Brook Busey (born June 14, 1978 ), better known by the pen name Diablo Cody, is an American Academy Award-winning screenwriter, writer, author, journalist 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, 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.

Early life and career

Cody, who took the pen name Diablo Cody (diablo is Spanish for "devil") during a trip to Cody, Wyoming, 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. 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. 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. 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.


Stripping and journalism

On a whim, Cody signed up for amateur night at a Minneapolis strip club called the Skyway Lounge. Enjoying the experience, she eventually quit her day job and took up stripping full-time. 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. 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
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.


Screenwriting

After completion of her book, Cody was encouraged by 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, The United States of Tara. Based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, Tara, a comedy about a mother with dissociative identity disorder, stars Toni Collette and will begin filming in Spring 2008. In October 2007, Cody sold a script titled Girly Style to Universal Studios, and a horror script called Jennifer's Body, starring Megan Fox, to Fox Atomic. She also partially wrote the script for Burlesque, a musical film by director/screenwriter Steven Antin.

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 the Best Original Screenplay Oscar 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, Broadcast Film Critics Association, the National Board of Review, the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, the Florida Film Critics Circle, the Southeastern Film Critics Association, and the Satellite Awards, the Cinema for Peace Award 2008 for Most Valuable Work of Director, Producer&Screenwriter for "Juno".