Saturday, April 24, 2010

"DIABLO CODY: AN ORIGINAL VOICE"



When I saw the film "Juno" I loved its nerve and originality, I haven't been impressed like this by a movie in a long time. Therefore I decided to investigate who had written this amazing script. It was Diablo Cody, her real name: Brook Busey ,a singular woman who never imagined herself working as a screenwriter. She has always loved writting."I never intended my work as a springboard to anything else. I write because I'm addicted to it. It's my confessional," she said. She started to write her blog "The Pussy Ranch" in 2003. Jason Reitman, Juno´s director, used to read her blog and told her that she should write a screenplay. "I was really just self-published and had this cult following on the internet. But one day I got an email from this guy who said: “I’m a fan of your blog, I read it every day and think that you’re really funny and by the way I’m a manager/producer in Hollywood and I think you should try writing a screenplay.” I’ve never been a very ambitious person and I loathe competition. I prefer to stay comfortable, so the idea of immersing myself in a really sort of competitive, cutthroat industry was not appealing to me. And I didn’t really see the point of wasting my time writing a screenplay that would just end up banished to a desk drawer, which is generally what happens 99% of the time.So I wasn’t very interested. But he kind of hounded me about it for a while and finally I was hanging out with my sister in Minnesota and I hit on an idea for a movie and I thought about Juno. So, I sat down and I started writing and I wrote the movie and it was a really, really painless process because ignorance is bliss and I’ve never had an easier writing experience since then… So I gave it to this guy who at that point had decided to be my manager and we took it out and it was received very well in Hollywood, which was a big surprise. We found many people that wanted to make it and it was just shocking," she tells.
This proposal changes her life. Now she is working in the series: "United States of Tara", she has worked with Jason Reitman in two movies: "Jennifer´s Body" and "Juno" for which she won her first Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay among other prizes. She is free and natural and before to work as a screenwriter she was a stripper because she was curious about how it was to work as a stripper.
Diablo Cody just lives her work and enjoy with it like a child, she does not feel under pressure. "OK, here’s a problem that is holding back feminism and you see it on the blogs. We all hold each other up to an incredibly high standard in a way that men do not. Let’s say a woman directs a movie that’s not very good—everybody piles up on her. It’s, like, “No! You’re representing us! It has to be perfect!” And that’s not how it works! Women should be allowed to make bad movies. Good movies. porno movies. Terrible made-for-TV movies. Women just need to be out there directing as many movies as men do. We don’t all have to be the model woman—what we need is to be more visible. We really, really are tough on each other," she says.
I think that she is not the typical profile of women who works and fights to have a place in the film industry. She started to work because someone believes in her and encourage her to do it, but despite this she teaches us that you can work to create and have fun. She has never been ambitious, she just enjoys the things that she is doing in each moment,being herself, like Saalfield says, "You can´t separate your activism from your art any more than you can separate your sexuality from your identity."


Works cited:

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2007/11/cody

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1959505/bio

http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Film-Review/juno-diablo-cody-interview

http://www.fandango.com/commentator_setvisitinterviewwithemjennifersbodyemscreenwriterdiablocody_272

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