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.
Moby-Dick
The novel has been adapted or represented in art, film, books, cartoons, television, and more than a dozen versions in comic-book format. The first adaptation was the 1926 silent movie "The Sea Beast", starring John Barrymore, in which Ahab kills the whale and returns to marry his fiancée. The most famous adaptation was the John Huston 1956 film produced from a screenplay by author Ray Bradbury. The long list of adaptations, as Bryant and Springer put it, demonstrates that "the iconic image of an angry embittered American slaying a mythic beast seemed to capture the popular imagination", showing how "different readers in different periods of popular culture have rewritten "Moby-Dick"" to make it a "true cultural icon". American artist David Klamen has cited the novel as an important influence on his dark, slow-to-disclose paintings, noting a passage in the book in which a mysterious, undecipherable painting in a bar is gradually revealed to depict a whale.