There's probably no experience more alienating than fame, other than a terminal illness, where you actually find yourself in a situation that nobody around you can relate to.
— Diablo Cody
You know, I did not like being famous. It was a stressful and ugly time, and I'm glad it's over.
I just want to be able to keep my house and pay for my son's school tuition in Los Angeles.
I'm one of the people that were divorced by 30, which is apparently a growing group... Obviously it's something that affects you forever. It's going to be interesting to see in ten, twenty years what kind of lasting effect young divorce has on the people that are doing it because it's becoming more and more common.
People don't have these tidy little redemption arcs in reality the way they do in movies.
And I think I'm an adrenaline junkie, and there's nothing that will spike your adrenaline more than sitting in a theater and listen to an audience react to something you've written.
I wrote a screenplay for a 'Sweet Valley High' adaptation, and it's really amazing to me how many women who are my age have responded to the idea and are excited about the movie.
I want Maggie Gyllenhaal. I don't know why. I don't think she necessarily looks like me or acts like me, I just think she's a cool actress and she could play me, so there you go.
Everybody knows that I'm not a snob when it comes to pop culture, obviously. I love reality shows.
I had written the script for Juno and apparently Steven Spielberg had read it. I can't just call him Steven, that's weird... Mr. Spielberg had read it and he liked it. He asked me if I would write this television show for him and I said, 'Yeah!'
I actually have two children now, and sometimes I wonder if that's it. Because they do make writing and directing more complicated and more difficult, especially now that they're very young.
I'm glad that as a 33-year-old working mother, I can still choose to wear a Hello Kitty T-shirt or stay up late scrolling through the Twitter feed of my junior-high crush.
I am actually able to do other things. I'm not just this writer.
It doesn't matter if they're in front of the camera or behind the camera. I know women who are producers who are surviving on nothing but juice and almonds.
The best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are.
There's a weird cloud around you when you're recognizable. It was a brief window for me. I think you have to have a pathological need for attention of any type, negative or positive, to thrive in that kind of situation. And I only want compliments.
I spent a lot of time staring at the clock in school, so I have that kind of personality.
I think sometimes people really require the satisfaction of closure.
I just go about my life. I'm a mom, I drive an SUV, I go to the grocery store every day. I'm definitely not a celebrity. I always say that I'm a celebrity-adjacent.
It's possible that I've matured as a writer, and I hope I've matured emotionally, but I always find myself revisiting these adolescent scenes.
I've come to find more satisfaction and enjoyment in writing screenplays over the years because that's what I do primarily now.
I don't think coolness used to be such a commodity among adults. And now it is.
You know, it shouldn't just be about women as heroic figures overcoming things, it just needs to be about women in general getting the opportunity to play a multitude of roles, telling a multitude of stories - just to express human experience from a woman's perspective. I hope, someday, we can get to that point. I'm all about representation.
I'm not an especially highbrow person, but I have always loved small, quirky, edgy movies.
I've been so lucky - I worked with Jason Reitman twice, who has always been a really strong advocate for my voice, and has always really respected the scripts that I've brought him and is just the coolest.
I had the experience last year of directing my first feature while I had a 1-year-old son and while I was also pregnant, so I am now well aware of the difficulties women who are rearing children face when they're also trying to make headway in mainstream of film.
In the past, I'll admit, I've enjoyed being compared to the protagonists in my screenplays.
Honestly, this will never happen because she's so much classier than me, but I would love to work with Sofia Coppola.
I appreciate the positivity of those 'year of the woman' articles - it's good to get that energy out there - but at the same time, in Hollywood it's not happening yet.
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.
I think it's great when writers get recognition; it doesn't happen very often. I just don't want that writer to be me. Let it be Aaron Sorkin or, you know, somebody good.
I don't think I ever got the hang of the writers' room. I love collaborating with people, but I really do my best work alone, and I think I would want to - if I did something again, I think I'd want to take total ownership the way Aaron Sorkin or David Kelley does.
Unfortunately I don't live by a Target now, so I just go to a regular Starbucks as opposed to a Starbucks nested inside a Target, which is my ideal situation. That works out for me. I like that white noise, those interruptions, and the people around me.
People are more interested in being visible than they are in loving other people.
That's also why comedy and horror are my two favorite genres of film to write, because you get these outbursts of emotion from people, laughter and shock, and it's really thrilling, and I like to be thrilled.
I always say when you write a book, you're a 'one-man band.' Whereas, when you finish a screenplay, it's just a sketch.
I do not quote my own movies. I think I would be pretty insufferable if I did.
Somebody asked me earlier if I thought it was really important to tell stories about women's struggles. And I said yes, but at the same time, it's also important to tell stories about women's triumphs, women being slackers, women being criminals, women being heroes.
Put your blog out into the world and hope that your talent will speak for itself.
If being an attractive woman got you attention for directing, then the entire 'best director' category would be comprised of models. To me, that is just the most ludicrous connection that you could make.
I feel like I'm part of a generation of people who are stuck in the past and are really self-absorbed. I mean, we're actually taking pictures of ourselves and posting them on Facebook, and keeping in touch with people that should have been out of our lives 15 years ago.
I absolutely relate to being alone in squalor, trying to come up with something adequate. I relate to that, and I've been known to crawl out of bed and drink out of a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke.
The primary job for women in Hollywood is still super-attractive actress. That is the most high-profile women's job in Hollywood.
To enjoy being famous, you need to have a screw loose.
I have never been an ambitious person, and my participation in this industry is a fluke, but only male writers can afford to be coy and self-deprecating.
