Juno (film)
Diablo Cody was first approached to write a screenplay by film producer Mason Novick, who had previously landed her a book deal for her memoir, "", after discovering her blog about stripping. He persuaded her to adapt the book for the screen, but suggested that she first write a screenwriting sample to show studios; that sample became "Juno". After deciding on an adoption storyline, Cody collected the stories of adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents, including that of her then-husband, an adoptee who reunited with his birth parents after she wrote the film. She also found inspiration in the story of a close friend who had become pregnant in high school and used some details from her friend's experience in the film, such as mistreatment from an ultrasound technician. Much of "Juno", however, was based on Cody's own high school experiences: She dated a tic-tac-loving boy similar to Paulie, she was best friends with a cheerleader like Leah, and she used a hamburger phone identical to the one that appears in the film. After writing the screenplay over seven weeks in the Starbucks section of a Target store in Crystal, Minnesota, Cody compared writing to breathing, seeing Juno as an extension of herself.
Leo Brady
In 1949, Brady published his first novel, "Edge of Doom", which Samuel Goldwyn produced as a feature film in 1950. Directed by Mark Robson and with a screenplay by Philip Yordan, with post-primary scenes added by writers Ben Hecht and Charles Brackett and directed by Charles Vidor, the film was a rather notorious failure, due in no small part to the creative team’s inability to realize the story’s thematic critique of organized religion and the way society fails to respond to the less-fortunate poor. The Hecht-Brackett rewrites, spurred on after the initial screening by the producer's fear that the movie was too bleak, attempted to turn a dark tale of a pathetic murder into some kind of hopeful Hollywood preach-fest. These changes—including a sappy narration and hackneyed prologue and epilogue—were designed to gain the film wider audience appeal but only helped to doom the project completely. The film still turns up now and then as an acknowledged curiosity piece in the film noir genre.