Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

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  • Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

    This is a long piece. If you have the patience to read it all, it seems the timeline makes it unlikely Cody spent a year stripping in Minneapolis.

    Let's start with the bio (complete with typos, misspellings and odd syntax) on www.diablo-cody.com. (I've underlined items which caused confusion as I later uncovered other career facts in her blog archives):

    Diablo Cody had graduated studies with a degree in media. Her first job was a secretarial position for a banruptcy firm in Chicago, where she lived at the time. She also worked for a while editing and proofing advertisement copy that appeared on the Twin Cities radio. With her move to Minnesota she deciced to try something new and exciting, so she went to a local strip club, and applied for the amater night. Even though she lost, she actually enjoyed the entire experience, and decided to become a full time stripper. Although stripping was the name of the game, that is not all that went down, as she later told her readers and described the private shows and simulated intercourse she was involved with. She also tried working in the phone sex industry for awhile. Eventually becoming bored with the strip scene she started a carreer in journalism, working for the local newspaper.
    At the age of 24, Cody finished her book Candy Girl: A Year in The Life of an Unlikely Stripper. This book began after a publisher showed interest to the extreme popularity that her blog P-ussy Ranch had been receiving. See: http://www.diablo-cody.com/diablo-cody-biography.html


    A University of Iowa press release stated she graduated that school in 2000. There are many other references to her writing her memoir, Candy Girl, at age 24, in 2004, after being discovered by a publisher on The P-ussy Ranch blog. Including this recent Wired article:

    "Diablo Cody's Tips On Blogging Your Way To Hollywood":
    Step Three: Write Your Memoir at Age 24 and Publish It.

    http://www.wired.com/entertainment/h...s/2007/11/cody

    Let's recap: Doing the math, if she wrote the book at 24 in the year 2004, it appears Diablo graduated college in 2000 at the tender age of 20. Okay, that's possible. Now let's see how much she crammed into those four years.

    From 2000-2004:
    - Graduated University of Iowa in 2000
    - After graduating, worked as a secretary for a Chicago law firm.
    - Met her future husband online and moved to MN to live with him.
    - Worked for an ad agency as a proofreader in the Twin Cities, MN.
    - Left agency to work as a full-time stripper for one year in the Twin Cities, MN, with the full support of her future husband.
    - Left stripping to work sex phone lines.
    - Quit sex industry and became a journalist writing articles for City Pages, an alternative Twin-Cities weekly owned by the Village Voice.
    - 2004, discovered online via her P-ussy Ranch blog, by a publisher who prompted her to write her book Candy Girl: A Year in The Life of An Unlikely Stripper.

    Blog history, listing most recent first:
    - P-ussy Ranch blog under the name Diablo Cody.
    - Darling Girl and/or Red Secretary blog detailing the fictional exploits of a secretary living in Belarus, Eastern Europe. (note: it's not clear if Darling Girl and Red Secretary were two separate blogs or the same blog but I got this from the site: http://www.diablo-cody.com/
    - Girls, Cars & Surfing blog under her real name, Brook. Here's a 2001 entry archived in the Red Secretary link where she talks about being in Oregon(?):
    http://web.archive.org/web/200112151...com/index.html

    A very busy 4 years indeed, one of those years stripping full time and blogging non-stop about her stripper life on the "P" Ranch. Did she ever sleep?Or, could this resume be a little untrue? Then I find some of her own archived "P" Ranch blog entries from 2005 which contradict published reports. Edited from her blog postings:

    Ten Years Ago: I was a newly minted high school senior and utterly secure...
    Five Years Ago: In September of 2000, I was three months into my first job
    out of college, as the "creative assistant" (read: aimless secretary) at a
    midsized advertising agency in downtown Chicago...
    One Year Ago: I had recently been hired as a claims adjuster (really) in the Minneapolis 'burbs, and was writing freelance for City Pages. ...My book had just sold to Gotham, which seemed (and still seems) incredibly surreal.
    http://blogs.citypages.com/dcody/2005/09/)


    My note: Wait -- her press releases say say she worked in a Minneapolis ad agency before quitting to become a stripper. Now she says the ad agency job was in Chicago? No where in this list does she mention her year of stripping full time or her phone sex job. Odd, no? It gets better. Here's another contradiction about her age found (complete with birthday photo) in her own blog archives:

    "Tomorrow is my birthday. ...So as of tomorrow, I'm a 27 year-old non-gravid Earth female." Posted by Diablo Cody at June 13, 2005 9:07 PM (see: http://blogs.citypages.com/dcody/2005/06/)

    Hello?! If she turned 27 in 2005, how did she write a book at age 24, in 2004? Some sort of loopy time travel trick? Okay, okay -- women lie about their age all the time. But why shave only two years from your age while compressing your four-year career history from office worker, to full-time sex industry worker, to published author, and risk someone like me questioning your honesty while doing the math?

    Then I find more contradictions in a very recent Q & A with Diablo (December 2007) The opening sentence reads:

    A paragraph doesn’t seem like enough space to tell you all that’s happened to Diablo Cody in the two years since we introduced her, let alone to encapsulate the entire life of the twenty-nine-year-old, just-gone-Hollywood screenwriter. But what the hell. Former Catholic schoolgirl Brooke Busey moved from Lamont, Illinois to Robbinsdale, Minnesota (via college in Iowa) after meeting her One True Love, Jon Hunt, a Minneapolis musician she met on the internet. She was a secretary at Fallon when she adopted a stripper’s alias, Diablo Cody, before actually becoming a part-time stripper..

    My note: A part-time stripper? I thought she spent a year as a full-time stripper? And she adopted the name Diablo Cody before she actually became a stripper? Every bio says she came up with the name when she started blogging about her life in the sex industry. How could she start blogging as Diablo Cody the stripper before she became a stripper? Is this some kind of Zen Koan?

    Could it be possible that since she had the fictional blog about being a secretary in Eastern Europe, the "P" Ranch was a fictional blog about her exploits as the stripper? Here's another exerpt from the same Q&A referenced above:

    So how did this come together so fast? Cody: I wish I could understand. I wish I could find a reason behind it. I think about this a lot, because I’m aware of how improbable this all sounds, and I know it’s definitely an atypical situation for a writer. A lot of the time I feel like a fraud, because my peers went about things the usual way and had to fight to be where they are.

    (My note: "Hmmm. You feel like a fraud?" muses the ghost of Dr Freud.)

    But you were a secretary in Minneapolis? Oh yeah, before Hollywood, sure, I faced my share of rejection. Absolutely. But as soon as this happened, it happened. I mean, God knows, I never succeeded at anything prior to trying my hand at writing. Never. I’ve been fired from so many jobs. I’ve been told that I’m incompetent, socially retarded, maladjusted. I still know that I couldn’t function in reality. Los Angeles is a good place for me.

    (My note: So many jobs? How many jobs can she hold from 2000 through 2004 when she wrote the book, especially when one of those years was working as a full-time stripper?)

    How long did you live in Minneapolis total? I lived there for four years ....
    Interview is here: http://www.mspmag.com/features/features/79839.asp

    Then I find this on the Austin Film Festival site:

    Writer Diablo Cody penned her debut screenplay JUNO while working as a phone sex operator/insurance adjuster in Minneapolis. http://aff.bside.com/2007/?userId=30...yfestTab=blogs

    I thought she quit the sex industry before she wrote the book, and the book preceeded writing the screenplay? Then there's this interview:

    She chose Diablo Cody for its cool, androgynous sound while visiting Cody, Wyo. As a stripper, though, she used names such as "Bonbon" and "Roxanne." ...."I could not get out of college soon enough," says Cody, who graduated in 2000. She eventually met her 35-year-old musician and graphic designer husband, Jon Busey-Hunt, on the Internet and moved to his hometown of Minneapolis in 2003. http://archive.seacoastonline.com/ne...cody-jy19.html

    My Note: Wait a second! She moved to Minneapolis in 2003? Yet she penned her stripper memoirs in 2004 after she quit stripping in Minneapolis? The timeline is compressed again. And this same article ends with:

    And she bristles at suggestions that anyone who strips could write a book. "If that were the case, the legions of women that I worked with, who were desperate to get out of it, would have done the same. There's a reason that I did it and they didn't. And the reason is, that I'm a storyteller."

    My note: She worked with legions of women during a year as a part-time or full-time stripper? Yet I can't find any reference to one woman who stripped with her? Maybe the last quoted line says it all. She's a storyteller. And her bio is tall tale too.
    Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

  • #2
    Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

    Uh-oh. I smell a James Frey in the making. Alert THE SMOKING GUN!!
    http://www.pjmcilvaine.com/

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

      So, let's say she stripped once a week, or only on amateur nights. How does that change things?

      Maybe she just bartended in the club and switched things around to make it juicier.

      Why is this important?
      If you really like it you can have the rights
      It could make a million for you overnight

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

        Sc... why are you spending all of your time researching this? Shouldn't you be out stripping?

        I mean... you do wanna make it as a writer, don't ya?

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

          Sc... why are you spending all of your time researching this? Shouldn't you be out stripping?
          One word:

          Webcam!
          If you really like it you can have the rights
          It could make a million for you overnight

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

            Odo:

            It's important because her published book is supposed to be a true memoir about a year in the life of a full-time stripper.

            All the book reviews mention her claim that she stripped full-time for a year.

            This could be another hoax memoir like Frye's "Million Pieces." It could also mean another publisher did not fact check.

            Lips:

            Hey -- if I can expose this hoax, it may launch my own screenwriting career. Besides, it's a good excuse to avoid screenwriting and stripping for a day.

            Imagine the headline: A Green-With-Evny Wannabe Screenwriter Exposes Diablo Cody Memoir Hoax.



            I found another interesting article. It seems a studio producer discovered her blog and then he sent her book to a publisher.

            Keep in mind her book was published by Gotham in December 2005. All the book reviews state she claimed to worked full-time as a stripper. And everywhere it's said she wrote Candy Girl in 2004.

            But the following article indicates she had already written the book when producer, Mason Novick, discovered her blog.

            Exerpted from the article:

            "Juno" would not have made it to the page in the first place if it hadn't been for the team of filmmakers who worked tirelessly to bring her to the big screen. It started with producer Mason Novick who, while surfing the Internet, discovered an Internet blog penned by Diablo Cody. He was immediately struck by her humorous writing, hailed for its singularly feminine, ultra-contemporary and utter candid nature.

            "As a movie producer I read a lot that is supposed to be funny but is usually pretty terrible," Novick explained. "So every day for about six months I read her blog, and every day it made me laugh. So, I called her out of the blue, and said, 'I'm a producer, I live in Los Angeles, I read your blog every day and it makes me laugh. Have you ever thought about writing a screenplay?' And she said, 'I've thought about it, but I've never, you know, never really done it.'" But what she had already done is write a book, "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper."

            Novick sent a "Candy Girl" draft to a New York book agent who in turn sold it to Gotham Books. "By then we were talking about Diablo adapting CANDY GIRL for the screen," Novick recalls, "and I pointed out that she would need a sample screenplay so the studios could see that she could do it. A couple of months later she called and said 'The sample script's ready,' and she sent me "Juno."

            http://www.emanuellevy.com/article.php?articleID=7399

            Help me figure this out.

            She moved to MN in 2003 and worked at an ad agency before she quit to be a stripper. How long was she at the ad agency, we don't know.

            Still, even if she immediately started stripping and blogging about it, Novick was reading her blog for about six months before he contacted her.

            We don't know what year he started reading her blog, but let's say it was around the same time she moved to MN and started stripping (and blogging about it). Which would bring us to late 2003 - early 2004.

            But Novick said the book was already written before he contacted her. And her publisher says it was written in 2004.

            This is harder than figuring out the timeline for when O.J. killed his wife!

            Last edited by sc111; 12-03-2007, 10:07 PM.
            Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

              I think OJ had help. Nobody as dumb as OJ could've done it by himself.

              What if Cody just stripped for a month? Or three months? I don't think anyone will care.

              And we're talking about Hollywood here, not the New York publishing world. In this town, people lie like rugs.

              Get solid proof that Ms Busey-Hunt was only on the pole a few weeks. Everyone will pat her on the back for being such a sharp cookie. "Good that you got out of it before it broke you," they'll say.

              If Polanksi and Salva are still working, a chick who lied about how long she was on the pole is hardly worth worrrying about.
              If you really like it you can have the rights
              It could make a million for you overnight

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

                I guess it doesn't bother some people that another writer may have launched her career by publishing a (possibly) bogus memoir. But it bothers me.

                I solved the mystery about when Novic contacted her on on her current blog!

                Quote:

                Mason is the guy who stumbled upon the original P-ussy Ranch back in 2003 and was like "You should write a book. I'll get you an agent." Then after I wrote the book, he was like "Now write a movie."

                http://diablocody.blogspot.com/2007/...iere-post.html

                And yet in my post above Mason is quoted in the article as saying she already had the book written when he contacted her. Here it is again:

                'I'm a producer, I live in Los Angeles, I read your blog every day and it makes me laugh. Have you ever thought about writing a screenplay?' And she said, 'I've thought about it, but I've never, you know, never really done it.'" But what she had already done is write a book, "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper." (see link in above post)

                I think I found enough contradictory quotes by her and her manager to indicate there's something fishy about this 'only in Hollywood' stripper-turned-screenwriter story.

                Okay, my work here is done.
                Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

                  I'm pretty sure she was a stripper for a year.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

                    Originally posted by j over View Post
                    I'm pretty sure she was a stripper for a year.
                    What do ya base this on, vs this "evidence" sc's amassing?

                    Did you actually see her strip, and if so - how's the yams?

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

                      I had question about her too. And I don't or haven't read her blog.

                      The story of her life is just to damn... sexy.

                      First-off - I read her husband (or boyfriend at the time) gave her the okay to quit her ad job to be a stripper. What's he a Pimp?

                      Secondly - She writes a book and gets a publishing deal right out of the box (maybe her blog helped. Let's all start blogs!) What did she have a family friend in the publishing business?

                      Thirdly - Where is she from in Chicago? I have a feeling she comes from a well-to-do suburb. She looks it. If so, What's she doing riding a pole? Most of the time, people who do that had a rough upbringing.

                      And it's all okay. But the sad thing is, if you have or can create a sexy story about yourself or the making of you little $2 indie, it helps.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

                        Thanks for the link. However, I still suspect she didn't spend a year stripping full time. And what she has posted in that entry contradicts a lot of other things about when she wrote the book.

                        But this exerpt I've underlined is interesting (from above link):

                        Also, I actually worked at Deja Vu for a while, quit and returned a couple of months later. For the book, I condensed those two employment periods into one cohesive tour of duty--it made the narrative much cleaner. The story I told on the original ***** Ranch was a totally accurate, dangerously detailed account of my experiences, whereas the book is inherently tidier and more, well, legal. But it's real.

                        ---

                        "Condensed tour of duty?"
                        Last edited by sc111; 12-05-2007, 10:33 AM.
                        Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

                          So basically, she's the first woman ever to lie about her age?
                          "I dub thee: Sir Non Sequitur." - sc111

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

                            Title this post:

                            THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES???

                            You know, Diablo's blog and articles were famous for ripping everyone without mercy. She proudly calls hersef a "subversive female." Well in this tradition, I'm making it my recent hobby to seach for contradictions in her public relations story. And they keep coming.

                            Note that I'm comparing her own quotes from different articles -- some of them interviews and some she's written herself -- and it seems as if she's given slightly different versions of the story.

                            For example, now it appears she worked peep shows. I'm not a sex show expert but it seems to me working in a glass box is a lot different than stripping on stage and giving lap dances, no? And I'm still trying to sort out her claim that she worked with "legions" of strippers in her year of XXX experiences.

                            The following 2005 article exerpts (written by Cody) indicate her manager carefully crafted this whole public relations thing.

                            She also contradicts her later 2007 article quoted in my earlier post where she indicated the book, Candy Girl, was written after he contacted her. ("Mason is the guy who stumbled upon the original P-ussy Ranch back in 2003 and was like "You should write a book. I'll get you an agent." Then after I wrote the book, he was like "Now write a movie." http://diablocody.blogspot.com/2007/...iere-post.html)


                            Here's an article she wrote August 17, 2005 titled:

                            ------------

                            Are You There Hollywood? It's me, Diablo.

                            Two years ago, when I was working as a peep show girl and blogging daily about the pitfalls of masturbating in a booth for a living, I met Manager via a brief and professional e-mail. He'd discovered my blog, the ***** Ranch, while surfing online. He told me he worked in Hollywood and wanted to know if I'd ever considered writing a screenplay. I hadn't, but I had written a slender, cynical memoir about my tenure in the sex industry. Though I anticipated an anticlimactic end to my correspondence with Manager, I mailed him my manuscript. This powerful stranger in California pulled strings accordingly, and before my eyes could even adjust to the blinding light of salvation, I had a six-figure book advance, an agent, an attorney, and, of course, Manager.

                            (!!!!!! YOU MUST READ THIS PART: from later in article, her conversation with her manager

                            "When I used to call you, it always seemed like you didn't believe the things I was saying," Manager says, alluding to the early days of our business relationship.

                            "I didn't," I say, attacking a pile of French fries. I refuse to do as the Romans do, cuisine-wise. Salads are for pussies and Best Supporting Actresses. "What reason did I have to believe you? I'd never written a screenplay before. Everyone I've ever met who's tried to write a screenplay has languished in obscurity. It didn't seem possible to succeed at it."

                            "Obviously, it was," Manager says smugly.

                            "I just think this whole thing is insane," I say.

                            "It's like the story about the emperor's new clothes," Manager says. "One person in power decided you'd written the greatest movie ever. Then another guy jumped on the bandwagon. Next thing you know, you have the most talked-about script in Hollywood and two studios are fighting over you."

                            "The emperor's new clothes, huh?" I say.

                            (From closing paragraph):

                            The following week, after I've been back in Minnesota for a few days, I accept an offer from Warner Brothers to write two scripts for an amount of money that surprises even my barracuda lawyer.

                            (My note: Someone should read her the cautionary tale of Shane Black.)

                            entire article here:

                            http://citypages.com/databank/26/1289/article13597.asp

                            ---------------

                            If you read the entire piece you may notice that in 2005, during Cody's first trip to meet LA producers, she was herself suspicious of the hype. Reading this, I felt compassion for her because she was being turned into a product for the profit of others.

                            Sadly, later quotes indicate (at least to me) she's bought into her own manager-manufactured hype and now sees herself as a major force in Hollywood. Read this Dec. 2007 quote from Jezebel.com:

                            ------

                            In a New York Times article...Diablo says: "The attitude towards women in
                            this industry is nauseating. There are all sorts of porcine executives who
                            are uncomfortable with a woman doing anything subversive. They want the
                            movie about the beautiful girl who trips and falls, the adorable klutz."
                            She's also working on the lady version of Superbad, which is tentatively
                            called Girly Style...

                            -----

                            My note:

                            Porcine executives??? Diablo -- don't bite the hand of the oinker who feeds you. Like gods they giveth and taketh away. See above reference to Shane Black.
                            Last edited by sc111; 12-05-2007, 09:40 AM.
                            Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: Did Diablo Cody Really Spend A Year Stripping?

                              Originally posted by sc111 View Post
                              Someone should read her the cautionary tale of Shane Black.
                              Explain... Never read it myself. Maybe I should now.

                              Comment

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