'Juno': Inside Oscar's 100 Million Dollar Baby

Right now, at this very minute, you can be sure that Hollywood's best brains are working overtime to crack the code of Juno's success. ''I think that when the strike ends we'll see a lot of scripts with smart, funny, and subversive teen girl characters,'' says a production executive at a rival studio. ''Everybody in town wishes they had Juno.'' In Hollywood, imitation isn't just the sincerest form of flattery — it's standard business practice.

But to extract a formula from Juno would be to miss the point, and the imitators will likely fail as they always tend to. ''This movie feels authentic to young people and doesn't cast adults as idiots,'' says producer Russell Smith. ''Look at the political world — if you say the word 'change,' everybody gets up and applauds. That's where we are: We're dying for something different.'' Thanks to Juno's triumph, Cody and Reitman are already working on Jennifer's Body. ''The movie's plotline,'' says Reitman, ''is kind of like 'if Juno was possessed by a demon and started eating her classmates.'''

As for Page, she is circumspect about the impact of Juno's success on her own career. In April, she'll turn up as Dennis Quaid's tart-tongued daughter in the romantic comedy Smart People. Beyond that? ''It's kind of daunting to be a young actor with some stuff happening,'' she says. She gazes around the dining room before pulling her hands into her sleeves and retreating further into her hood. ''I could do the whole [Hollywood] thing if I wanted, but I'm not going to. I look at someone like Johnny Depp or Kate Winslet and they seem to be strong individuals who have decided to take risks and be unique.... It could be easy to rush into something, so I want to take my time to figure out what's really going to get me excited.''

To paraphrase her character in Juno, Page doesn't yet know what kind of girl she is. And to paraphrase all those rebellious young spirits in the audience, it's going to be a thrill just watching her find out.

Additional reporting by Clark Collis,Whitney Pastorek, Missy Schwartz, Nicole Sperling, and John Young

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