IF you are a fan of the indie version of the human drama, it would be tough to top the one about the plucky Midwestern girl who used a stripper pole to shimmy her way up and out of a drab office cubicle and grab her piece of the Hollywood dream.
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Screenplay Excerpt: 'Juno'
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Diablo Cody, the writer formerly known as Brook Busey-Hunt, at a restaurant in West Hollywood.
A few years ago, Brook Busey-Hunt was typing copy at a Minneapolis advertising agency and walked by the Skyway Lounge, a skeevy strip bar where desiccated women grind out a living a dollar at a time. Good Catholic girl that she was, Ms. Busey-Hunt saw an ad for amateur night and had a naughty epiphany. And the rest is, well, a stage name, a blog, a book and a screenwriting career.
Now named Diablo Cody, she wrote a screenplay that became ?Juno,? a film directed by Jason Reitman set for release by Fox Searchlight on Wednesday. The story of a maniacally verbal 16-year-old girl who becomes pregnant and decides to give the baby to a childless couple, ?Juno? is on most every short list for an Oscar for original screenplay.
Sitting recently at the Rainbow, a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles draped in rock history, Ms. Cody, 29, did not pretend that her life was anything other than a fairy tale, albeit one where the role of the glass slippers is played by a pair of stripper?s stilettos.
?You make this really unexpected, half-cocked decision and all of a sudden it creates this weird energy that turns into something else,? she said during lunch. A self-described geek who had led a very insular life, she said that getting naked for strangers was her version of self-improvement, a way of transgressing her upbringing and opening up other doors. Unlike many strippers who resemble balloon smugglers with very large hair, Ms. Cody is a crisscross of tattoos and post-punk fashion, sort of Suicide Girl meets Riot Grrrl.
Those trips down dimly lighted runways, followed by a short stint as a phone-sex worker ? ?You have to convince them that your parents don?t know you are on the phone and that you are just aching to get with your physics teacher? ? became an unmentionably titled blog. Mason Novick, a talent manager from Benderspink, a Los Angeles agency, came across the blog and eventually put her in touch with a New York literary agent, who sold ?Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper,? which was published in 2005. Mr. Novick suggested she give screenwriting a crack, and she bought a copy of the ?Ghost World? screenplay so she could correctly format what became ?Juno.?
The movie has all the hallmarks of an art-house film ? endlessly quirky dialogue with a soundtrack to match ? but contains an old-fashioned moral center. At a time when many films about teenagers are a mess of machinations and hookups, ?Juno? ends in a very tender hug.
Ellen Page, the young Canadian actress who starred in ?Hard Candy,? plays Juno, a teenager who can?t get through a sentence without coining a metaphor. Juno becomes pregnant after a single sexual experiment born of ennui and friendship, and proceeds to waddle her increasing heft through the rest of the film while using her mouth as a plaything and weapon.
In one instance she turns it on Michael Cera (from ?Superbad?), who plays her so-geeky-he?s-sweet boyfriend. When she finds out he is going to the prom with a girl he admits ?smells like soup,? she is livid and trapped. ?I am wearing a fat suit I can?t take off. I am a planet,? Juno says, a huge belly protruding under her vintage T-shirt.
Apart from the pregnancy, the character is heavily autobiographical, with her thrift-store fashions and kitschy taste; Ms. Cody?s beloved hamburger phone gets a cameo. And like Juno, Ms. Cody has an ability to capture the human transaction between genders and generations. In Ms. Cody?s case, she understands the nature of the compact between the demanding lout with a dollar in his hand and his objectified temporary fantasy. Stripping, she wrote in her memoir, required her to ?bounce like the phantom cheerleader in the vault of every man?s memory.?
Ms. Cody smiles plenty, but she is all done preening for the benefit of others. She now prefers creating characters on the page as opposed to the stage. Especially after her first script fell into such eager, talented hands.
Her new life may not always be so sweet, but the work is plentiful. Her future includes another book; a pilot for a series about a woman with multiple personalities called ?The United States of Tara,? which was conceived by Steven Spielberg for Showtime; and several more features. (The Hollywood writers? strike, however, has put a temporary hold on her movie and television work.)
?I have never been an ambitious person, and my participation in this industry is a fluke, but only male writers can afford to be coy and self-deprecating,? she said, her hand absently stroking a Hello Kitty necklace. (?Tarina Tarantino. I bought it for $75 at a trashy mall in the Valley. I bought $220 jeans that same day and my cheeks burned with shame.?)
?I plan on hanging on to my soul, but I am not precious about writing,? she added. ?I am here to work and make money.?
Mr. Reitman said Ms. Cody would do just fine in Hollywood.