Bateman Talks Juno
"I guess our story is sort of the most blatant adult storyline," said Bateman. "We want to be parents. We have had trouble getting pregnant. We are now looking to adopt. That on paper sort of says this is a little bit more of a dramatic through line. I mean, giving your kid up for adoption I guess is not necessarily comedic, but you have a 16-year-old dealing with that so there is an inherent fish out of water thing that lends itself well to comedy. Our thing was much more serious so perhaps that was sort of used as a grounding mechanism for all of the other sort of eccentric elements to Diablo's script and dialogue.".

As Mark Loring, Bateman's character is not quite as enthusiastic about the prospect of parenthood as his wife. "Jennifer and I, I think, always saw our storyline as something that wasn't part of the comedy and to play the real and to play the drama of it without being too precious. My character's going through something that is a little bit of a push pull so there can be some funny stuff in that too as far as the discomfort of him having to grow up and being reluctant about that, but there's something kind of heartbreaking about that. At least I thought that there was. That is a concept that was certainly very familiar to me, having just become a new father or was about to, I can't remember. But the idea of are you going to step up and become a new adult or carry on being an experienced young adult? There are a few points in one's life where you can actually make a proactive step to go to the next stage. Having a kid is definitely a blatant one so that was something that was an easy thing to play dramatically and vulnerably and humanly."

Juno

When he meets Juno, the two start hanging out unbeknownst to Mrs. Loring. Juno seems to awaken Mark's childlike spirit, but whether or not that relationship goes deeper, even Bateman does not know.

"That's something that Reitman and I went back and forth on. There's two ways to play this. One way to play it is much more of a sort of salacious through line and the other is: is his attraction to Juno more of a sort of kindred spirit, sort of a peer sort of dynamic, something that he's missing in his marriage and is wanting to experience a friendship with her as opposed to getting in her pants? He wanted to dance the middle so we did. It wasn't as fun for me to play something that was internally vague. I prefer to know which way I am and then just play the vagary of it. But he wouldn't give it up. He wouldn't tell me which way. He said, 'Well, you know, if the movie went on another month or something like that, maybe they would go out on a date but I don't know how that date would go.' I'm like, 'Well, what does that mean? Are they going roller skating or are they going to a romantic dinner?' 'I don't know.' 'You've got to tell me.' 'No, no, not really.' So we kind of tease each other a little bit about that and ultimately it just kind of became an exercise for me to just kind of dance the middle and let him kind of build it in the editing room. I'm not sure which way it is. He wanted to leave it ambiguous for the audience, to let them decide what Mark's intentions were."

It all sounds so complicated, but really it wasn't. "It was not difficult to be good in this movie because the script was there. Jason Reitman didn't let us suck, or at least if we did, he didn't put it in the movie."

Juno opens to theaters on December 5th.

For the trailer and more movie info, go to the Juno Movie Page.