After I watched "Julie & Julia" yesterday, I started thinking about the scene near the end where Julie (Amy Adams) got the telephone call from the reporter telling her what Julia Child said. I wanted to know if there was more to it so I did a little research (yeah, I know I'm starting to sound like Hermione) and found out that Julia Child (as well as quite a lot of readers of her blog and book) didn't find Julie as charming as she was shown in the movie. Many also thought she had created the blog as some sort of stunt to get some attention and nothing more.
According to Julia Child's editor Judith Jones, this is how Julia really thought:
Flinging around four-letter words when cooking isn't attractive, to me or Julia. She didn't want to endorse it. What came through on the blog was somebody who was doing it almost for the sake of a stunt. She would never really describe the end results, how delicious it was, and what she learned. Julia didn’t like what she called 'the flimsies.' She didn't suffer fools, if you know what I mean.
I think a lot of the credit for making "Julie & Julia" such an amazing film should go to Nora Ephron. She took, what many reviewers are saying was a shallow and self-centered book and transformed it into movie gold. Since I have not read the book "Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously" by Julie Powell, I can't honestly give my opinion of it. I only wanted to know more about Mrs. Child's reaction.
(quote source: "Mastering the Art of French Cooking Reaches Young Readers Again" by Lynn Andriani from Publishers Weekly (July 20, 2009))
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