Thursday, July 30, 2009
INTERVIEW SPOTLIGHT - Julie Powell, co-creator of the new film "Julie & Julia", opening on August 7 in the U.S. and Canada
Shadows And Light: Julie Powell has emerged triumphantly with smiles amidst life's doubts to become a best-selling author and cooking master. Her story is part of the recipe for the new film "Julie & Julia", which opens on August 7 in the U.S. and Canada. (Photo: Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com)
In 2002 Julie Powell was trapped in the middle of nowhere, but the cooking recipes of Julia Child rescued her, and passion and obsession reinvigorated her life
Shining Light, Superscribe And Super Cook-Inspired
By Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com SHARE
Thursday, July 30, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO
Thou must learn to smile in the face of adversity.
That line was one of the so-called Ten Commandments of Success by Dr. Benjamin Mays, a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, and writer and cooking maven Julie Powell is all smiles and energy as she discusses her work and evolution as a writer. Mired in mediocrity and a virtual standstill in 2002 in New York City following the previous September's terrorist attacks, Ms. Powell, an Austin, Texas native, was then working at the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation fielding complaints from irate New Yorkers and decided to pick up a signature book from cooking extraordinaire Julia Child entitled Mastering The Art Of French Of French Cooking. Ms. Powell started the "Julie/Julia Project" at the delicate age of 29 that same year and went on a mission to cook 524 of Ms. Child's recipes in a mere 365 days. With her husband's Eric's advice she started an online blog chronicling her travails on August 25, 2002.
With the blog an overnight success and the mission to cook up a storm accomplished, Julie Powell then wrote a book on the ups, downs and frustrations of life, love and cooking and has become a best-selling author and the basis for the new film "Julie & Julia", directed by Nora Ephron and starring Meryl Streep as the world-renowned cook Ms. Child, and Amy Adams, who plays Ms. Powell. (The film, released by Sony Pictures, had its premiere in Los Angeles on Monday and opens on August 7 in the U.S. and Canada.) Fame has not completely changed Ms. Powell, who remains a resident of the Big Apple in Long Island City, Queens with her high-school sweetheart husband, whose job is in the area.
If you read the just first few pages of her book Julie and Julia: My Year Of Cooking Dangerously, you get a clear picture of Ms. Powell's sharp wit, incisive commentary and analogies between cooking and sex. There's plenty of playful, cheeky observations but above all, love and a deep devotion to cooking.
Sitting in a suite here at the Ritz Carlton perched on a sofa embracing a cushion on a recent afternoon, Julie Powell, a cheery and upbeat presence, talks about what food means to her. "I think for me food has always been -- and a lot of people think it's comfort and it's family and it's community, sure . . . but food is sex. Food is -- I mean, what do you do every day of your life if you're not in some horrible situation? You sleep and you go to your bedroom and you don't have sex every day, usually. But you eat, you do eat, and it's this sensual thing you do everyday and if you make it sensual . . . if you immerse yourself in it, it is a pleasure that does bear a kinship to other physical pleasures."
To hear Ms. Powell describe food is to get a strong sense of her need to dig deep into what moves her and it is difficult to imagine just how distant her life was seven years ago from where it is today. "I was exhausted all the time. It was like -- my soul was being sucked through my eyeballs everyday at work. And I missed that engagement. And -- so that was why food became the obvious thing. I always liked to cook and I wanted to get elbow deep into it."
Writing comes to the cook/author as an organic, physical entity. And with a very entertaining blog ("What Could Happen?", started in August 2005), Ms. Powell is more than elbow deep into that. A quick check of a recent count of hits/visits shows over 63,000, which will only rise following the release of the film and the second book she has completed called Cleaving, a second memoir, about Ms. Powell learning to butcher at a butcher shop in upstate New York. Cleaving will be in U.S. bookstores this December, and will be available in the U.K. before then.
For Julie Powell parallels to the famous Julia Child were irresistible. (By the way, it should be noted that the new film is also based on Ms. Child's memoir My Life In France with Alex Prud'homme.) Ms. Child hadn't begun to cook in earnest until her mid-thirties. "As a nobody secretary at the age of 29 thinking 30 was the end of the road, that was obviously an encouraging thing," for the author, who observed "that Julia Child had to form herself and that was even a struggle for her."
Both Ms. Powell and Ms. Child enjoyed passionate marriages and at points in their lives despite the endless support of their loving and devoted husbands had something missing that needed to enervate their lives.
Food was that shared vehicle.
"She loved food, so that was her medium, but what she was really teaching people to do was to engage, to commit, to do something with rigor and dedication . . . I really thought of her as a feminist icon as much as she is a culinary one, you know, because she's this big, six-foot-two woman who . . . lived without fear. That's not to say she never had doubts. That's not to say she never got lost, but she was always on to the next thing. She never let anyone tell her what she could and could not do. And that's in that book [Mastering The Art Of French Cooking]. She never says that, but you read her recipes and you feel it."
Ms. Child, whom Ms. Powell noted inspired women everywhere, was born in Pasadena, California and died on August 13, 2004. The new film shows how one of those inspired women was Ms. Powell.
Growing up as a young girl in Austin, Julie Powell wanted to be an actress.
"I wanted to be an actor on the stage, not on film because I was still a snob," she jokes mildly. (The opportunity to ask Ms. Powell if she would have liked to play herself on the big screen in "Julie & Julia" goes begging.) "I took acting classes as a child. I was fairly seriously involved in high school theater . . . and majored in theater [at Amherst College.]" Ms. Powell revealed that the career aspect of acting was not really for her though she loved being on stage. For her, writing and acting cancelled each other out. "I didn't know where to concentrate my energies."
"I had pretty much given up on everything by the time I tried the [Julie/Julia] project."
Out of this realization came a stronger one about Ms. Powell's writing skills. "I do have a voice here as a writer that I can develop, and I think it is unique and it's mine. I'm not saying that I'm some great profound writer, but I have the beginnings of something I can work on and be proud of as really my own."
"Julie & Julia" opens in the U.S. and Canada on August 7. The film is released by Sony Pictures and stars Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Stanley Tucci and directed, written and co-produced by Nora Ephron.
Julie Powell's current blog: http://juliepowell.blogspot.com
Julie Powell's Julie/Julia Project Blog: http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html
"Julie & Julia" official film website: http://www.julieandjulia.com
Copyright 2009. Omar P.L. Moore. The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. All Rights Reserved. SHARE