Diablo Cody, meet "Diablo Quotey."
Filed under: Comedy, Oscar Watch
The Juno phenom has got all due analysis from every possible angle. Cinematical's Ryan Stewart tried to calm us Juno-haters by insisting that Juno was certainly a little movie; perhaps that will be some consolation when Juno wins that Best Original Screenplay Oscar a week from Sunday (the safest Oscar prediction you could make). Despite the charm of Ms. Page, and the arguable indie cred, there's still holdouts. I still think Juno was a sustained onslaught of alterna-cuteness so pitiless that it makes the very follicles of the hair ache.
Revenge is sweet, and few internet commentaries have been sweeter than this one by Bob "BobServo" Mackey at somethingawful.com. It's purportedly the first three pages of Quotey, the new Diablo Cody script about "a brilliant yet spunky screenwriter who says what we all think." Like all great satires, it looks exactly like the real thing: a culture-vulture's breakfast of dropped references and a Love Story plot, illustrated with ink margin drawings, in the manner of a bored sophomore doodling while listening to a lecture on Tennyson. The vintage National Lampoon meanness is really delightful. Interestingly, the phrasing in this imaginary disease-of-the-week script turns out to be not that horrendously different than the purportedly leaked script of Cody's new horror film script Jennifer's Body, as annotated by "Big Ross" of CC2K. Read and compare...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-15-2008 @ 7:40PM
Philip said...
Ok so to be fair, I visited both sites and examined the subject matter. Although my Diablo Cody tolerance has been exceeded (for whom else does one successful script a career make) I indulged for the sake of unbiased investigation.
Results: Shall we be expected to analyze her used toilet paper in the future as well? This is much ado about nothing.
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2-15-2008 @ 1:31PM
madgamer said...
Thanks for the link. It's almost too good. Really funny though.
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2-15-2008 @ 1:52PM
Mr. R said...
Great scripts have been written by people who wanted the movie to succeed at transporting the viewer into another world, not the character that was writing it. This new fashion she is starting of making writers the central character and a celebrities that go around extending their persona is a hit of the moment thing, how can it last, when is she going to create something that stands on it's own without the horrible name Diablo all over the place? I hope her celebrity status fades for the sake of directors and actors alike.
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2-15-2008 @ 2:43PM
Kim Voynar said...
Ugh. The endless Diablo-bashing by the JUNO haters makes the very follicles of MY hair ache. Most of the anti-Diablo diatribe is being written by men, and much of it is misogynistic bullshit coupled with a bad case of envy at her success. There will always be haters ready to latch on to any whiff of someone else's success.
Quentin Tarantino has endured worse said about him and succeeded in spite of the endless rivers of drivel blathered by people who couldn't write a good script if a gun was held to their crotch. Either Diablo will prove the haters wrong with her future efforts, or she won't. I expect she doesn't give a rat's ass about the "Diablo Quotey" nonsense -- likely she thinks it's funny. I just want to see her win on Oscar night, and stand up there with her golden man and yell, "Hey JUNO haters! I drink your milkshake!"
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2-15-2008 @ 4:06PM
Mr. R said...
How lame to take this to the sexist discussion...
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2-15-2008 @ 4:36PM
Philip said...
Eh I don't hate Juno, or Diablo for writing it. I think it's absurd to be doting over every single line of some unfinished piece or work she has, as if it was an unfinished Mona Lisa. God knows no one orgasms every time Alicia Keys hums a few bars of "Sitting on the Docks". This is just getting out of hand a bit. And if Micheal Bay is fair game for criticism for "writing" his own script for Transformers 2, why would Cody be exempt?
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2-15-2008 @ 4:41PM
Kim Voynar said...
Mr. R.,
Lame? I call it like I see it. Show me a male screenwriter or filmmaker who's been attacked in the personal ways in which Cody has -- for everything from her tattoos to her former occupation. When people attacked, say, "Titanic," or "Crash" for their Oscar noms, the focus was on the merits (or lack thereof) of the films, not the people behind them.
Show me, even, an attack on Jason Reitman, nommed for Best Director for "Juno," that sinks to the personal level I've seen leveled against Cody for this film. People don't like the script as a script per se, fine. But that's just not the nature of most of the diatribe I see aimed against Cody and "Juno." THAT is what is lame.
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2-15-2008 @ 5:03PM
Philip said...
Kim I'd certainly agree with you, she's been the target of some rather sexist remarks, and most unfairly. She's young, of average good looks and clearly talented. But again, all disagreement about the success or perceived lack thereof cannot be lumped under the heading "sexism". You basically discourage any thoughtful disagreement under the questionable premise that said disagreement must revolve around the gender of the one disagreed upon.
Cody may indeed be the next Judd Apatow (or maybe Judd is the next Cody if that suits your tendencies). But ooohing and aaaahing over every single little doodle on a piece of paper is a bit much at this early stage, and the over-exposure only serves to encourage the type of dislike you champion against.
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2-15-2008 @ 7:15PM
Joel M. said...
Kim, it honestly sounds like you're the one overreacting here. Maybe some critics have gotten personal with Diablo Cody, but not in this article. It's right on in its satire IMO. No hate here.
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2-15-2008 @ 5:52PM
madgamer said...
@ Kim, Diablo is getting bashed because she is popular at the moment, and most people are cynical a-holes. The fact that she puts herself out there makes it so people actually know who she is and therefor allow them to bash her directly instead of the movies. Like with your Crash or Titanic examples (or pretty much 95% of the other movies out there), I and most of the general public, even if they are kind of into movies, could not name the screenwriters. If I want to bash the latest ewe boll turd, or even a big movie like crash, I could maybe name the director or some actors, but I would have no idea who wrote it. I think that, if anything, the fact that people are bashing her is pretty remarkable, as in my mind it makes her easily one of the most recognizable people of her trade (to the common person anyway) around.
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2-15-2008 @ 7:46PM
Kim Voynar said...
Joel, I don't take issue with the satire of the script at all. It's actually pretty funny. I don't even take issue with people who dislike the film -- heck, I dislike plenty of films that my fellow critics think are great ("Reservoir Dogs" for one, but there are others) and champion some that others dislike. We all have our likes and dislikes. I just think that in general, Cody has been subjected to a lot of bashing, much of it unfair. Yes, she's different and quirky, and quite probably she likes most of the attention and brushes off the haters. But she's just been attacked on a personal level way more than any man I can think of in the same position, and while I certainly don't think all of it is sexist in origin, much of it is.
Go read what's been written about her on some of the more male-dominated film sites out there -- the guys who are writing it would never attack Reitman or any other man the way they've gone after her. I'd love for them to prove me wrong, but unfortunately, I just haven't seen it.
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2-16-2008 @ 5:36PM
Joel M. said...
Kim, I appreciate that, and you're probably right about the personal attacks on Diablo Cody. I just think it's important to distinguish genuine criticism (like the article) from personal attacks. I guess your comment and the article coincided, and I imagined causation that wasn't there. Anyway, don't worry your pretty little head about it, sweetheart.
Just kidding ;)
2-15-2008 @ 9:33PM
Richard von Busack said...
I'd certainly like to distance myself from anyone who thinks Cody is too female to write a good script, if they're indeed out there on the Internet. Actually, I'm always complaining in my reviews about how male dominated the business is, and how little screen-time actresses get, and how every third movie in 2007 was a bromance. I'd be happy to prove this.
There are some scriptwriters you learn to avoid, like Akiva Goldsman for example--no director can improve them or survive them, and in the scheme of things they're so much worse than the likes of Diablo Cody.
It's not Diablo Cody as a woman that bothers me, it's Diablo Cody as a flavor of the month scriptwriter that gets me right in the follicles. That somethingawful.com piece hit it on the head, and I can't resist a good literary parody.
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2-16-2008 @ 11:02AM
Philip said...
Post #10, attributed to me, was actually the first post in response to the main article. It appears here now, out of order. It was not posted by me at the time it shows, as I was busy being overrun by children at a Chuck E. Cheese at that time. I'm not sure why it was moved, or by whom, but I felt I should clarify the post. The mover of the post should take responsibility for moving it.
No one likes a Nazi, thread or otherwise.
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2-17-2008 @ 12:41PM
Kim Voynar said...
Philip,
Not only did we not move your comment, we don't even have the ability on our end to do such a thing. Nor would there be any reason for us to do so. The only thing we ever do to comments is delete them if they are clearly spam or outright offensive ... like calling people Nazis, for instance.
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2-18-2008 @ 5:31PM
Philip said...
Never heard of someone who manipulates postings after the fact to be called "thread Nazis"? Perhaps that usage is lesser known than I previously thought.
Nevertheless, your blogging host is perhaps moving the posts. This is important, as moving a post out of order damages the context of the post itself.
And I'm sorry you found the statement "No one likes a Nazi" offensive. Though it's no surprise.
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2-26-2008 @ 11:17AM
cg said...
Oh my fucking god... so she's the one who has calculated this rise to stardom by shifting the focus from her material to her personal life? Hate the media. Hate your-fucking-selves (it's unremarkably easy) for continuing to talk about her and 'leak' scripts. Juno haters??? Are you all 12???
She wrote a script. People signed on to make a movie. Who did she force to make it all happen? Who has she forced to like it? Don't watch it and certainly don't write about it every 2 fucking days.
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2-26-2008 @ 11:44AM
Richard von Busack said...
OK, that does it.
To reiterate now that she's won the award and drank the dang milkshake...
I don't hate her because she's a woman. I like women, and have been very well treated by them all my life. There are exceptions, but these just proved the rule.
I don't hate DC because she was a stripper. I like strippers. They're brave, they're entertaining. They put themselves out there. Many of them aren't slummers like some people I could mention.
I don't hate her because she has a tattoo. I've got some myself.
I don't hate DC because she's whip-smart. There was this woman once called Dorothy Parker, and....but that was a long time ago. There's a few more: Jean Rhys, Mary Fleener, Phoebe Gloeckner, Anita Loos...there's so many more.
I hate Juno, and to some extent its author, because this supposed little film that could (ha!, it's as indie as the Chemical Bank!) is a huge commercial in favor of the joys of teen pregnancy and baby farming.
I hate the fact that there's going to be 20-100 scripts just like Juno produced in 2008 (as my colleague J.R. was just observing last night).
And Cody's rackety, relentless name dropping, her turning of the entire very good cast into whipsmart wisecracking sock-puppets made both hair and teeth hurt, and the numerous mentions of DC and her two-headed illegitmate brain child in magazines, TV and blogosphere make it all rather damned hard to tune out. That's what makes a person want revenge.
And with that, I will endeavor never to write her name again, except to in context with the imitations of Cody when they come out, and they will come out. Just as surely as Cody imitated Clowes and Whedon, she in turn will be imitated. And it will all be very hard to tune out--there'll be armadas of publicists and semi-pro flacks making sure of that.
Say, can we all talk about Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days?
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