Diablo Cody Strikes

Is it wrong for me to adore Diablo Cody before I’ve read her book or any of her scripts? A couple of interviews, plus this picture, taken from her blog, tell me no. Such admiration is in all likelihood not misplaced.

Read more about the former stripper turned book author turned hot young scriptwriter at New York mag’s Vulture, at Entertainment Weekly (“Ex-Stripper Turned A-Lister”), and at Esquire, in the -- where else? -- Women We Love section. The EW piece is particularly informative and entertaining. Lots of stuff about Juno, the movie she wrote “sitting in Target in suburban Minnesota”:

When Jason Reitman, who'd made a name for himself with 2006's Thank You for Smoking, read the script for Juno, he scrapped plans to direct his own project to work with Cody instead. ''When I think of the response to Diablo and her screenplay,'' he says, ''the only person I can equate it to in recent history is Tarantino, that kind of overwhelming excitement about a fresh new voice.'' But the movie would have imploded fast without the right actress in the title role. Enter the impressive Hard Candy actress Ellen Page, who, Cody believes, beautifully embodies her wry, tough-talking, secretly tender main character. ''It would have been really heartbreaking to meet Ellen if she was like, 'Oh, hey, wassup?' while talking on a rhinestone-encrusted cell phone,'' says Cody. ''But she's so cool, she scares the s--- out of me. She is Juno.''

Ellen Page! I loved her in Hard Candy, even if I didn’t love Hard Candy itself. And I thought she made a great Kitty Pryde too. Lots of great buzz about Juno -- I can’t wait to see it. Funny though, this is probably the first time I’ve ever seen a film’s scriptwriter get as much, if not more than, buzz than the film itself. Not that that’s a bad thing, in my book.

Oh, almost forgot to include my favorite quote from the Entertainment Weekly article on D.C. Here it is:

"I'm f---ing sick of actors!" declares Cody, stabbing the lime in her third vodka soda. "They look airbrushed in reality. I swear Jennifer Garner has to be bathing in the blood of virgins because she has the most beautiful skin that I've ever seen on a human being. The boys too! I met Brandon Routh from Superman last year. He looks like a special effect. He's too beautiful to live. And actors are all tiny people. Why is that? I'm a hulk compared to them! If you look at pictures of me with actors, I look like I ate them all."