Hollywood Tales
“I’ve always written for my own edification and for fun but I have this fear of rejection so I spent my entire life being a writer who…
“I’ve always written for my own edification and for fun but I have this fear of rejection so I spent my entire life being a writer who didn’t get published. For that reason, I’ve never received a rejection letter in my life because that terror would just grip me. I didn’t even write for the school paper. So, when the internet publishing revolution came about it was perfect for me, I could write every day, put it out there and not have to worry about an editor telling me I wasn’t good enough. It was very freeing. I started blogging every day and when I started blogging about stripping and the sex industry, suddenly surprise surprise I got a huge audience! For some reason people on the internet are interested in sex — who knew that?! My blog traffic went through the roof and one day I got an email from this guy who said he was a big fan of my blog and he was also a producer in Hollywood and he said I think you should try writing a movie. The odds of writing a screenplay and having it produced are daunting as it’s a very competitive field and as I’ve said, competition doesn’t appeal to me, nor does rejection. I’m very unambitious and I want to live in a bubble! So I said no but he hounded me for a bit and I just said ‘whatever’, because I had free time on my hands. I hit upon the idea for Juno. It didn’t take me very long. I don’t think writing movies is hard — when I hear people have spent years nursing a single script I can’t imagine what their day looks like! I wrote it and Mason (Novick) the producer said ‘Right — let’s take it out there and see what people think’. It was received very warmly from the beginning and we were very surprised and we continue to be surprised every day. It’s been a very crazy situation.”
— Diablo Cody
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