Diablo Cody
After completion of her book, Cody was encouraged by Mason Novick to write her first screenplay. Within months she wrote "Juno", a coming-of-age story about a teenager's unplanned pregnancy. The Jason Reitman-directed comedy stars Ellen Page and Michael Cera.
Bill Cody (actor)
Late in 1934, producer Ray Kirkwood signed Cody to a contract, to make a series of cowboy thrillers for release through Spectrum Pictures. Kirkwood, a native of Pennsylvania who had once been a production manager for Thomas Ince and later a film distributor in South America, turned producer with the release of "Frontier Days", a lively and entertaining feature which opened to exceptionally good reviews. Cody and his pinto, Chico, were joined by leading lady Ada Ince, silent film veterans Franklyn Farnum and William Desmond, one-time leading man Wheeler Oakman, and Cody's 9-year-old son, billed simply as "Billy, Jr.". As the first father-and-son team starring together in B Westerns, both Cody, Sr. and Billy showed considerable promise in the first film of the series. It was followed by "Six Gun Justice", "The Cyclone Ranger" (a tale of mistaken identity from the pen of prolific western writer Oliver Drake), "The Texas Rambler" (another Oliver Drake screenplay, this one with a strong element of mystery), and "The Vanishing Riders" (in which Cody and his son masquerade as ghosts to demoralize a gang of despicable, superstitious rustlers). The Codys went on tour with a wild west show and circus. When they returned to Hollywood, Kirkwood – experiencing a financial squeeze – replaced writer Drake with his own wife, Zara Tazil, who wrote the remaining screenplays for the series. Director J. P. McCarthy succeeded in getting from Cody one of his best performances in "The Lawless Border", featuring Molly O'Day as leading lady. "Blazing Justice" and "Outlaws of the Range" concluded the Spectrum series on a pleasant but less-ambitious note.