Reel Politique: Prize Beat, Before Diablo Knows She’s Dead
The last time screenwriter Diablo Cody was seen in the pages of Entertainment Weekly she was stumbling down a side street near an obscure Hollywood pensioner’s bar called Rustic in search of yet more Wild Turkey (though writer Karen Valby characterized it as walking off a buzz). Now, with this week’s issue, No. 970, Miss Cody has been elevated to last-page columnist under a banner called “Binge Thinking.”
Cody’s rise has been phenomenal. Born Brook Busey-Hunt, Miss Cody was a prep school girl and white collar drone with a degree in media studies from the University of Iowa who became a pole dancer and peep show girl in Minneapolis, experiences which became fodder for, of course, a blog, which then, of course, became a book, Candy Girl: A Year in The Life of an Unlikely Stripper. A producer in Hollywood, ensorcelled by the blog, approached Miss Cody for screenplay ideas, according to EW. Having none handy as a showpiece, Miss Cody batted out Juno, which itself had a meteoric rise from pages of text to strips of film. The film, about a sass-mouthed pregnant teenager played by Ellen Page, has been praised by everyone from the New York Times to the Ebert show. It’s got a Golden Globe nomination and is widely viewed as a shoe in for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Entertainment Weekly ran its praise-filled profile in issue number 963, then reviewed the movie itself glowingly a few issues later. Miss Cody is very much au courant, with color-steaked black dyed hair, her short skirts, torn stockings, and combat boots, and ostentatious tattoos; she’s one of those girls, a pasteurized Suicide Girl. Now Miss Cody has joined the ranks of Stephen King and Dalton Ross as final-page columnists for the nation’s number one general entertainment magazine.
Bearing some kind of “Good Will Hunting” style intervention from a notable if silent screenwriter, Juno is an impressive highly strung gag fest, an anthology of one liners that Bruce Vilanch would envy. It is also contains the kind of story and characters that the writers for The Gilmour Girls could ring out between lattes.
Miss Cody kicks off her debut column by talking about … herself. After some preliminary praise for the ultimate groupie movie, Almost Famous, Miss Cody then goes on to compare Cameron Crowe’s movie to her experiences on the road promoting Juno. She was going to be just like Jason Lee in Crowe’s film, only, in a gag characteristic of the column’s childish imitation of the Vilanch-style, “with less facial hair.”
I suppose we could expect no less than self-absorption from a blogger’s foray into adult journalism, since blogs, whence comes Miss Cody and her talent, are all about the narcissism of talking about oneself as if the world cared. At least Miss Cody’s processed prose isn’t as horrid as the untampered-with dictations of Stephen King, monthly anthologies of every current verbal tic.
EW has been undergoing a gradual redesign these past few weeks, and Miss Cody’s ascension is yet another measure of contemporary print journalism’s panic in the face of lapsed subscriptions and fleeing advertisers. Instead of reclaiming readers (and advertisers) through innovative web presences and striving to be “must reads,” newspapers and magazines are pandering to younger readers in obvious and intelligence-insulting ways. Thus, instead of hiring truly witty writers such as Cintra Wilson or Stacie Ponder to share their insights, they go for the flavor of the week. Adding Miss Cody to the masthead must strike the brainiacs at EW as a cool move. Will it be so in two years if her career washes out (as, statistically, it might)? Until then, we can enjoy such future columns as Diablo Cody on winning the Golden Globe, Diablo Cody on winning an Oscar, Diablo Cody on meeting Steven Spielberg, Diablo Cody at Telluride-Sundance-Cannes, and maybe even Diablo Cody on reading about Diablo Cody.
January 23rd, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Ooh. I’ve never posted a comment after a blog before but since I googled “Diablo Cody self absorbed” and found this…I might as well.
The woman’s success is so bizarre to me that I am actively seeking out an explanation. I read Candy Girl and thought it was horrible. It was wildly insulting to strippers (even though she was one) and patrons (even though she lived off of them). I am a former stripper BTW, so I guess I take it a bit seriously. Not once does she discuss her coworkers or clients with anything resembling interest or compassion. Not once does she mention making a friend. Instead she belittles and condescends to everyone in the world she has chosen to impose upon.
At one point in the book she talks about her husband “the only person who could still see any good in her” or something like that, and I thought, maybe the fact that nobody can see any good in you has less to do with your being a stripper than with you being a self absorbed, self congratulating bitch.
August 9th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Thousands and the dazzlingly buy cytotec then announced held.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:05 pm
What do you think about this cartoon Its funny! Cheers! Tim
http://www.jjcomics.com/frat_boys_computer_science_geeks_girls_cartoon_comic.htm