Diablo on Fire
Juno Screenwriter Takes Newfound Fame in Stride

Author, blogger, phone sex operator, stripper, all around drama queen, more than any of that freshman screenwriter Diablo Cody easily has the greatest penname I think I’ve ever heard. More, she’s go the winningly punk (and spunky) personality to go along with it, walking into our interview at the downtown Seattle Fairmont Olympic Hotel in one of the most outrageous – yet still tasteful – outfits you could ever imagine.

Ellen Page and Olivia Thirlby in Fox Searchlight's Juno

“Thank you,” she endearingly laughs in regards to my comment. “But [the name] wasn’t like a conscious thing where I sat down and was like, this would be a great penname, this would be a great pseudonym. I was originally writing on the internet and everyone has an online handle, so I think to myself that I’m going to reinvent my online persona and I’m going to be Diablo Cody. I liked the way it sounded. It spoke to me, but I never thought it would follow me into my career as a screenwriter.”

And that career is about to takeoff, the release of her first film Juno producing critical and audience response like nothing else out there. The story of a young teenage girl wise beyond her years dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, finding a way to deal with the situation – with the love and support of her family – outside the usual norm, the movie is an almost instantly iconic sensation. Even with that in mind, Cody has to be more than a little bit stunned or that she could imagine anything like the recent turn of events in the direction of her life.

“I would never envision that anyone would pay for me to stay at a hotel,” she exclaims honestly. “I would never ever have envisioned a life even approximating this one for myself. And, obviously, this is just sort of this temporary whirlwind but, to be sitting here talking about this movie, to even have been working with [director] Jason Reitman on film, to even have completed a screenplay, all of those things are very hard for me to comprehend.”

“And I hope it isn’t too temporary. But, I’m in a very fickle industry. They could spit me out.”

True, but for my money unlikely. Talent like this woman’s doesn’t come along all that often, and while intelligence isn’t exactly a hot commodity in Hollywood finding screenwriters who can generate laughs seemingly at whim is. And now here she is promoting a film which features both those traits and more. Not exactly bad for a screenplay Cody didn’t think was every actually going to be produced.

“I tend to think of it as a writing exercise,” she explains. “It’s funny when people ask if I ever envisioned certain actors in the roles because I’m way too pragmatic and way to cynical to have been ahead of myself like that. I couldn’t even imagine the movie being made.”

But lucky for us it was made, and for the first time in what seems like ages the cinema is graced by a quick-witted female character unafraid to speak her mind or be exactly who she is. It’s almost as if the writer had wanted to just slap the cinematic establishment a little bit and show a young woman with a brain, prove to them once again the level of a girl’s intelligence isn’t in direct proportion to the size of her breasts or how much lip-gloss she chooses to slather on.

“Yeah, that’s a very astute way of saying,” agrees Cody. “[Juno] was autobiographical in some ways and she reminded me of myself as a teenager. But I also felt smart, witty teenagers were under represented, particularly females.”

“I came of age in the ‘90’s, and I feel like there was a different archetype of female empowerment then. My friends and I made ‘zines, we wore combat boots, we listened to Hole and Bikini Kill. I’m not seeing that movement in contemporary teenage girl culture and if I could even make the slightest effort to steer things back to that I want to do that. And, I know that it is probably nostalgia coloring my viewpoint but I think that was an important time.”

Bit words, and considering we’re suddenly living in a time where everyone wants to be Paris Hilton or Nicole Ritchie probably important ones. We don’t see a lot of characters like Juno, and goodness knows it’s about time that dynamic started to change. “You’re right,” agrees the screenwriter. “We don’t. And we don’t see a lot of actors like Ellen Page, either. Most of the other girls in her kind of age range are these very manufactured safe starlets and Ellen is a really complex, articulate, literate, witty young woman. She’s incredible.”

That might be an understatement. As explosive and electric as she was in her debut Hard Candy Page is an absolute revelation as Juno. She digs into the character with confident zeal, ripping apart Cody’s rapid-fire dialogue as if it were nothing more than a simple glass of morning orange juice for her to digest. It’s an extraordinary portrait, and one can’t help but wonder what was going through the author’s mind as she watched the actress bring her beloved character to life.

“She never struggled,” she says. “Just innately understood how to deliver [the dialogue]. She’s a hero of mine. I never thought my hero would be ten years younger but she is.” Does that mean she sees a lot of herself in the actress? “Actually I don’t. We’re very different but we get a long very well. Same with me and Jason Reitman, very different but complimentary.”

Speaking of the director, Cody had to be surprised when the filmmaker, fresh off the success of Thank You For Smoking, came to her saying he wanted to make the woman’s script into a movie. “I was surprised at how smooth and seamless the collaboration was,” she admits. “He is a writer himself, and typically there is tension between writers and directors. Also, he and I come from completely different backgrounds. Just polarized.”

“Yet when I met him there was this immediate ease and friendship. The shorthand developed so quickly. I didn’t see that coming. I feel like the characters evolved. Tonally, he brought so much to the story. He has an excellent understanding of tone. I don’t even think I understood what type of film I had written. Jason found the voice. People always talk about the writing voice on the film but there is a directorial voice, too. I always say [Juno] is a Jason Reitman film in every way. And while I love that the script is being recognized I want to make sure credit goes where credit is deserved because he is the reason for everything that has happened.”

But this is Cody’s film as well, and she has to understand the acclaim she’s gotten for the film is definitely deserved. “I’ve gotten a lot of ink as a writer and I appreciate that, and I think it is really cool and I wish that all writers could be recognized,” she admits. “But some people might feel like I’ve been overexposed as a writer because there is a piece about me in Entertainment Weekly or there is a piece about me in Rolling Stone or a piece about me in Esquire. You just don’t see that with writers frequently.”

“But I don’t think I’m overexposed I think other writers are underexposed. I don’t understand why there can’t be a writer profiled in Entertainment Weekly every month. If I have to hear about some lame actor who’s done two films why can’t I read an article about some amazing writer like Ronald Harwood? Where is his full page photo?”

Speaking of photos and of writers, Cody had her own brush with fame standing on the picket lines of the current writer’s strike when one of her patented iconoclastic photos started making its way around the net. The picture is a knockout, and inside of it you can see every bit of the woman’s idiosyncratic nature and fierce determination even if they’re supposed to be hidden behind her wickedly silly pink heart-shaped sunglasses.

“That’s very cool of you to say,” she states with a devilish smile. “I’m somewhat mortified for having posted that photo. I’ve been blogging for so long I forget that the blog isn’t merely a little outlet for my tantrums and my feelings. I forget that a lot of people read it now whether out of curiosity of the movie or because I wrote a book, whatever, and then I post a photo like that and it winds up making the rounds on the internet. And, I was kind of embarrassed because could I look like a bigger attention whore? I look like a douche bag.”

“I really didn’t intend for it to become some public image of the writer’s strike, and I think it was on [awards site] The Envelope they had posted it and some girl [commented], ‘I’m so sick of this girl,’ and I was like, right on! I’m sick of me, too. I don’t blame you.”

Diablo Cody on the WGA Strike picket lines

Be that as it may, this strike has everyone in the film and television industry on edge, and for Cody that has to be even doubly annoying realizing her fellow writers are out there picketing while she’s here trumpeting a film partially financed by one of the very studios they’re all standing up against. More, thanks to the movie’s success she’s a totally hot commodity right now, the projects she wants to be doing not exactly going to see the light of day until the differences between the writers and producers are settled.

“It’s a little frustrating on a personal level but I am in full support of the strike,” she responds without equivocation. “I want to see how it plays out. I have very high hopes. But, it is strange to be promoting a movie right now. The other day I was out on the picket lines and today here I am sitting in this room talking to you.”

“But I’m lucky I’m being supported in promoting the film. I think people understand for a writer to be getting recognition for a movie is helpful for all writers. Maybe that mitigates the weirdness.”

As far as Juno is concerned, the strike and the film both uphold the writer’s worldly belief that the rights and wrongs of the world are very few and even further between. Everything is a series of choices, decisions that straddle the line between the two eventually adding up and one side of the moral docket or the other. “I’m a big believer in shades of gray,” admits Cody. “I don’t thin there are any absolutes. I don’t know what really defines a family and to me this film is like a valentine to unconventional families. That’s what I wanted it to be.”

So, when all is said and done, does the writer ever expect to have another filmmaking experience half as good as this one? “I am so spoiled!” she admits with a brightly lit smile and small girlish chuckle. “I am the most spoiled writer in Hollywood, perhaps the world. I’ve had such an incredible experience here. I would not expect to match it again. It’s been amazing.”

“I’m suffering from amazing fatigue, and I totally know I’m overusing the word amazing right now I probably sound like Tom Cruise or Katie Holmes, but so much has happened to me this year that when people throw around the O-word It’s kind of like, I couldn’t be any happier but I don’t even think about the possibility of that happening because I’m so in shock by everything else that’s already happened. While it would be the proverbial icing in many ways, making the movie was its own reward.” 

“This is gonna make me sound like a total douche but I went to a test screening really early on that was all young people and I was sort of hiding in the audience and there was this girl behind me I could tell from her laughter and her sniffles she was appreciating the movie immensely. When the lights came up, and mind you this was the first time I had seen the movie with an audience, she stood up and said, ‘That was the best movie I have ever seen!’ I just kind of exchanged glances with my friends and I remember thinking that it didn’t matter what happened from that point forward because somebody said that and I heard it and they didn’t know I was there. I can’t imagine anything better than that.”

Additional Links:

-  Juno Review by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  Juno Theatrical Trailer