nicole_powers

"I constantly want to feel like I'm in danger," says author and screenwriter Diablo Cody during our interview. This statement reveals a lot when you consider Cody's resume. She punctuated a rather mundane series of office jobs by moonlighting as a stripper, phone sex worker, and a peep show girl. While still working for "the man" she documented her experiences in the sex industry in a very public space -- a popular blog called Pussy Ranch. Subsequently she penned a full-blown memoir, entitled Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, which was published by Penguin imprint Gotham Books.

Having bared her body, for her next artistic endeavor, Cody bared her decidedly off-beat soul, writing a spec screenplay called Juno based, in part, on her experiences, and that of her friends, while growing up. The non-stereotypical, non-tragic tale of teen pregnancy courted controversy with its optimistic, pro-choice perspective, but ultimately prevailed both at the box office and the Oscars, where Cody won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

After receiving what many consider to be Hollywood's ultimate accolade, Cody took a career risk again, turning to a genre - horror - that neither has the respect of the mainstream film community nor favor with The Academy. Horror however is Cody's raison d'tre, her latest film, Jennifer's Body, being an homage both to the conventions of the genre and her feminist ideals.

Femme fatale Megan Fox plays the title role of Jennifer, a schoolgirl whose body is more attractive than her soul. The film co-stars Mama Mia actress Amanda Seyfried, who plays the archetypically nerdy Needy, Jennifer's bosom buddy turned frenemy. The blood starts to fly after a gig at the local dive bar when Jennifer and Needy encounter the enigmatic Nikolai (Adam Brody), a singer who's willing to deal with the Devil to facilitate his rock & roll dreams.

On the eve of the film's release, SuicideGirls caught up with Cody by phone to find out if her dreams remain true -- or if they've turned into anything resembling nightmares.

Nicole Powers: In your last SuicideGirls interview done around the time Juno was released you talked about how you were working on a book about Hollywood. Since then, in a few short years you've gone from being the outsider to an insider. What has Hollywood and the film industry taught you?

Diablo Cody: Well, honestly, I'm still writing that book, and it's interesting because it gets more and more challenging with time. As I become less of an outsider I lose that outsider perspective. And I think it's important to actually maintain that perspective because if you become one of them you've officially lost the battle in life.

I think, if anything, I've become tougher. Hollywood will definitely toughen you up because it's the kind of place where you can be rejected very quickly. Also, I love Hollywood because it's a town full of optimists. It's a town full of people whose dreams have come true for them. I grew up being told to keep my feet on the ground and not make any big plans, and I appreciate now that I'm an adult I'm surrounded by people who do make big plans and who follow up on them. It's actually kind of cool to witness.

NP: It's nice to watch your Hollywood experience. You hear so many horror tales, but you seem to have had an experience that's been incredibly positive.

DC: Yeah, it's funny. It's been positive really from the very beginning. 'Cause when I first came to town I already had some momentum going with my career so I never went through the phase that a lot of newcomers do where you're waiting tables and struggling. I was very fortunate in that regard so I've always seen Hollywood as a very warm and welcoming place.

NP: I also think that's a reflection of your outlook on life. There's a thread of positivity running throughout your work. I mean with Juno, the played out tale of teen pregnancy is traditionally very dark and depressing, but you portrayed a highly functioning teen from a highly functioning family, and show that a bad situation doesn't have to 100 percent suck.

DC: Yeah. I think I actually am kind of an optimist by nature. Actually, I even surprised myself with Juno because I think I had originally envisioned it as a very, very dark comedy and the finished product was more life-affirming. But Jennifer's Body, I wouldn't actually call it an optimistic movie. It's pretty dark and it says some pretty damning things about teenagers.

NP: It does, but there's a lightness that counterbalances it. Some horror movies are just about gore on top of gore, and kill after kill after kill, whereas Jennifer's Body has much more light and shade. I think part of that comes from the smartness of the dialog.

DC: I appreciate that so much. Thank you. The director, Karyn Kusama, it was really important to her to make something that had a warm vintage feel as opposed to the coldly mechanical horror movies that you see these days. We definitely didn't want it just to be a series of kills, one more titillating than the next, which is kind of the MO these days. We definitely wanted to tell a story about the girls, and I like the phrase "light and shade." I think that is a pretty apt description.

NP: What you've done with Jennifer's Body is produce a smart movie in a genre that's generally become so dumb it's almost insulting to its audience. It's become all about the kills, and not the story and characters.

DC: That's true. And I think definitely the horror element was secondary to character development for us. Obviously there are a lot of messages in this movie. We were trying to say stuff about body image and sexuality, about female friendships, about relationships. We tried to shove all our weird feminist ideals in there but package them in a glossy commercial way.

NP: Last time you spoke with us you also talked about how your ambition was to be a horror movie director. Has that desire been sated by working on Jennifer's Body? Or has it intensified?

DC: I would still like to do that. At the moment I feel pretty satisfied by this experience, and I think I will probably do something non-horrific next. That being said, I cannot wait to write another horror script, and I'm definitely interested in directing in the future.

This was a world that intrigued me my entire life. I always loved horror movies. I've always been intrigued by horror filmmakers and so the opportunity to actually get up close and do it was life-changing. It made me realize that this might be a calling for me. And I still feel that way.

NP: What about the horror genre appeals to you?

DC: I don't like to go to the movies and have a passive experience, sitting there, watching a screen. I want to react. I want to feel like I'm genuinely in peril. I want to laugh until I cry. I want to be engaged when I watch a film. And I feel like there's two ways to do that: make a comedy or a horror film.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good drama, I'll watch a period piece from time to time, but most of the time I find myself going back to horror because you have the most visceral experience when you're watching those films.

NP: I was reading your Twitter page, and your post about Six Flags -- I guess the horror movie is the rollercoaster of the cinema world because it induces that physical feeling of terror.

DC: I think it's possible that I might have some kind of adrenalin disorder because I'm obsessed with rollercoasters and I go to Six Flags all the time. I travel around the country and ride coasters, and I catalog them on my computer. It's this weird secondary hobby I have. I feel it's interesting that I'm into shock cinema and also these machines that turn you upside down. It's like I constantly want to feel like I'm in danger.

NP: I think there's definitely a connection there that should be explored further with your therapist.

DC: [laughs] Yeah. I think I've done a lot of work there already.

NP: So what are your favorite scenes in Jennifer's Body?

DC: My favorite scene in the whole movie is probably the sex scene between Needy and Chip [Needy's boyfriend played by Johnny Simmons]. I was so excited about being able to write an authentic sex scene that was awkward and sweet and realistic, and place it in an established sexual relationship between two teenagers. Because in a movie it's always either their first time, or somebody gets killed halfway through, or there's some big debate leading up to it. Nobody ever just has matter of fact sex in horror films and I wanted that to happen. I think the chemistry between Amanda Seyfried and Johnny Simmons is incredibly sweet, and I like the juxtaposition between that scene and Megan killing the boy in the abandoned house. It's kind of showing opposite sides of the same coin.

My other favorite scene, I always love seeing the girls fight in Jennifer's bedroom at the end. I think it's shot so beautifully. I love the way the blood rolls into Jennifer's throat. Just form an aesthetic perspective, it's probably my favorite scene.

NP: And of course there's the kiss (between Jennifer and Needy) which everyone is talking about. People have been throwing this word "gratuitous" around. Is that frustrating for you?

DC: Yeah. It is. First of all, yes it is hot. Definitely. I think it's beautiful. I get turned on every time I watch it. I don't feel that people would think it was gratuitous if the characters were not the same sex. So to me that's just inherently homophobic.

NP: Also if there was no chemistry. People only see it as gratuitous because it's hot - and it may make some viewers uncomfortable - because it's working.

DC: Yeah. Exactly. I wonder if people would call it gratuitous if it was not effective. And we've established that there is this sexual tension between the two of them. Jennifer even alludes to the fact that they've played games together and, you know, they hold hands during the show. It's obvious that Needy is nursing feelings for Jennifer, and I didn't understand why in a tense moment we couldn't address that. Also, and nobody talks about this, there's something inherently scary about kissing a cannibal. To me it's a very tense moment. What if Jennifer eats her? I'm not sure I would want to kiss somebody who is possessed by a demon and known to eat people, so there's also an element of horror there. I really like that scene.

NP: The other thing that I like is that Adam Brody got the chance to be cool because obviously he played the dorky Seth Cohen in the OC for years.

DC: Yeah. And the thing is Adam Brody is just a cool dude. He's a really charismatic, intelligent, funny guy. He's very quick witted and he actually improvised a lot in the movie. Working with him was a wonderful revelation. He's one of those people where you work with him once and you want to work with him again.

NP: What bits did he improvise?

DC: One of my favorite lines is when they're at the bar and they ask him why he's playing all the way out in Devil's Kettle, and he says, "Well I think it's important to connect with our fans in shitty areas too." I'm pretty sure that was not in the script. [laughs] But the way he delivered it made us laugh every time. And there's a part in the car when Jennifer's asking questions and he says, "Oh, you don't have to talk." He's so full of menace and evil - it's great.

NP: The elephant in the room is Megan Fox, who's become so huge that she's bigger than any one project that she participates in at this point. Was that a concern?

DC: Honestly, at the time when we cast her it wasn't the case. When we cast her in this movie she had just come off the first Transformers movie. Obviously people knew who she was, but she wasn't this superstar phenomenon that she is now. I was able to sit down with her in a bar and discuss doing this movie, whereas if we sat down in a bar now she would probably get mobbed. So it was sort of serendipitous that she wound up becoming this huge star. We got an accidental movie star.

NP: In a recent Frisky.com interview you talk about how Megan is the kind of woman girls love to hate, which is a reaction you examine in the movie when you explore how we perceive beauty and how females interact. Often it's not very nice how women treat women is it?

DC: Not always.

NP: It can be pretty damning on the female gender.

DC: You know what though? I love women and I'm definitely a girls' girl, and I really like being surrounded by women on this movie. But I think, unfortunately, we live in a society that pits women against each other. Women are encouraged to be competitive by the patriarchy because it helps us to stay suppressed. I feel very strongly about that. I think that's why you see the stereotype of women being catty and bitchy. It's being perpetuated by men and unfortunately women buy into it, and they mimic it - especially young girls. I think a lot of young girls are programmed to believe there can be only one, and that you need to keep each other down in order to succeed, and I don't like that mentality. I think women need to help each other and support each other. In the movie I'm not indicting Needy and Jennifer, I'm indicting a society that creates women like Jennifer.

NP: I like the connection that you make between the horror genre, and the horror women endure at school. Young girls can be so cruel to each other. How much do you feel is nature and how much is nurture?

DC: I don't feel that it is biological. I don't feel that the competition is ingrained. I feel that it is created by society. I feel that if girls had equal opportunities, had equal treatment in school and were encouraged to be as inquisitive and aggressive as men are encouraged to be, that there wouldn't be so much anger.

NP: Final question, because I know you have limited time. I was watching the outtakes of Juno on the DVD extras, and it killed me that some of those scenes weren't in the final cut of the movie. Are there any scenes in Jennifer's Body that didn't make the cut?

DC: A lot. There's going to be an extreme director's cut because we actually lost a lot. The movie was originally longer, looser, weirder, more ambiguous. Some of it we lost with good reason and some of it we miss. So we often joke about the DVD, that it's going to be pretty exhaustive. We had to leave a lot behind.

NP: What's the one scene that you miss the most?

DC: There was a scene at Colin Gray's funeral, the kid that [Jennifer] kills in the house. His mother unleashes this angry speech about the superficiality of teenagers and how furious she is with whatever monster it was that did this to her child. It's really intense but we had to cut it because it was so good that people would cry when they saw it when we tested the movie. It kind of ruined the mood. It was like suddenly you'd stepped into a different film where no one's having any fun anymore. I though it was an important moment because I felt we needed to address the gravity of the situation; Like people are dead, parents have lost their children. It's not just hilarious, it's awful and Jennifer must be stopped. But the scene was so powerful it was too much, but I'm looking forward to people being able to see it.

NP: You talk in terms of a director's cut, but I actually feel there should be a writer's cut because that's where the vision starts.

DC: You know, I think that's a cool attitude. Not a lot of people feel that way. Writer's are typically marginalized in Hollywood. I've been very lucky in that I've worked with a lot of supportive and sympathetic people, but most of the time nobody cares what the writer has to say.

NP: Well you're in a good position because you have such a marquee name. Maybe you could be the first writer to get a writer's cut DVD. I'd love to see the writer's cut of Juno, I'd love the see the writer's cut of Jennifer's Body.

DC: I've never even thought of that. That's a fascinating idea. Maybe I should try it.


Jennifer's Body hits theaters on September 18.