fox and Seyfried developed a quick rapport, which kept both of them laughing amid the story’s carnage and action. “I like Amanda; she’s funny,” Fox says of her costar. “She says really inappropriate things all the time, and it makes me laugh.” “I think I was a little shocked by Amanda and Megan,” jokes Johnny Simmons, who plays Needy’s boyfriend Chip. “I’ve never come across anyone like these two before. They don’t hold back on anything. I was just trying to keep up.”
Needy confides in Chip when she realizes Jennifer is chowing-down on the male student body at Kettle High. “If somebody came up to you and said that their best friend was possessed and was eating guys, it’s sort of like, ‘You’re my girlfriend, I love you, but you’re kind of crazy!’ That thought would have to go through your brain,” says Simmons.
Adam Brody plays Nikolai, the lead singer in the fictional band Low Shoulder. He’s the ringleader in sacrificing Jennifer in a bid for rock ‘n roll superstardom. “Adam takes words, throws them up in the air and juggles them,” Dubiecki notes. “The role of Nikolai is completely outside of what you’d think of as his normal wheelhouse, and what he thinks of as his normal wheelhouse, but his instincts are right on. Nikolai is a completely sinister jerk – a scary guy who’s doing things for all the wrong reasons – but at the end of the day, we actually want to be caught up in the confusion and shock over who this guy is and how desperate he is for success.”
The band is a catalyst in the story, “setting the chain of events in motion,” says producer Mason Novick. Similarly, the score by Theodore Shapiro & Stephen Barton, and the Jennifer’s Body: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, are key elements of the film. Released by Fueled by Ramen, the soundtrack gathers unreleased tracks from an array of top FBR artists, including Cobra Starship, Hayley Williams and Panic At The Disco, who contribute the first single, “New Perspective.” The soundtrack also features a who’s-who of today’s top new acts, including tracks from Silversun Pickups, All Time Low, Little Boots, Black Kids, Florence and The Machine, and Lissy Trullie, alongside such alternative icons as Dashboard Confessional and Hole, whose classic “Violet” will be included as a bonus track on the digital Deluxe Edition. Jennifer’s Body: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was produced by renowned music supervisor Randall Poster (“The Hangover,” “Revolutionary Road”).
The JENNIFER’S BODY cast also includes “Juno” and “Spider-Man” veteran J.K. Simmons, who plays Mr. Wroblewski, a teacher at Kettle High who sports a prosthetic arm with a gleaming hook. “I wanted Wroblewski to have a prosthetic appendage to hint at some horror in his past,” says Cody, who had to defend her choice against those who thought it gratuitous. “That’s why horror movies are frightening; they underscore the fact that we’re surrounded by horror in life and that’s an unpleasant reality.”
No matter how wild the on-screen action, the filmmakers were determined to infuse JENNIFER’S BODY with a realistic, naturalistic look. “As much as I love beauty in movies, it’s also important that there be some kind of fundamental honesty in the design choices,” notes Kusama. “Even if you push it and go a little over the top, which I hope we did with this movie in a positive way, there’s still something truthful about it.”
“My initial dialogue with Karyn was basically how to get the hyperbole of horror into this fairly mundane, Midwest setting,” notes production designer Arv Greywal. “While doing some location scouting, we saw a swimming pool that was almost overgrown with vines, so we took that another step and there are literally thousands of running feet of vines in our pool set.”
Nature is a major visual design thematic in the film. There are plant motifs in the girls’ bedroom wallpaper, an artificial forest of denuded trees at the school dance, and a mossy tree stump serves as Jennifer’s sacrificial alter. “Nature symbolizes the wild forces that are uncontrollable – the supernatural – the primal emotions that permeate this story,” says director of photography M. David Mullen. “We’re constantly seeing this wild, untamed nature, which gives the film a kind of fairytale quality.”
Also embedded in the design is a macabre kind of natural science that portends the visceral experiences to come. “In the girls’ biology class we see models of human intestines and lungs. We also have a possum in a jar of formaldehyde,” notes Greywal, whose first production design assignment was horror maestro George Romero’s “Land of the Dead.” “There are some design themes that we draw on from classic horror movies, and we’re quite overt about it in certain instances. At the pool, there’s a pile of trash and the objects are all visual clichés from old horror movies — cradles, wheelchairs, broken mirrors, chandeliers, for instance.”
The film’s offbeat sensibility and varying types of humor were key considerations. “Sometimes we’re working with a kind of deadpan humor, other times it has a macabre quality. Sometimes the humor’s in the dialogue, sometimes it’s in the situation, the set-up, or the image itself,” Mullen explains. “Over the course of the story we travel from naturalism to expressionism. As things go more and more wrong for the characters, the lighting gets more shadowy, and things get more extreme in terms of contrast and mood. We could justify it because it’s a story where almost anything is possible.”
Over the course of the story, Jennifer transforms from a glittering beauty into a pale and sickly creature. Jennifer’s wan look had the suntanned Megan Fox making every effort to avoid the gym and the sun. “Coming off of ‘Transformers,’ I was really healthy,” says Fox. “I was working out all the time, and I was often at the beach. When I took on JENNIFER’S BODY, I stopped going outside so I could approach Jennifer’s demon-esque coloring. I never left my house. I actually started becoming physically what she becomes.”
When Jennifer feeds, her facial features transform into a hideous maw. This is achieved in a sequence of shots that showcase the artful marriage of prosthetic make-up and visual effects. “Jennifer’s jaw becomes unhinged, her cheeks rip open and the inside of her mouth fills with teeth as she attacks her victims,” explains VFX supervisor Erik Nordby. “Because we have a mandate to do as much as we can on camera, our makeup effects team, Greg Nicotero and Mike Fields, took the lead on developing this signature sequence. They designed the overall look that informed our approach, which entailed a series of passes with every pass fulfilling a role in what became the final shot.”
“Megan has a pair of fang-like dentures that she wears in the feeding sequences,” adds makeup effects artist Mike Fields. “We also had a double who wore an extended jaw and neck prosthetic, and repeated Megan’s action on a separate pass. The double’s prosthetic was painted green so it could be manipulated in post-production. I then stepped in with the full prosthetic puppet head for a reference shot to give visual effects the full range of motion of the jaw.”
Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Directed by: Karyn Kusama
Starring: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody, J.K. Simmons, Johnny Simmons, Kyle Gallner, Josh Emerson, Lance Henriksen, Diablo Cody, Juno Rinaldi, Cynthia Stevenson, Amy Sedaris, Sal Cortez
Screenplay by: Diablo Cody
Production Design by: Arvinder Grewal
Cinematography by: M. David Mullen
Film Editing by: Plummy Tucker
Costume Design by: Katia Stano
Set Decoration by: Joanne Leblanc
Art Direction by: Paolo G. Venturi
Music by: Stephen Barton, Theodore Shapiro
MPAA Rating: R for sexuality, bloody violence, language and brief drug use.
Distributed by: Fox Atomic
Release Date: September 18, 2009
Visits: 137
