AWARDS SEASON

Watch out for... Diablo Cody

This former stripper turned screenwriter of "Juno" could be a contender.

By Mark Olsen, The Envelope

September 25, 2007

Diablo Cody... It sounds like a '70s-era TV bounty hunter, or perhaps a discontinued brand of bubblegum, packaged like a packet of chaw. (And, no, it's not her real name. Her first name is actually Brooke.)

Regardless, the former Midwestern pole dancer's pseudonym has certainly been a name on many people's lips since "Juno" first screened at Telluride over Labor Day weekend.

Sure enough, the buzz tailed Cody to the 32nd Annual Toronto International Film Festival, where her first screenplay turned into a movie unspooled.

She has been making the festival rounds with "Juno" director Jason Reitman and actors Ellen Page and Michael Cera. But before her turns on festival red carpets, she was previously known as the author of "Candy Girl," a memoir of her adventures as a stripper in Minneapolis.

As far as first impressions go, Cody's a lot like the cool neighbor-girl, if one's neighbor has a popular blog and a book deal and has already appeared on Letterman to promote a bestselling book. I caught a few moments with her in Toronto to find out what it's like being the flavor of the moment.

When "Juno" played at Telluride, there was such an increase in attention and buzz around both the film and you. What's that like?

We have been so well received, it's been overwhelming. I'm incredulous about the entire thing. It's like when somebody loves you, even in a relationship, you don't understand what's wrong with them. It's been so incredible, in the true sense of the word, I can't believe it. That people love it so much, and I'm glad that they do, but I'm so close to the film that it's impossible for me to see it objectively.

You had a fair amount of input during production, yes?

I'm sort of bizarrely specific, and there are some things in the script that I have scavenged from my own life, so it would be one of those things where it would have been really strange if someone tried to direct it without any input from the person whose world it was. But Jason elevated it, so when I see the movie I can see both sides of our sensibilities in there, so it's like a creepy mutant baby in a way.

Are you pleased at all by the response to "Juno" in that it will allow you to move on to being known as a writer, and not just as the blogging stripper?

I'm not ashamed of the blogging stripper thing at all. It's like you don't insult your mother. I sometimes feel like doing unexpected and foolhardy things in life that can cause such Rube Goldberg-like effects. Basically it's a complicated way of saying, fortune favors the bold. I'm not sorry for what I did. My life changed forever.

But it is such a tantalizing hook, I could imagine it getting in the way after a while.

The only thing that concerns me is, I would never want my past to detract attention from Jason Reitman or from the film. I would never want anybody to be adversely affected by my legend, so to speak. But me personally, I'm incredibly proud of it.