Cody Thompson the surfer
Cody and her older brother Marc were born and raised in Lemont, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Cody was raised Catholic and attended Benet Academy, a Roman Catholic school in Lisle, Illinois. She took the pen name Diablo Cody (diablo is Spanish for "devil") after repeatedly listening to the song El Diablo by Arcadia while passing through Cody, Wyoming. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a media studies degree. While at the University of Iowa, she worked in the acquisitions department in the main university library. 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.
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.[citation needed]
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,[citation needed] Cody began writing a column for the magazine Entertainment Weekly.
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 sharp and sarcastic voice. Based on the popularity "The Pussy Ranch" had received, he was able to secure her a publishing contract with Gotham Books.
After completion of her book, Cody was encouraged by Mason 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, United States of Tara. Based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, Tara is a comedy about a mother with dissociative identity disorder, starring Toni Collette. The series began filming in Spring 2008, and premiered on January 18, 2009.
In October 2007, Cody sold a script titled Girly Style to Universal Studios, and a horror script called Jennifer's Body to Fox Atomic. Released on September 18, 2009, Jennifer's Body starred Megan Fox as the title character. She revised writer-director Steven Antin's script for his musical film Burlesque.
Cody is good friends with fellow screenwriters Dana Fox (What Happens in Vegas, Couples Retreat) and Lorene Scafaria (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) and they often write their screenplays while hanging out together, in order to get advice from one another.
Edits welcome!
