The Strange Success of El Diablo

Over at the Done Deal Boards, there's a thread questioning the legitimacy of Juno scribe Diablo Cody's backstory.

I haven't seen Juno yet, but I did read Candy Girl, her memoir of her year as a stripper in Minneapolis and enjoyed it. The official story is, after Candy Girl was sold for $250,000, Diablo's manager urged her to write a script. Now, in addition to Juno coming out, Diablo has several scripts in development. What they're questioning over at Done Deal is, was Cody's success really a fluke, or is her story a machination of some really good PR people?

Mason Novick, Diablo's manager, works for Benderspink, a production and management company that brought you such earth shattering films as Monster in Law and the forthcoming Jessica Simpson vehicle Major Movie Star rather than representing top tier literary talent. Given the amount of competition to get read and the number of scripts that probably get submitted to Benderspink, I'm beginning to doubt that Cody was simply cajoled into writing a script.

Juno is what one might call "execution dependent", meaning that it relies on character development as opposed to high concept. Coupled with the other movies Benderspink produced, Juno is not the type of movie that Benderspink is keen to sell. The key? Candy Girl was a ruse to sell the writer, Diablo Cody, in order to get her scripts sold.

Two things I'm willing to believe, though, are that Diablo was discovered through her blog, and that she spent some time stripping.

If it indeed is a ruse, I'm a little disappointed, having liked her book, but I don't feel cheated. Actually, I think it's a really clever way to market a screenwriter, and I wish I had encountered someone like Novick when I was writing specs. Perhaps if I had worked more at my first one, I might have. But as I've said, I'd be writing a very different blog today...