Sure, I get the point of trying to spread the wealth of kudos for the success of the movie further than just on Ellen Page, Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman, but let’s not get crazy and use words like “genius” lightly.

Mandate Pictures is a great company with a lot of good employees, and I’m a big personal fan of Joe Drake and 35-year-old partner in crime Nathan Kahane (although nobody would have called him a ‘genius’ back in the 90’s when the exec was better known as ‘Nathan Cocaine’ and had a big belly and head full of hair.)

Let’s be honest, if “Juno” didn’t make $100 million + in box office would the average IQ of Mandate who got the film financed by Fox Searchlight, be as high as Goldstein pruports it to be? Sure, Mandate made a really good film called “Stranger Than Fiction” and that film didn’t make a lot of dough, and Mandate’s first flm “Harold & Kumar go to White Castle” was hilarious, but nobody was calling Drake and Kahane uber-smart back when that film failed to cross the $20 million box office mark…

Joke Drake says:

“Our niche at Mandate isn’t so much a movie niche as a talent niche….. Movies are made by great writers, directors and actors, and our job is to support their vision, give them the best possible economic support and then get the hell out of the way.”

Maybe Kahane isn’t a genius after-all. It was then Creative Executive Jim Miller (who worked with Kahane back when Kahane was a VP making crappy films like “Angel Eyes” for producer Mark Canton at Warner Bros.) who brought in the project which was submitted to him by manager turned producer Mason Novick.

Kahane gives Jim props though saying:

“Jim has unbeatable taste, so I simply started reading… After 20 pages, I was so excited I just said, ‘Buy it!’ Diablo’s script had heart, an explosive character and a real original voice. When you’re little guys like us, you have to read everything, but you hope you recognize it when the good stuff comes along.”