Flicked Off: "Julie and Julia"
Last night, at Castle Clinton, I saw a bit of John Kelly performing as Joni Mitchell, a trick he rarely does these days. This weekend, I am thinking about attending an exhibition called "Maurizio Cattelan is Dead: Life and Work, 1960 – 2009," a fake retrospective exhibition of a non-deceased conceptual artist. And this week I went to see Julie and Julia, a movie about a sad young girl desperately casting about among substantial, acclaimed, meaningful figures of the past for a structure to lend meaning to her meaningless, inward-looking, self-obsessed, awful, drab, over-analyzed life.
There are many reasons on which I could hang the simulacra culture problem that besets young and less-young people, and their creations, today. It is related to the hero worship/celebrity industry of our time. But I think, for first causes, that I'd go with "laziness." Or "bad education." Or I don't know, "capitalism"! "The cost of living" maybe? My jury is out. All of the above?
I do not know Julie Powell! I have read very little of Julie Powell. I do know that her current blog couldn't be less interesting. Mostly it is about how she does not read things on the Internet that are by "haters." And now she goes to premieres, and she brings back no stories of any actual meaning from them. As near as I can tell, she's sort of barely wrestling with the issues of being a public person and a memoirist and a blogger in the least effectual, least articulated, least meaningful way. She is failing at this task of living in the modern age, having retreated to this idealized past, where meaning existed, where people—Julia Child—did substantial, meaningful, life-changing things, with all the fuss and muss (that is so similar to our own) obscured by history.
One of the nice gifts of the movie is that it reminds us that it took the better part of a decade for Julia Child to ponderously work out her cookbook. That she worked in a weird isolation from the means of distribution—who would publish her cookbook? She had no idea! Who these days spends a decade making something new and crazy that might never see the light of day? What a turn-off. What a pain.
In the fictional depiction of food blogger and now relationship memoirist Real Julie Powell, who blog-cooked her way through Julia Child in a year, Screenplay Julie Powell was "drowning" and found a project of attachment to a substantial Figure of Renown, who "saved her." How could such a thing happen? Here was a girl with one half-finished novel, with a truly shitty job. And she made something, if a blog can be anything. She sure didn't make anything new, but the simulacrum was enough. But then, well: making the new? Who among us is.
Where once we had to hitch our wagons to stars, now we just give our Master Card number to the Star Registry.
My new disco rock project I'm working on is revolutionary. Oh wait. But it's fun to listen to if you're trashed. Isn't that enough?
The original blog's idea of a single-ish NYC woman with a small kitchen cooking through "Mastering…" was genius. Execution was not so genius. But then Nora Ephron grafting the partial bio of Child onto this non-story story, well that just leaves it floating out there, clouds of meringue.
The Julia Child part of the movie was much better. Too bad it could not have been just about her life.
"Who these days spends a decade making something new and crazy that might never see the light of day?"
Hi!
(Sorta.)
The real problem here is that Nora Ephron is an overrated hack who's needlessly idolized by the media and various literary/intellectual/media opinion-makers. And so she keeps getting work.
Who would expect that the writer/director of such brilliant, insightful films such as You've Got Mail! and Bewitched and Sleepless in Seattle would do justice to not one but two bildungsromans in the same film?
She inflicted Meg Ryan on a helpless world. Hasn't she done enough damage already?
Hater.
I'll hate what you're hating.
Heh. Hey lady the v on yer keyboard don't woik … And me too and can I even have seconds of what you're hating?
Who is making the new?
New is the enemy.
New could be new!
Different, scary, unusual, unexpected….horrors!
Instead even the actors are playing themselves now. Charlyne Yi, Paul Giamatti, the cast of Seinfeld reuniting for Larry David. Chris Freakin' Kattan! When Malkovich did it, it was witty and wry…but now you're right..it's becoming more than little lazy.
Eventually all the actors will be playing versions of themselves and the entertainment world will collapse into a postmodern blackhole.
And maybe THEN, we'll get something new.
Funny – just last weekend I was looking at John Kelly's book and telling a friend how brilliant he is.