April 10, 2008

Powell '95 is back (not that she ever left)

We’ll start with the note in Variety (from last October) that Nora Ephron would direct and Meryl Streep play Julia Child in Julie & Julia, a film based on the book by Julie Powell ‘95, which won the first “Blooker Prize” back in 2006.

From there, progress to the article by Michael Cieply in yesterday’s New York Times noting Julie & Julia’s production as part of the “next generation of chick flicks.” The article, “Wary Hollywood Plans More Chick Flicks (Hoping to Lure the Guys)”, calls the film:

…a complex exercise, … based on both the life of the cooking enthusiast Julia Child and the 2005 book of the same title by Julie Powell, who, stuck in place as an office temp as she approached 30, spent a year whipping up every recipe in Ms. Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”

In fact, [the film is] rooted in a phenomenon — widely styled “chick lit” — that has swept the publishing world in the last decade. The books are written for, and mostly by, professional women in their 20s. The covers are often bright and fluffy, with amusing illustrations. And narrative is often rooted in the first person singular.

And, to top off the tour, Julie’s own reaction to the NYT piece, which, along with some pointed criticisms of both the label “chick lit” and the accompanying condescending tone, takes issue with the Times’ characterization of Child:

COOKING ENTHUSIAST?!!! Pardon my french, but what the F——?!

Parker Morse '96 | April 10, 2008 08:51 PM | Alumni

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