| Diablo Cody | |
|---|---|
 Diablo Cody in January 2008 |
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| Born | Brook Busey June 14, 1978 (1978-06-14) Lemont, Illinois, USA |
| Occupation | Writer, Blogger, Screenwriter |
| Years active | 2007-present |
| Official website | |
Brook Busey (born June 14, 1978), better known by the pen name Diablo Cody,[1] is an American Academy Award-winning screenwriter, writer and blogger. First known for her candid chronicling of her year as a stripper in her Pussy Ranch blog and her 2006 memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in The Life of an Unlikely Stripper,[2] Cody won wider fame as the writer of the 2007 film Juno, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
A sitcom written by Cody, called The United States of Tara, based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, is currently in pilot stage at Showtime. She has several other scripts in the development stage at various studios.
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Cody, who took the pen name Diablo Cody (diablo is Spanish for "devil") during a trip to Cody, Wyoming,[3] attended Benet Academy, a Roman Catholic school in Lisle, Illinois. She grew up in Lemont, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a media studies degree.[4] While at the University of Iowa, Cody was a DJ at KRUI 89.7 FM. 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 of a weblog called Red Secretary, detailing the (fictional) exploits of a secretary living in Belarus.[5] 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.
Cody's first bona fide blog appeared under the nickname Darling Girl after Cody had moved from Chicago to Minneapolis, Minnesota to "live in sin" with Jon (Jonny) Hunt, a musician she had met over the Internet.[5] They married in October 2004, but separated in late 2007. On December 5, 2007, Cody announced in her "Pussy Ranch" blog that they are now divorced; Hunt wrote that they nonetheless remain friends. Cody currently resides in Los Angeles.[6]
On a whim, Cody signed up for amateur night at a Minneapolis strip club called the Skyway Lounge.[4] Enjoying the experience, she eventually quit her day job and took up stripping full-time.[7] Cody also spent time working peep shows at Sex World, a Minneapolis adult novelty and DVD store. Eventually she became disillusioned with stripping and switched to phone sex before eventually returning to stripping. Cody soon made a retreat to more traditional employment in journalism, and a budding writing career stimulated by her skin trade days.
While still stripping, Cody began writing for City Pages, an alternative Twin Cities weekly newspaper.[4] She left City Pages just before it changed editorial hands. Cody has since written for the now-defunct Jane magazine. In December 2007, Cody debuted as Entertainment Weekly magazine's newest Backpage columnist, joining regular contributors Dalton Ross and the iconic pop horror author Stephen King on a rotational basis.
Diablo Cody at the Academy Awards, February 2008
At the age of 24, 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 Cody's acerbic wit. Based on the popularity Pussy Ranch had received, he was able to secure her a publishing contract with Gotham Books.