Just saw Julie and Julia, and there’s a scene in which Julie Powell (the woman who emulated Julia Child for her blog) has a bit of an existential crisis when she learns secondhand from a reporter that Julia Child was not in the least bit amused at Julie’s blog.
This seems pulled out of left field to me. First of all, Mrs. Child was over 90 at the time; I doubt she even knew what a blog was. Second, everything I’ve read about Mrs. Child says that she was gracious and kind in the extreme; that she would publicly express disdain for someone who basically worshipped her would seem out of character.
Also, was her (Julia Child’s) husband actually called to testify before the McCarthy Commission, or was this just added for dramatic effect?
That doesn’t really sound like a dis to me, in that it’s quite true. She wasn’t really being cruel, just honest; any cook would attest to that. Don’t forget that Julia Child was no Rachel Ray. She could actually cook.
I saw the movie, and quite enjoyed it, but I could totally see why Julia Child might not be amused or flattered by the blog. I just now, for the first time went through bits of the original blog, and I could totally understand her assessment of “she doesn’t seem very serious, does she?” Also, even though I have been known to pepper my prose with profanities as punctuation, Julie Powell doesn’t seem to be able to get through a single blog post without “fucks” being strewn about all over the place. I mean, yeah, I suppose that’s her “voice,” but it does get annoying.
So she didn’t like the blue language, she thought it was a stunt and she didn’t think Powell was taking the cooking seriously. I can also see why it would bother her that Powell didn’t bother to describe the results.
Also, Child didn’t say anything publicly, she confided privately in a reporter and asked him not to quote her.
The blog is rather frivolous and self-absorbed.
Yes. That was taken from Julia Child’s autobigraphy, My Life in France. Paul Child really was called back to Washington DC and interrogated by the McCarthy Commission, exonerated and promoted.
Appropos of nothing, I found Julie and Julia rather frustrating to watch. All of the Julia Child material is terrific. Streep and Tucci are teriffic. That stuff is great. The Amy Adams sections, though, are complete crap and didn’t deserve to be a movie. The movie just should have been about Julia Child and to hell with that blogger who never says or does a single interesting thing in the whole movie (I couldn’t stand her husband either).
It was a stunt. Julie Powell doesn’t even cook French food anymore. She’s currently on a “butcher” kick. Learning to butcher meat. Another gimmick for another book. http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2009-11-24-julia-powell-cleaving_N.htm
I’ve read the blog. She never seemed interested in learning from the experience. There was this weird single-minded approach of cooking one recipe a day. If it failed, she didn’t stop, and figure out why.
These are the things that bothered me about the blog, too. The self-absorption, the language (I’m no prude, but, c’mon lady), and what seemed like a complete disregard towards finding out why she failed at things when she did.
I’ll agree with this, for sure. I thoroughly enjoyed the Julia segments, didn’t really care for the Julie segments. Streep was so completely Julia Child that I forgot she was Streep. I like Amy Adams, but the Julie Powell character (as opposed to the real Julie Powell, whom I’m not sure how much of got into the movie) was…irritating. At best.
And the movie itself contrasts the two to pretty much the same results as Child herself is quoted as noting. When Child had that execrable first performance chopping onions, she bought pounds of them, took them home, and chopped for hours just to perfect her technique. Powell was so focused on getting through Child’s book in a year that she didn’t even stop to figure out what she’d done wrong when she messed up a recipe. You don’t get through the Cordon Bleu by shrugging your shoulders and putting your failures down the memory hole.
To be fair, I think the film may have overstated the “dis.” The reporter said “…she was quite a pill about it,” at least in the movie script. What he (and Julia Child) actually said IRL has been revealed upthread.
I guess everyone’s watching it on cable at the same time.
Yeah, I thought the Julia parts were much better than the Julie parts. Th latter was waaaaaaaay too self-absorbed for my tastes. And the hero worship was a little creepy. But I can’t say I’m buying that Julia’s marriage was so perfect. If it was, it doesn’t make for good viewing. Streep is so good, though, that it’s fun to watch her act no matter what.
My guess is that Julia didn’t write her book with career women in mind. Cooking a fancy french meal every day after work is not a recipe for a relaxing life. And what’s so intimidating about de-boning a duck?
I didn’t post this before, but I scanned through the August 2003 blog entries, and counted 71 occurrences of the string “fuck” in 23 blog entries. (I didn’t bother looking for any other words.) One single post accounted for 16 of these entries, and another 10. I think there were a total of 6 or 7 posts of those 23 that did not contain the word.
Of course it was a stunt. If the stunt is interesting, it doesn’t really matter that it’s a stunt. (To me, Powell’s stunt does not sound interesting at all and neither does a movie based on a blog about a cookbook.) This is also a stunt. If I had more free time I’d read Lawrence’s blog every day for a year and blog about that. I think that would complete some kind of cycle.
