Julie & Julia - and blogging


It's difficult not be intrigued about a movie about a blogger. Blog. Book contract. Movie. It piques your interest. Especially if you are a blogger. Doubly intriguing if the movie is written by your (imaginary) best friend, Nora Ephron.

In the last couple of weeks I've re-read Ms. Ephron's Heartburn and read Julie Powell's Julie & Julia and Julia Child's My Year in France. Maybe all books, when you come right down to it, are about transitions. If your story arcs, after all, something must happen. Something changes. And you work from there. Your husband cheats while you're pregnant. Or you can't get pregnant. Or you move to France. Or Queens.

And you stand in front of the mirror, real or figurative, and you try to sort out how to be yourself now. And how to be yourself next. In these books, and in this movie, we get to watch stories of women creating themselves. Successfully. In Julie Powell's case, with a blog. In her book Ms. Powell says of the word blog, "Well, it is sort of a silly word, I guess." I wholeheartedly agree.

A silly word, but not a silly concept especially as it can be the way from there to here. It's a very good movie. There are many very memorable Ephron moments that I will not spell out here. It is not a romantic comedy. It is a movie that has as its backdrop two stories about marriage. Ephron said in Heartburn something like, "once you're married nothing really happens." (I can't find the exact quote because I have a library book and I can't turn down the pages of a library book.) Which in a lot of ways is true. And the main character, Rachel, is a cook book author who has her own show, but says something like, "people say I write cook books, but they are not really about cooking." The same sentiment can be applied to My Life in France and Julie & Julia. They are about cooks, but not really about cooking. They are about finding the thing that makes your soul sing.

Julie & Julia opens tomorrow.


All images courtesy of Sony Pictures; photography by Jonathan Wenk except for final image which is by David Giesbrecht.

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