As a self-employed cookbook indexer I felt obligated to see the movie, Julie & Julia, even though I never cared for Julia Child or French cooking. I mean, Meryl Streep is wonderful, isn’t she?
When the movie suddenly introduced Irma S. Rombauer, author of The Joy of Cooking, I was as stunned and in awe as Julia was. Irma has long been my heroine for producing the culmination of, and antidote to, all those syrupy Betty Crocker-type cookbooks I grew up with. Like Julia in the movie, I listened to Irma’s litany of big-publisher perfidy with an equal amount of growing horror.
When Irma concluded her ‘plaint by wailing about the ineptness of her publisher’s indexer in putting “Crispy Chicken” under “D” for “Drumstick” rather than “C,” I probably had the biggest smile in the audience.
That said, it’s no secret that audiences of the movie loved the “Julia part” and hated the “Julie part” of the movie. No surprise! A/B structures are fine for writing and songs, but nearly impossible to pull off in a feature-length film.
We were supposed to imagine that the lives of the two women whose names both start with “J” were parallel with each other. That premise was ridiculous! For me the Irma scene was not only a highlight of the movie; it was a reality check about publishing that made the Julie part of the movie not work at all.
After Irma’s litany, any intelligent viewer probably wondered for a second why Julia and her partners persisted in finding a publisher. The answer is, that unless you had a fortune or family connections, like the early twentieth century American poets Gertrude Stein or Amy Lowell, you had to go out and get a big publisher to manufacture and sell your book in Julia’s day.
Julia’s saga in finding a publisher was one most of us over thirty who call ourselves writers have been through in one way or another. During the movie I even had a palpable memory of exactly what Julia was “feeling” when she bundled up her carbon-copied typewritten manuscript to send out to a publisher. But times have changed, and in more ways than one. Many of us no longer sign with, or even seek out, traditional publishers.
Julie was among that number. Julie hadn’t even finished her “book,” whatever it was about, let alone tried to find a publisher or dealt with one, when she began her blog. Her project really wasn’t about writing as much as it was about being enough of a “foodie” to cook every one of Julia’s recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. For that I honor her cooking spirit.
But I can’t honor the Hollywood studio and scriptwriters who turned Julie’s story into a complete fairy tale of becoming a “real” writer with a big book and movie contract. That’s an increasingly elusive happy ending in this century. Fewer authors are picked up by big publishing houses than ever before, and the average total royalties for a book is still around $3,000.
Unlike the beginning of blogging, today a typical self-publisher with a blog still has to take a number of steps to promote her/his book well enough to get a book contract, if that is their intention. Julie’s path to fame, as the movie portrayed it, was a complete fluke, or worse yet, possibly a fake that Hollywood promulgated for its own profit.
In the movie we hear how much Julia got as an advance, and we know from the context it was piddly. But not a word is peeped on what Julie was paid for her book, just a coy intimation of more money than she had. Movie rights aren’t even given a mention.
Did the real Julie get the millions of dollars that the fictional Julie’s boring, stressed-out peers at Cobb Salad lunches got from their work? Given the statistics on writers’ royalties–doubt it!
Julia’s past will shine like a star for a long time. I’ll never love her like I love Irma for her classic Joy of Cooking. (Warts and all, Joy still has the most well-organized, comprehensive, cookbook index I’ve seen—but yes, “Crispy Chicken” is a bit difficult to find…) Still, I respect Julia Child a lot more than I did before seeing this movie.
But Julie? Julie’s recipe for success isn’t one that most writers will be able to follow. More telling, even for her in this movie, it fell flat at the end. Who could believe in the bittersweet ending of this movie? No one with an ounce of brains—poached, scrambled, or sautéed!
If you’re a self-publisher, or a moviemaker, or a small business owner who works with creative people, or any kind of creator, or a community-media organization, be sure to check out David Mathison’s book, Be The Media. You’ll find a lot more to excite you in David’s stories about Internet entrepreneurs than in Julie’s story.
Copyright © 2009 Nancy K. Humphreys
http://www.wordmapsindexing.com “The Best Index for Your Book”
2 comments ↓
I think this is the most interesting review I have read of the movie. I too go to any movie that includes Meryl Streep! I do, however, admire Julia Child for managing to create a career for herself in a time when lots of women were self-medicating with drugs or alcohol because they were so bored trapped in suburbia. Besides, she was so clearly not afraid to be exactly who she was, including over 6 feet tall and loud, that even if I would not, perhaps, like her in person, I have to admire her for being absolutely who she is.
Anyway, it was a fun movie, even with Julie whining. It is too bad, really, because I think Amy Adams is pretty good. According to the book/blog Adam’s portrayal of Julie was accurate, which is what an actor is supposed to do I guess.
The whole point of the movie was to celebrate Julia Child’s work. What a clever twist to present it in this fashion. Imitation is the highest form of praise, which even Julia seemed incapable of appreciating from her high perch(although imitation was the basis of her entire life’s enterprise. Nevertheless, our heroine, real life to boot, must continue to get brow beat into submission well beyond her ten minutes of fame.