Brook Busey-Maurio, better known by the pen name Diablo Cody, is an American
screenwriter, producer, director, author, journalist, and memoirist. She
first became known for her candid chronicling of her year as a stripper in
her "The Pussy Ranch" blog and in her memoir Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of
an Unlikely Stripper. Later, Cody achieved critical acclaim for her debut
script Juno, winning awards such as the Academy Award for Best Original
Screenplay, the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay, the Independent
Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay and the Writers Guild of America Award
for Best Original Screenplay. She is also known for creating, writing
and producing Showtime's television series United States of Tara and for
writing and producing the films Jennifer's Body and Young Adult. For the
latter, she received a second nomination for the Writers Guild of America Award
for Best Original Screenplay. Her directorial debut, Paradise, was
released on October 18, 2013. Early life and career
Cody and her older brother Marc were born and raised in Lemont, Illinois, a
suburb of Chicago. She is the daughter of Pam and Greg Busey. Cody was raised
Catholic and attended Benet Academy, a Roman Catholic school in Lisle,
Illinois. She took the pen name Diablo Cody after repeatedly listening to the
song "El Diablo" by Arcadia while passing through Cody, Wyoming. She
graduated from the University of Iowa with a media studies degree. While at
the University of Iowa, she worked in the acquisitions department in the main
university library. Her first jobs were doing secretarial work at a Chicago law
firm and later proofreading copy for advertisements that played on Twin
Cities radio stations. Cody began a parody weblog called Red
Secretary, detailing the exploits of a secretary living in Belarus. The events
were thinly-veiled allegories for events that happened in Cody's real life, but
told from the perspective of a disgruntled, English-idiom-challenged
Eastern Bloc girl. Her first bona fide blog appeared under
the nickname Darling Girl after she had moved from Chicago to Minneapolis,
Minnesota. Stripping and journalism
On a whim, Cody signed up for amateur night at a Minneapolis strip club called
the Skyway Lounge. Having enjoyed the experience, she eventually quit her day
job to become a full-time feminist stripper. Cody also spent time working
peep shows at Sex World, a Minneapolis adult novelty and DVD store.
While still stripping, Cody began writing for City Pages, an alternative
Twin Cities weekly newspaper. She left City Pages just before it changed
editorial hands, and has since written for the now-defunct Jane magazine. In
December 2007, Cody began writing a column for the magazine Entertainment
Weekly. At the age of 27, Cody wrote her memoir
Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper. The memoir began
after Mason Novick, who would soon become Cody's manager, showed interest
in her sharp and sarcastic voice. Based on the popularity "The Pussy Ranch" had
received, he was able to secure her a publishing contract with Gotham Books.
Screenwriting After completion of her book, Cody was
encouraged by Mason Novick to write her first screenplay. Within months she
wrote Juno, a coming-of-age story about a teenager's unplanned pregnancy. The
Jason Reitman-directed comedy stars Ellen Page and Michael Cera.
In July 2007, Showtime announced that it would be producing a pilot of Cody's
DreamWorks television series, United States of Tara. Based on an idea by
Steven Spielberg, Tara is a comedy about a mother with dissociative identity
disorder, starring Toni Collette. The series began filming in Spring 2008, and
premiered on January 18, 2009. In October 2007, Cody sold a script
titled Girly Style to Universal Studios, and a horror script called Jennifer's
Body to Fox Atomic. Released on September 18, 2009, Jennifer's Body
starred Megan Fox as the title character and Amanda Seyfried as the supporting
character. She revised writer-director Steven Antin's script for his musical
film Burlesque. Cody is a friend of screenwriters Dana
Fox and Lorene Scafaria and they often write their screenplays together in
order to get advice from one another. Cody made a small cameo appearance as
herself in the U.S. broadcast television series 90210. She appeared in the same
episode that marked the return of Tori Spelling as Donna Martin, in which Cody
needed Spelling's character to make a dress for a red carpet event.
In 2009, Cody signed on to script and produce a film adaptation of the Sweet
Valley High young adult book series. In 2011, she was brought in to revise
first-time feature director Fede Alvarez's script for a remake of Sam
Raimi's 1980s horror film The Evil Dead. Since October, 2011, Cody has hosted an
online celebrity interview program called "Red Band Trailer," on the
broadband channel, L-studio. She originally launched the series privately
on YouTube in summer 2010, and the Lexus channel picked it up the following year.
On the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, on February 24, 2012, she said her next
project would be directing her first film, which is about a young woman who
abandons religion after surviving a plane crash. In February 2013, she said
that the film is called Paradise. Julianne Hough, Holly Hunter, Octavia
Spencer and Russell Brand are in the cast. Mandate Pictures produced it.
Cody is the spokesperson of Barnard College's Athena Film Festival.
Projects In May 2013, it was announced that Cody
will host her own talk show, Me Time with Diablo Cody, at TBS. The program
will tailor "around Diablo’s unique perspective on all things pop culture
and told in her very own tongue-in-cheek way," and "reveal a side of Hollywood
and celebs that the public very rarely gets to see." Steve Agee will be
presenting and writing with her as well. Cody is also a producer, alongside Mark
Cronin and Courtland Cox. The pilot of the talk show is in works.
She is currently developing a teen-drama TV series with Josh Schwartz for Fox
called Prodigy. According to the The Hollywood Reporter, it is about "a
16-year-old genius who through home schooling has been isolated from her
peers. Hoping to experience a “normal” teen social life before she enters the
adult world of academia, she enrolls in her local high school. Her experiment
goes off the rails when she finds herself adopted by a wild crowd, getting
caught up in a whirlwind of romance and crime." Cody is also linked to Warner
Bros. Television's romantic comedy Alex +Amy.
Personal life In her book, she wrote fondly of her
boyfriend "Jonny". They were married from 2004 until 2007, during which time
she was known in personal life as Brook Busey-Hunt.
On April 6, 2010, Cody announced that she was expecting her first child with
her husband Dan Maurio, who worked on Chelsea Lately, on which Cody also
appeared frequently as a "roundtable" guest. The couple married in the summer
of 2009. Their son was born in 2010. Cody had her second child in 2012.
As of 2008, Cody resides in Los Angeles. Nominations and awards
Juno was runner-up for the Toronto International Film Festival People's
Choice Award, won second prize at the Rome Film Festival, and earned four
Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. Cody herself won an
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for her debut script, which
also picked up a Golden Globe nomination and an Independent Spirit Award for Best
First Screenplay. She also won screenplay honors from BAFTA, the
Writers Guild of America, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the National
Board of Review, the Satellite Awards, and the 2008 Cinema for Peace Award for
Most Valuable Work of Director, Producer & Screenwriter.
For Young Adult, Cody was nominated by awards associations such as the
Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Writers Guild of America. With
Reitman, the director, and the actors Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt, she
shared the Chairman's Vanguard Award at the Palm Springs International Film
Festival. In 2012, the Fempire, the collaboration of writers Cody, Dana Fox,
Liz Meriwether, and Lorene Scafaria received the Creativity and Sisterhood
Award from the Athena Film Festival for their support for one another in the
competitive film industry. Works
= Films= = Television=
= Videos= References
Other sources Interview with Diablo Cody about JUNO at
the Telluride Film Festival, September 10, 2007
Reitman and Cody, Consorting with 'Juno' - interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air,
December 6, 2007 Diablo Cody for Jennifer's Body,
SuicideGirls interview, September 15, 2009
City Pages interview with Diablo Cody, December 26, 2007
Off the Stripper Pole and Into the Movies, The New York Times, December 2,
2007 Overexposed - Salon.com
External links Diablo Cody at the Internet Movie
Database