Diablo Cody’s identity crisis

Diablo Cody has no idea who she is, says Jill Soloway in Bust. The Oscar-winning screenwriter of Juno was born 31 years ago as Brook Busey, grew up in the middle-class Chicago suburbs, and spent 12 years in Catholic school. The “religious indoctrination” left her angry and damaged, she says, and she became a stripper in Minneapolis. While traveling through Cody, Wyo., she heard the song “El Diablo” on the radio. At that moment, she recast herself as Diablo Cody, an in-your-face, post-feminism feminist. That persona is the one the movie industry and the public knows, but it represents just part of her, leaving her with a split personality. “I don’t feel a close relationship with this public figure. I definitely feel like there is a big difference between me and the hologram. I go to different log-ins on my computer. I have different accounts, one for Diablo, one for me. People who have met me recently have difficulty calling me Brook. Sometimes even Dan, my boyfriend, stumbles on it.” What makes it even more confusing is that the pre-success Brook Busey would see Diablo Cody as nothing but a pretentious Hollywood poseur. “I would have hated my guts. I would have thought, Oh, that girl with her precious shtick and her stupid name. Go f---- yourself. I can’t even deal with this, please go away. Oh my God, I would’ve had no patience for myself.”

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