Julie and Julia: From Blog to Movie

So, if a movie was made out of my blog, who would play me? Any suggestions?

If you said What’s Her Face, or That One Girl From That One Movie, or Nancy Kerrigan (who’s not even an actress, by the way, so please keep thinking) I would probably agree with you. Because no matter who would be the perfect Kim Tracy Prince, the likelihood of House of Prince becoming a movie is very, very slim.

That’s not even the first thing that I thought of when I saw Julie and Julia today with my mom. My first thought about the film was that I had read the book for book club last year, and besides the delectable beef bourguignon that our hostess made that night, the book was only worth a passable attempt at entertainment. As a blogger, I could instantly tell that it was a blog-turned-book. There wasn’t much of a plot aside from the I’ll Try This For a Year and See What Happens device which, as I’ve said before, I’m so over already. As with Under a Tuscan Sun, the food language was pretty yummy, but there wasn’t much else there.

Overall, the movie just made me want more of Meryl Streep as Julia Child. And with Stanley Tucci as her dapper straight man, her scenes were even more entertaining. She brought a childlike gusto to every word she uttered. Nothing was mundane, ordinary, or overused. The word “butter” in itself was like a discovery falling from her lips. The scene that depicted lunch with Julia’s sister Dorothy upon her arrival to France made me wish I was there during its actual filming, the actors seemed to be having so much fun.

In contrast, Julie Powell’s arc was boring, just like it was in the book, and I say this with no small amount of jealousy, but a big heaping wooden spoonful of it. Of course as a blogger I would love to have someone turn this amorphous mass of my thoughts into a book and then a movie. But as a reader and moviegoer, I would hope that there would be a more definable character arc, a less annoying lesson, (“get up, get up and do something” seemed to be the case here) and some actual conflict between the main characters. “You’re so self-involved!” cried her husband. “Yeah, so?!” cried Julie. And he storms off and ponders her and reads her blog and comes back all cheerful and ready to eat and toast her with tears in his eyes. As if.

Aside from its missteps as a movie, this story moved me because of what it had to say to me about blogging. (Incidentally, I happened to wear my “Born To Blog” t-shirt today, and that was not at all planned.) (No, I’m serious.) First, I watched Amy Adams in the blogging scenes, and as we all know the actual action of blogging is as cinematically interesting as golf: a sweaty woman sitting at her computer wearing pajamas and drinking orange juice and typing while she bites her lip and talks to herself does not strike me as action-packed or riveting in any way. Despite this, I was moved. Why? Because she looked like she was really enjoying herself.

That idea spoke to me because with all the business of blogging that I pile onto my plate I risk losing my love of the idea itself. I like writing, I like that you read it, I like shoving it into the faces of my Twitter followers and Facebook friends and saying “LOOK AT WHAT I WROTE ISN’T IT AWESOME PLEASE LOVE ME.” But, when every single day I have this thought “Ugh, I’m so behind on my blogging,” it just isn’t fun anymore. And in that dark movie theater with the old ladies in front of us and the popcorn growing cold under my fingers, I resolved to remedy that. Just sitting here typing, I’m already feeling better.

Also, this Julie Powell, according to the movie at least, started her blog in 2oo2, two years before I started mine, when blogs were relatively new and the cell phones used by Julie’s impossibly successful 30-year-old girlfriends were very large and people still used PDA’s. Julie’s process of learning about what a blog is and creating hers on Salon.com (was this actually possible then?) was very expository in the film, and I found myself thinking that at the very least the movie can, if nothing else, educate a wider audience about what a blog is. Because believe it or not, there are still people in the world who say to me “What is a blog, anyway?”

And then I thought about how far blogs have come despite the stubborn few who refuse to acknowledge their existence, and about the mommy bloggers and all the hype and controversy surrounding us lately. And how the original group of really good writers who had mommy blogs have risen to the surface of the soup and have been skimmed off by book deals and lucrative ad contracts and writing assignments at outlets that pay a decent fee. And how those writers have left a void where other women have stepped in, taking up the mantle of “mommy blogger” with their incessant product reviews and changed what the label means. And how those good writers who have been left behind with our personal blogs where we continue to blog about parenting and sometimes throw in a review* but barely have enough time (“Where do you find the time?!”) are reclaiming the title and I am proud to count myself in that group and stand up and say

I AM A MOMMY BLOGGER

without irony or shame or a wry face and a rolling of my eyes. Because dammit, I started blogging because I became a mother, but the format of blogging gave me a voice. And that is what I love and that is what I am going to continue to do.

Even if it never becomes a movie starring Lauren Graham.**

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*I don’t know who brought this up to me recently, maybe it was actually Stewart, but someone said “how is mommy blogger free product different than product placement in the movies and TV?” And guess what I saw in Julie and Julia? Blockbuster, Tums, The New York Times, Salon, Le Creuset, and more that I can’t remember.

**I picked her because she’s the one I get most frequently and the one I like the best. I looked for a bad picture of her to approximate what she’d look like if she played me but apparently a bad picture of her doesn’t exist, or at least she has a very good team of Photo Nazis who scour the internet and make sure that such a travesty never sees the light of broadband. In any case, it’s my fantasy, so don’t judge.