Diablo Cody Biography

Brook Busey-Maurio (born June 14, 1978), better known by the pen name Diablo Cody, is an American screenwriter, producer, author, journalist, memoirist, stripper and exotic dancer. 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 (2005). Later, Cody achieved critical acclaim for her debut script Juno (2007), 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 (2009-2011) and for writing and producing the films Jennifer's Body (2009) and Young Adult (2011). 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. Her mother is of Italian descent and her father is of British ancestry. Cody was raised Catholic and attended Benet Academy, a Roman Catholic school in Lisle, Illinois. She took the pen name Diablo Cody (diablo is Spanish for "devil") 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 blog called Red Secretary, detailing the (fictional) 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 (What Happens in Vegas, Couples Retreat) and Lorene Scafaria (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) 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 (2008). 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 (firstly known as Lamb of God). 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" (musician Jon Hunt of Minneapolis psych-folk band, Lovely Dark). 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 (which she shared with Jason Reitman, John Malkovich, Mason Novick, Russel Smith and Lianne Halfon).

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

Year	Feature film	Credit/Role	Notes	Ref.
2007	Juno	Writer	Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay Austin Film Critics Association Award for Best Original Screenplay BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay Broadcast Film Association Award for Best Original Screenplay Cinema for Peace Award for Most Valuable Work of Director, Producer & Screenwriter Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Original Screenplay Christopher Award for Feature Films Dallas Fort-Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay Florida Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay Hollywood Film Festival Breakthrough Screenwriter of the Year Award Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Original Screenplay Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Screenplay National Board of Review Award for Best Original Screenplay Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Original Screenplay Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Original Screenplay San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Original Screenplay Satellite Award for Best Original Screenplay Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Original Screenplay Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Original Screenplay Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay Nominated - Humanitas Prize - Feature Film Category
2009	Jennifer's Body	Writer, executive producer
2010	Burlesque	Script revision (uncredited)
2011	Young Adult	Writer, producer	Hollywood Film Festival Screenwriter of the Year Award Palm Springs International Film Festival - Chairman's Vanguard Award Nominated - Broadcast Film Association Award for Best Original Screenplay Nominated - Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay
2013	The Magic Bracelet	Writer (story by Rina Goldberg)	Short film directed by Jon Poll
2013	Evil Dead	Script revision (uncredited)
2013	Paradise	Director, writer, executive producer
2015	Ricki and the Flash	Writer
2017	Tully	Writer
TBA	Time and a Half	Writer	Julianne Hough is set to star and Ol Parker to direct
TBA	Sweet Valley High	Writer	A musical based on the book series created by Francine Pascal
TBA	Barbie	Writer	A movie based on Barbie

Television

Year	TV series	Credit/Role	Notes	Ref.
2008	Sunday Morning Shootout	Herself	#5.13
2009	United States of Tara	Creator, writer, executive producer	2009-2011
	90210	Herself	"Okaeri, Donna!": #1.19
2010	Childrens Hospital	Writer	"Show Me on Montana": #2.10
2011	Robot Chicken	Herself/Diana the Acrobat/Martha Kent	"Catch Me If You Kangaroo Jack": #5.9
2015	One Mississippi	Creator, writer, executive producer	2015-
TBA	Alex + Amy	Creator, writer, executive producer (project sold to ABC)	Mason Novick, Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank will be producing with Cody
TBA	Prodigy	Creator, writer (pilot sold to Fox)	Josh Schwartz is developing the series with Cody

Videos

Year	Video	Credit/Role	Notes	Ref.
2010	Tight	Writer
2008	Sincerely Yours	Actress