Diablo Cody, Hollywood’s unlikely new darling

America's warring presidential candidates could learn a thing or two from Diablo Cody, writer of the wildly successful indie film Juno, for which she's just been nominated for an Oscar.

Cody, a lavishly tattooed ex-stripper, phone sex worker and self-declared radical feminist, has managed to bridge the frontlines of America's raging culture war. She has fashioned a film which has not only charmed Hollywood liberals with its hip, in-your-face feistiness, but has won over conservative evangelicals in Middle America with what they see as its anti- abortion, pro-family message.

Juno is about a deliciously independent, fast-talking, 16-year-old girl called Juno McGuff, played by the young Canadian actress, Ellen Page.

Juno gets pregnant the first time she has sex but decides to give her baby up for adoption rather than have an abortion, a decision she takes after visiting a depressing abortion clinic where the terminally bored female receptionist prattles on about the smell of her boyfriend's penis and offers her a boysenberry-flavoured condom. The teenager flees.

Juno's decision has been applauded by conservative evangelicals unused to liking anything much that emanates from the Gomorrah they consider Hollywood to be.

"Pro-aborts will hate it," thrilled Jill Stanek, a leading anti- abortion campaigner, as the movie was released. "Juno is a great story that undermines almost all their talking points. The movie's ending goes almost as social conservatives would want it to go."

Although neither the filmmakers nor the distributor, Fox Searchlight, have touted the film's apparent anti-abortion message, perhaps for fear of upsetting pro-choice liberals also flocking to it, it's clear that that is why film is reaching rapturuous conservative audiences.

"Much of the film's popularity can be traced to audience demand in cities most Hollywood executives see only from their private jets," wrote the Los Angeles Times. "The word of mouth has been electric," said Gitesh Pandya, editor of BoxOfficeGuru.com.

Costing less than $15m to make, it should pass the $100m mark comfortably, especially after today's nominations for Best Picture, Actress, Director and Screenplay.

Oddly, the person who seems to be most puzzled that Juno has been espoused by conservative Middle America is 29-year-old Diablo Cody, Hollywood's new screenwriting darling, who is really called Brook Busey-Hunt but decided to keep the nom de plume she used when blogging about her life as stripper.

"I've had to field so many questions about the sinister pro-life agenda of Juno," she says. In fact, Juno's decision not to go through with the abortion was simply a narrative device so that Juno - and the audience - would get to meet the adoptive parents.

"Juno never moralises about the choice she makes. I'm pro-choice, so for me it was very important that the movie did not seem to have any kind of anti-choice agenda."

Don't tell Middle America. Nor mention that Cody's next film, a horror movie about a girl who eats boys. "It's Juno but with cannibalism and evisceration," says Cody. ·