Julie & Julia with Summer Farah

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello listeners, big announcement. We have officially added the Dublin
show to our Shrek Tannic tour, so come see us
in Dublin on May twenty ninth at the Irish Film Institute.
We are covering Titanic and we are so excited to
be able to finally confirm and announce that show, so
please come to it. And then, speaking of Dublin, I

(00:23):
am putting on a stand up comedy show in Dublin
on my birthday on May seventeenth at Hysteria Comedy Club.
There are going to be some amazing local comedians on
the lineup, and then I'll be doing a longer stand
up set, so please come to that as well. It's
my birthday, so you kind of have to be there.

(00:45):
And then we'll all go out for a little birthday
pint at a birthday pub after the show. It's gonna
be so much fun. And then tickets are of course
still available for the rest of the tour. The two
shows in London on May twenty second, the show show
in Oxford as a part of the Saint Audio Podcast
Festival on May twenty fourth, the show in Edinburgh on

(01:07):
May twenty sixth, and the show in Manchester on May
twenty eighth, and then again Dublin on May twenty ninth.
All of the ticket links for all of these shows
can be found at link tree slash Bechdel Cast. We're
so excited and we can't wait to see you there.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
On the Bechde Cast, the questions asked if movies have
women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zephim fast
start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Bojo Bojo, bonapadie.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Oh my god, this movie is so silly. I think
my favorite part in the movie is when Jane Lynch
and Meryl Streeper are just yelling in muppet voices for
like twenty seconds and they're.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Like, whooooooo.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
You're like that is sort of like the experience of
having a sibling, but just like on a noise strictly
noise level. I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, I love their sister relationship.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Can you imagine how thrilled Jane Lynch must be every
time they're making a movie about a woman that's sticks
to like She's like, I'm in a cast. Done. Yeah,
you can't not put her in a movie that requires
there's So, okay, let's can we start. I'm just excited.
Name's chef Jamie.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Oh, and my name is Chef Caitlin. And this is
the Bechdel cast. Although so we get this sent to
us a lot where people are like, if one something
something cooking ingredient speaks to another blah blah blah, but
then it passes the Bechamel test.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
What maybe I don't read the messages we get.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
I don't know if I'm saying it correctly. Bechamel sauce
question mark.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Is a thing, right, Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
And there's this like I don't know meme where people
are like if one something or other talks to another
something other because bechamel looks very close to Bechdel when
it's spelled out just a few extra letters, so people
are like ha ha ha. And so I feel like
this episode, this movie is the most relevant episode to

(03:22):
bring that up on.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
It's true, we did it, we did it.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Do I know what bechamel sauce is or what any
of the ingredients are? Absolutely not?

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Wait, what's your not to be? Like first day of college?
But like, what's your favorite food? What's your favorite food?
Ice breaker time?

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Oh my gosh, I don't even know how to answer
that question. I love food, though I eat it every day.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
I'm realizing I don't think I know the answer to either.
I think obviously hot dogs hot dog from Waltz. But
I think all So is the Philadelphia role the least
respected sushi role because it's my favorite. I feel like
sushi heads are like, sure, you know, but I don't know.
I might be projecting.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
I mean, it's very tasty, but I feel like it
might be like a very like American eyed bastardized.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Kind of for babies. A little bit could be well,
I like it, Wait what's in it?

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Salmon, cucumber and cream cheese?

Speaker 4 (04:26):
Okay, yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
The cream cheese. I think the cream cheese is where
they're like, do you really need it? And like I
need it badly. It's important.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
I want my sushi to taste like a bagel.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Anyway, So yeah, I don't know. I mean, I love food.
Indian cuisine is probably my top, but also I loved
Taigh food, and also I love sushi, and also I
love Mexican food, and I love Peruvian food, and I
love French food, and I love Brazil. I like basically
every food.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
Wow, I always forget until I rewatch this movie what
we mean when we say French food. So that's okay. Anyways,
great opening to the episode. This is the Bechdel Cast,
where we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional
feminist lens. But Caitlin, we don't know what the Bechamel
test is because we have unrefined palettes. But what's the

(05:17):
Bechtel test?

Speaker 1 (05:18):
The Bechdel test is a media metric commonly called the
Bechdel Wallace test because it was sort of co created
by Allison Bechdel and Liz Wallace, and it is a
media metric that has many different versions. The one that
we use is do two characters of a marginalized gender?

(05:39):
Do they have names? Do they speak to each other?
And is the conversation about something other than a man?
And then a little caveat that we like to add,
is is it a narratively relevant conversation or is it
kind of throwaway dialogue? So that is the Bechdel test,
the Bechamel test, We don't know, but yeah, let's introduce

(06:03):
our guests. Yeah, we're so excited to have her. She
is a Palestinian American poet and author of the book
I Could Die Today and Live Again with Game Over Books.
It just came out. It's Summer, Farrah.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
Hello, welcome, Thank you for having me. I'm so excited
to talk about this movie.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Oh my gosh, we're so excited. What is your relationship
with this movie?

Speaker 3 (06:29):
To Julie, to Julia? Also, we're covering Julia and Julia.
Have we said that yet?

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, probably didn't say it recovering Julia.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
So yeah, Summer, was your history with this movie or
to either of the food people women in it? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (06:45):
So I did not say this when it came out
in theaters, but I think my family rented it on
DVD as soon as it did come out, and basically
since then, I don't know. I think that was like
twenty ten. Maybe it was on the DVD. I've it
every year since. It is my biggest comfort movie, and

(07:06):
it also has shaped a lot of like it was
my first exposure to food writing, I think, and like
understanding food writing is something that people do and care about.
And I mean, I'm not a food writer, but I
am a poet who writes a lot about food. Both
in my poetry and in my critical work on poetry,

(07:27):
I look at food as image and motif, and I
think cooking and the kind of culinary stuff is very
important to like my identity formation as a Palestinian, very
like kind of typical daughter of immigrants, like my mom
cooks food for our culture, and those are the only
words I know in Arabic kind of things. But yeah,

(07:50):
and I think a lot of this movie kind of
made me start thinking about that critically and like, oh, well,
this is actually something that could be important out side
of the home, in the kitchen, And then I think
later now when I watch it, I think about parasocial relationships.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yes, yes, it's a movie.

Speaker 4 (08:12):
About parasocial relationships and how they're good.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
I don't know, to be determined.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah, well, if we're going to figure it out today. Yeah, wait,
so we just get to ask you what is your
favorite food?

Speaker 4 (08:27):
Oh yeah, oh goshm okay, top of my head, shishbrook,
which is like lamb dumplings cooked in yogurt broth, is
my favorite food. It is it's not that labor intensive,
but it's more labor intensive than like other things, because
you gotta like make the little dumplings and fill them.

(08:47):
But it's so good. The broth is like with garlic
and lemon and mint, and it is my favorite food
in the world.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
God, that sounds incredible.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
And most of the time our restaurants do not have it,
and so it's very much a thing that I only
have at home. But yeah, and so now I write
a lot of poems about parasocial relationships because I want
to recover from them, and so this movie is like,
it's got everything for me.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Nice Jamie, What is your relationship with the movie?

Speaker 3 (09:17):
I saw this movie when it came out. I don't
remember if it was in theaters or shortly after, but
this was a movie I definitely saw when it came out.
I was sort of wondering, I think that they're like
on the rewatch because I haven't seen this movie in years,
but I think I have seen it like four or
five times now. It's a fun movie to have on

(09:38):
and I was wondering, I'm like, is this the viewing
that Julie is gonna win me over? And I also
like want to be careful to separate real life Julie
from movie Julie. And this was not the time I
feel like since I saw this movie for the first time,
I was just like, Wow, this Adam's story keeps interrupting

(10:02):
this Meryl Streep story that I'm way more interested in.
And yeah, I still honestly do sort of feel that way.
Every time they cut back to Amy Adams in that
goddamn wig, I'm like, here we go and the wig
is I have questions about the wig that we need
to talk about the Wig. However, I really like this movie.

(10:23):
I think, especially talking about it in the context of
this show, there's a ton to talk about. I'm really
interested in Julia Child's life. I couldn't get through. Did
either of you give the new HBO series from last
year a try?

Speaker 4 (10:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah, I thought it was weird, and.

Speaker 4 (10:42):
Well, we can talk about it later if it's not.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
I mean, like, watching that make me appreciate Julia and
Julia Moore because ultimately we got Meryl Streep playing Julia
Child like that feels like a victory in and of itself.
And this is Nora Frown's final movie, and I think,
like Norah f on Is, I don't know, like so
many themes from her work and her writing are coming

(11:05):
together in this movie. Whether I like Julie or Not,
where it's like women turning their lives around and women
connecting with food and the cities they live in, and
you know, very little diversity, just like things that are
inherent to the Nora Efron canon. And I love nor
ef I especially, I think more so than any of

(11:26):
her movies. I really love her essay collections the most.
Everyone should listen to a Nora Efron audio book. They're
very soothing. But yeah, my issues with this movie have
been very consistent, but I think they are really fun
to talk about because you get to be like, you're
never gonna believe what Amy Adams character talks about all
day at work, and it is nine to eleven. You

(11:49):
don't expect nine to eleven to be such a major
plot point in the Julia Child movie, but that's why
this movie's built different. Caitlin, what's your history with this movie?

Speaker 1 (12:01):
I will tell you in a second, but first I
looked up Bechamel sauce. Oh my god, I'm gonna tell
you what it is in my finest Julie Child impression.
Bechamel sauce is one of the mother sauces of French cuisine.
This sauce is made from a white roue and milk

(12:22):
seasoned with ground nutmeg. The main ingredients are butter, flour
and milk. The end. That's what I pulled from Wikipia.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
That was really good.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
We're standing and cheering. That's pretty good.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
My relationship with this movie, I had seen it once before,
not long after it came out, and I was like, wow,
I like Meryl Streep.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
You're also part of the movie Julie Hater Patrol.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
Well, sorry if this is blasphemy, but I've never been
a fan of Amy Adams. I find her a bit
irritating most roles she's in.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Sorry, everyone really fucked up to say.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
I can't help it.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
We've done a whole Amy Adams months on the Patreon
and we've never talked about this.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Wait did we?

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, we did Amy Adams. She can do it all month?

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Oh whoa wait?

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Okay, arrival and enchanted because she can do it all.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah. I guess I was just like holding my tongue
because I was like.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
This is shocking to me. This was like two years ago.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, I remember now, but yeah, I don't know. I've
always found her a bit I don't know, just not
for me, not for me.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Look, it's okay, speaker truth, thank you.

Speaker 4 (13:41):
Really brave to come forward with.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
That, honestly, really brave because Amy Adams fans don't fuck around.
There's like a whole section of YouTube that's dedicated to
discussing why Amy Adams does not yet have an oscar.
And I've watched a lot of videos.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, don't ask me that question because I'll be mean
about it anyway. But I do love Meryl Streep and
I love Stanley Tucci, so I'm having fun when they're
on screen. I generally like the movie, you know, I
like Nora Efron's work, and I'm excited to talk about it.
Although if it's a movie about like French food making,

(14:23):
I'm gonna choose Chaco Lot every time. I mean, okay,
Alfred Molina alert.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
For Velina Chocolate coma like hard to top. I think
that there's like a bunch of actor parings in this movie,
where like Meryl Streep had just worked with Amy Adams
on Doubt the year before, so they're like engaging in
a pretty severe vibe shift in this movie, and then
she had also worked with I mean more famously, I
guess worked with Stanley Tucci. And Devilwaar's Prada a few

(14:50):
years before this. Right, anyways, that's six degrees of Beryl.
I do think it's weird that, Yeah, doubt and then
this movie coming out less than a year apart is bold.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah truly. Yeah, but in a case, let's take a
quick break and then we'll come back for the recap.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
And we're back.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Okay. So here is Julie and Julia, based on two books,
based on two true stories. It's the late nineteen forties.
When the movie opens, we meet Julia Child played by
Meryl Streep and her husband Paul Wait.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
I kept meaning to look up how tall Meryl Streep
actually is. I was just gonna ask because I thought
that there are so many, like funny, practical camera tricks
to make her Yeah, she's five six, Julia Child is
six to two. I appreciate that the movie is like,
she was six too, and we'll prove it. Jane Lynch

(15:59):
is her sister. But I feel like the whole movie,
Meryl Streep is standing on an apple box in a
lot of shots, and she's often standing a little closer
to the camera than everyone else, so she looks bigger
and I was like, wow, movies are amazing.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
It's just like Lord of the Rings.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
It's true.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, Gandalf is so tall in The Hobbit, and so
in this scenario, Stanley Tucci is a Hobbit Merylyn Streep
is gandalfrual, brutal.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
This is a good short King movie as and also
it's I was looking at the letterbox reviews for this
movie and one of the top ones was like, this
movie takes place in a fictional world where husbands are supportive,
and I was like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
I cannot wait to talk about the husband one. But anyway,
so we meet Julia Child and her husband Paul, played
by Stanley Tucci. They have just moved to Paris. They
are Americans, but Paul is a diplomat, so you know
he's abroad working.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
He's in the CIA, which I feel like, where is
really He's in the literal CIA, and they didn't call
it the CIA yet, So I feel like the movie
really gets away with not being like Julia Child's career
is brought to you by the CIA, much like here
comes my Bummer thing I love to bring up. Ina
Garten's career is brought to you by the Blackstone Group

(17:29):
aka some of the darkest, most fucked up Wall Street
money in the world. In a Garden's adorable husband Jeffrey, Right,
Jeffrey he worked for Nixon, Ford and Carter and then
went to Wall Street working for Lehman Brothers and the
Blackstone Group. That can't be good, Like, there's just so
there's just like two extremely iconic women chefs who got

(17:54):
some kickback from some of the worst institutions in the world.
But the Julia Child's CIA pipeline, I don't know. We'll
talk about this in the context area too, because this
movie is not going to touch the CIA stuff. They're like, well,
they're a good part of the CIA, right, so already

(18:14):
we're struggling.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
I was unclear what his job was because in an
early scene he seems to be at like an art
exhibit for art that he made question mark. I was like, okay,
he's an artist, but wait a minute, he works at
the embassy. But also he's a spy question I don't.
I don't.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
Season two of Julia on HBO.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Is oh very.

Speaker 4 (18:38):
Much about their past, catching up to them.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
Look at you. Watching season two.

Speaker 4 (18:46):
I had like a fever for like four days, and
I was like, well, my school what you do?

Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah, that is how you end up watching something like that.
Wait did they get into it in a meaningful way?

Speaker 4 (18:58):
I still walk away from it uncertain of both what
they did during World War two and what their politics
were after World War Two. But basically the last half
of the season is about the TV station where like
the Julia Child Show is made getting investigated by the
FBI for leftist dissidents, and they rally everyone together to

(19:21):
thwart the FEDS so that they can all keep on
doing their progressive work.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
God it yay.

Speaker 4 (19:29):
But it's very much like we believe in anti war movements.
We believe in fighting against institutionalized racism, but we do
not believe in communism. Don't think that we do. It's
very funny, not like funny, haha, but like, oh I
don't understand what's happening.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yeah, So like, tell me what do you believe in?
Rent it bag?

Speaker 4 (19:49):
I really don't know. I think personally, I like to
imagine Paul Child was a bisexual communist.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yes, God, I would love that. I want to believe.
I mean, it's like this movie. He certainly succeeds in
making you want to believe the best in him because
you don't cast Stanley Tucci if you want to be
rooting against him unless you're watching The Lovely Bones, and
in that case, very much so. But yeah, I know
the history stuff. It's so the Cia origin story. We

(20:15):
can get more into it. She like had to do
with the invention of shark repellent. It's all very bizarre.
We'll get back to it.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, okay. Still on the first sentence of the week,
Julia Child and her husband have just moved to Paris
Frans ever heard of it? And they are eating delicious
French food and Julia is just like reveling in it.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
She's making noises. She's like, oh, so many cummy noises.
It's in this movie. Across the twentieth century, people are
making coummy noises.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
That's true. That's because eating is like basically better than sex.
I would say in almost every example. Damn, yeah, take that.
All of the men that I've had sex with, take
that sex.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
You weren't very good the tight race for me, I
don't choose between my passion.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Mmmm. That's brave of you. Anyway. We cut to two
thousand and two and we meet Julie Powell played by
Amy Adams and her husband Eric, played by Chrismasina. They
have just moved to Queen's. She works at this government
call center answering like devastating phone calls all day from

(21:33):
people affected by nine to eleven.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
Her job is nine to eleven. Yes, well, Summer, you've
read the book. I don't quite understand the movie. I
don't think does a great job of telling you what
her job actually is.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
From what I remember, it's like she's processing insurance claims
of people affected in the various aftermath of nine to eleven.
But what's fun about her book is she doesn't about
nine to eleven. She's writing very soon after the events
and with an apathy that I have only seen in
like shit posters in the twenty eighteens.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
That is a great way to Yeah, there is like
a moment in the movie where it's like, oh no,
she cares, Yeah, But most of it is like these
phone calls are so annoying, and the people that are
trying to get their insurance claims processed are bombing her
out and they're rude, and you're just like, yeah, now, Julie, like.

Speaker 4 (22:34):
And it is a department made specifically after nine to
eleven to deal with nine to eleven, which I think
is interesting in just like how do you get into that?
And it was as temping, which you know, temping is
a great way to get a full time job, but
you often don't care about it totally to it.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, and her job is established to basically be like
what a hard job she has? So she comes home
and finds comfort in cooking. Ye, because that becomes her
whole thing. And then after a string of events where
Julie's mean friend writes a rude article about her and
then starts a blog. This sort of also happens in

(23:17):
Sex and the City too. Yes, do you remember this
from Sex and This happens to Carrie Bradshaw at one
point where they're like you're so cool and yet you're
thirty And then there comes out like this woman sucks,
like on.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
The cover of a magazine.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yeah. So Julie is inspired to start her own blog
about cooking because she's like, well, if my mean friend
can have a blog, I can have a blog.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
She doesn't have a nice friend, It's like not really
and also she's not a nice friend. No, it's interesting,
and I was like, Nora, what are you getting at
with this. I don't understand, not sure, but yeah, that
first thing with her friends, all of her friends are like, Julie,
shut up, Like anytime she opens her mouth, they're like,

(24:06):
can you stop talking? They're just like calling her a loser.
And then you're like, I feel for Julie, And then
later on I'm like that she is the worst. Wait
a second, would I bully her? I don't know, movie Julie.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
In any case, she decides to start a blog about cooking,
and specifically, she will blog about cooking her way through
Julia Child's cookbook entitled Mastering the Art of French Cooking,
and she'll do all five hundred and twenty four recipes
in the book over the course of one year. We
then cut back to Julia Child in Paris again. Paul

(24:42):
is a diplomat and he's busy with that, and so
Julia wants to find something to do with her time.
She tries a few things like making hats and playing bridge,
but what she really loves to do is eat, so
she decides to take up cooking. She tries to buy
a French cookbook in English, but no such thing really exists,

(25:05):
so she decides to go to culinary school. We cut
back to Julie Powell. She has started her blog and
she started cooking the recipes from Julia's cookbook. It's a
rocky start. It seems like no one is reading her blog.
Her mom is not supportive of this project.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Who can relate? Who can relate? You're writing for no
one and your mom doesn't understand what your job is.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Also, one of the recipes requires that she bone a duck,
and she's dreading doing that, and that's going to pay
off later in a not very significant way.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Check out's duck.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yep. Meanwhile, Julia starts at Li Corombleau and she ends
up in a class with men who judge her because
her skills are are not as advanced, so she works
extra hard to prove herself. She's chopping onions about it,
and then soon she outperforms everyone else in the class.

(26:11):
Back in Queen's Julie's readership is growing. People are leaving
comments on her blog.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
We mostly hear about people that as her blog is
growing through something that I remember noticing the last time
I watched this movie. The only non white character in
the movie whose face we see once we see her
face once it's aggressive. She has a friend. I guess,

(26:38):
do we ever learn what her name? Should?

Speaker 4 (26:39):
We do?

Speaker 1 (26:40):
We learn her name? But she's on screen for a
total of maybe five seconds, and that might even be generous.

Speaker 4 (26:47):
Part of it is doing a cute little like hand class.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
They're good enough friends to have a secret handshake. She
also works at nine to eleven. That's all we know.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Her name is Ernestine. Yes, and I'm going to try
to figure out. Oh, she's played by Crystal McCreery. Again,
she's on screen for five seconds, but yes, that is
one of Julie's friends, and she's talking about this project
with Ernestine at work. She's also talking about how by

(27:18):
doing this project, Julie feels like she and Julia Child
have this like deep spiritual connection and that it feels
like Julia is always in the kitchen with her watching
over her. But also along the way, Julie has several
meltdowns because, oh, she's got a murderal lobster. Oh, some

(27:40):
of the recipes are hard. Oh, she drops food all
over the floor. But then she gets a call from
a journalist at the Christian Science Monitor who wants to
arrange a dinner with her and a very special guest,
but we don't know who it is yet because then
we cut back to Paris. Julia Child meets two women,

(28:01):
Louisette and Simca, who are teaching French cooking to Americans,
and they invite Julia to join them. Then there's this
whole sequence where Julia's sister, Dorothy played by Jane Lynch,
comes for a visit.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
N The economy of Jane Lynch's time is so amazing.
She's in there for like a weirdly really long scene
that just seems to be there so that she and
Meryl can be like yelling together and it's really fun.
And then they're like, we're going to introduce you to
a tall guy, and then instead she meets a short guy.
Cut too. They're married, and then she's gone from the

(28:39):
movie right wild.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
But before she's gone, well I get after she's gone,
she sends a letter to Julia saying that she's gregnant,
that Dorothy has gotten gregnant, and this is basically there
to establish something that's not like explicitly stated, but it
seems like Julia has she's like struggling with infertility, and yeah,

(29:03):
she really wants to have children, but she and Paul
are not able to and so like. Learning that her
sister is gregnant is better sweet. Obviously she's happy for
her sister, but she's like, but I want to be
gregnant too, And she's sad.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
But I think is true to her life as well.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, I believe so. Meanwhile, Julia's friends Luisette and Simca
ask Julia to collaborate with them on their cookbook. Their
publisher had rejected them, saying that they need to make
the book more accessible to Americans, so they ask for
Julia's help in doing that, and she is delighted to help.

(29:40):
We cut back to Julie, who reveals her mystery dinner guest.
It's Judith Jones, the editor who was responsible for getting
Julia Child's cookbook published, and Julie is making.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
I love try to say.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
I'm like, how do you say this?

Speaker 3 (30:03):
Bof Aby Adams doesn't sound one hundred percent?

Speaker 4 (30:06):
No, I love the like legend of that dish recurring
throughout the movie. I've never eaten that in my life.
I've only heard of it in the context of this movie.
Speaks to my ignorance towards French cuisine. I do not care.
It's beautiful it's a mystical dish.

Speaker 5 (30:22):
I just love the word bof Boo's how it's like
trying to say ewan regret.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Boof is it? I'm good for yes, absolute you. So
Julie is making this dish and she prepares it the
night before the dinner, but she falls asleep while it's
still in the oven and it gets all burnt and ruined,
and she's freaking out. We cut back to Julia. She's

(30:57):
working on the cookbook right now. It's just a bunch
of recipes. There's like no fun or flair, and so
she's trying to liven it up. I guess. Julia sends
some of the pages of the book to her pen pal, Avis,
who then we learn is a literary scout or something.

(31:18):
She works in publishing, and she shows them to an
editor at the publishing house Hutton Mifflin in Boston, who
loves the book and wants to publish it. Julie meanwhile
makes a new for her dinner with Judith that night,
and Julie is hopeful that maybe she'll get a book

(31:41):
deal after a meeting with Judith, but then Judith cancels
at the last minute and they never reschedule. I guess
I know.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
I was like damn, wow, Like yeah, she really ends
up getting her ass handed to her.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Julie is very upset and her husband Eric is frustrated
by this whole project and all of her like mishaps
and meltdowns and he can't wait till this year's over.
He feels like she's being very self absorbed and that
she's focusing more on her readers than their marriage. And
they argue and he storms off, and she's very upset.

(32:16):
She keeps blogging, but she stops cooking for a little while.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
What I think is interesting and this like is kind
of dropped within the movie, but like he makes a
point I think reasonably to say, like, well, please don't
write about this argument or me in your blog. And
then she almost does, and then she doesn't, and you're like, okay,
she's like learning how to set boundaries a little better.

(32:42):
But then she just does any eyes and then he's like,
all right, I'm back. I was like, she didn't you
made one request, like and I don't know. I was
kind of on his side on that. I was like, yeah,
if someone doesn't, I feel like it's the same deal.
Like if you're in like stand up. I'll always like
be like, is it okay if I talk about un stage?
If not, I won't do it. He's like, don't blog

(33:03):
about me. She's like, okay, but what about in one
day and he's like, okay.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
It's fine, okay, So back to Julia. She and Simca
go to Boston to meet with Julie's penpal Avis in
real life for the first time. They also meet with
the publishers at Hutton Mifflin, but they think the book
is too long and complicated, so Julia and Simca get

(33:32):
to work on revising it. Meanwhile, Julie and Eric make
up and she starts cooking again, and then a writer
from The New York Times comes over for dinner to
do a piece on her. And once it's published, people
are calling her left and right. She's got publishers, lit agents,

(33:52):
TV producers. They're offering her deals and then one person
calls her who is writing a piece about Julia Chi
Child's ninetieth birthday, and apparently Julia knows about Julie's blog
and thinks that Julie is not serious or respectful.

Speaker 4 (34:10):
So crushing, I know.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
So she's like speculating as to why Julia thinks that
she's so sad.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
Her real life comments were not as bad.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
What did she say?

Speaker 3 (34:23):
So, the piece that I am pulling from is from
tastingtable dot com. I don't know if this is a
historically verifiable source, and so I can't vouch for tasting
table dot com. But it seemed like the comments sounded
very cruel, and they like certainly weren't nice. But it
had more to do with Julia Child didn't understand what

(34:44):
a blog was.

Speaker 4 (34:46):
Yeah, she's a ninety and was.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
Like, why would she cook all of my recipes?

Speaker 4 (34:50):
Like?

Speaker 3 (34:51):
So she said she must not be much of a cook,
meaning like she must not be able to write her
own recipes. Why would like she didn't understand the concept
of a stunt blog because she was ninety. So, but
I believe obviously that like if you just heard that
quote out of context in your Julie crushing, miserable, horrible,

(35:11):
never meet your heroes. I hope your heroes never learn
you exist. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I think
it had more to do with her being old and
grouchy and being like, what what is this?

Speaker 4 (35:24):
Yeah, this sceneedd instill like a deep fear in me,
just like, oh, like, I never want anyone that I
ever admire to ever know about me or see what
I do or comment on my work ever, because I
won't be able to handle it.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
And I think it's like interesting too, at least for
the script. I don't know where the book lands on it,
but like where the movie lands on it, where Christmasina
is like all that matters is that Julia Child that
lives in your head. And I was like, hmm, I
don't know that I agree with that at all. It
feels kind of like a bizarre moral. I don't know. Yeah,

(35:58):
I was having difficulty with where because it's like it
is crushing and I think it's a really interesting thing
to explore, but that She's just like, well, I guess
I just am gonna go with the fictional character Julia instead, right,
But that's the parasocial relationship conversation we get to have,
I guess.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
And then Julia Child I think, dies before Julie Powell
ever gets a chance to meet her in real life.
And then I'm just like, oh, I did feel bad
for that is sad Julia in that moment, But yeah,
what I wrote in the recap here is Julie's very
sad about Julia Child, thinking that she's not like respectful

(36:37):
or serious. But then Julie realizes that what Julia thinks
of her doesn't matter. What matters is what Julie thinks
of herself question mark or something sort.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
Of really unclear. I don't know. I was like, Okay,
if I had like made all of act cast right
and then found out that Kathy guys White was like,
You're not a serious person, it would be crushing. But
I feel like it would just be really weird to
be like, I actually don't care what she thinks because

(37:11):
it's like so obvious that I really do or why
would I have done any of this? But then it's
I don't know. I feel like maybe it's just like
the Christmas in a line of dialogue sort of being like,
and this is the lesson because Julie, it seems like
Julie at the end, she goes to the exhibit and
is like, I love you, Julia, but like which Julia

(37:33):
the one in her head or the real one?

Speaker 1 (37:35):
The real one? Will never know, We'll never know. In
any case, we cut back to Julie Child, Houghton, Meflin
rejects the book, and so Julia is unsure what to
do next. She feels like she's wasted eight years of
her life writing this book. But then, thanks to her
pen pal Avis, the book comes across the desk of

(37:59):
a publisher named Judith Jones, the one who was supposed
to meet with Julie and then it was raining, so
she canceled, and then they never rescheduled. A question mark
not sure, but anyway.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
I mean, I'm on Ja's side there too.

Speaker 4 (38:14):
I love to cancel plan.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
I know surely she's like, yeah, it's a little far, sorry.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
But yes. We meet Judith Jones when she's a young
publisher and she loves the cookbook and she wants to
publish it and she thinks it's going to revolutionize cooking
in the US, and Julia is ecstatic. Back to Julie,
it's her last day of this year long project and

(38:42):
the last of her five hundred and twenty four recipes
where she has to bone the duck, and it is
presented by the movie as though it's gonna be this
big event because they keep referring to it, and it
feels like it's really building up to something. But then
she's like I did it and there's no special moment

(39:02):
or anything anyway.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Yeah, the cookie scene I remember is the lobster scene
from this movie. Yeah, the lobster scenems fun.

Speaker 4 (39:08):
That seems much scarier to me. Yeah, especially, I mean,
hygiene doesn't really matter in a movie, right, but like
she's like touching the phone with her raw chicken hands.
She's like, yeah, on the yenging on the ground with
raw chicken residue, and she's like very brave, unafraid of that. Yeah,

(39:29):
and so like the grossest thing to me about deeboning
the duck is like touching raw meat. Yeah, but she
seems fine with that, So I don't know. The live
lobster thing, I was like, oh, I simply would never
do that, but yeah, the raw meat is gross.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
The rob meat is pretty nasty. Yeah, the lobster. I
think the lobster scene sticks with me mainly because I
would be petrified to do that, and because I like
the music choice, like putting Psycho, Like it's.

Speaker 4 (39:55):
So silly, it's really fun.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Yes, there's talking heads in the Meryl Street Julia Child movie.
That's fun.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
Anyway, So she bones the duck and it is fine.
There's no problems and she celebrates with her friends, and
then Julia and Eric go to the Julia Child Museum
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
Ever heard of that?

Speaker 1 (40:22):
And then text on the screen at the end of
the movie says that mastering the Art of French Cooking
is in its forty ninth printing. Julie Pal's book Julie
and Julia was published in two thousand and five and
then made into a movie, and we were like, I'm sorry,
you mean the movie that we are watching right now?

Speaker 4 (40:42):
What?

Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yeah, which is sad because it's like the last frame
that Nora Efron ever produced. But my boyfriend was like, oh,
fuck you. Like when they show at the end where
they're like and it's a movie, You're like, I know,
I know where I've been the last two hours.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Yes, So that's the movie. Let's take another quick break
and we'll come back to discuss and we're back.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Is it cool if we talk about the real life
women before we get into sultanly, because this is the
first time I've seen this movie since Julie Powell passed. Yeah,
she passed away very young, She's forty nine. It was
a brief sudden illness and so I want to be
clear when I'm talking about the Julie of this movie,

(41:32):
I'm not talking about Julie Powell by all accounts. She's
a lovely person, and God help you if you are
judged by blog posts from the early two thousands for
the rest of your life, truly. Yeah, So I just
wanted to share a little bit about her. There were
a number of lovely essays eulogizing her when she passed

(41:54):
in twenty twenty two. That also touches on something that
I memory hold but vaguely remember about the time that
this movie came out, which was that Julia and Julia
came out in two thousand and five. It was a
very successful book. It was turned into this movie in
nine and Julie Powell released her only other book shortly thereafter,
and she was torn to shreds over it because it

(42:18):
dealt with the marriage that we see presented very lovingly,
and they remained married until her death. So I don't
know about it, but there was a lot of infidelity
between the two of them, and Julie Powell wrote about it.
I haven't read the book, but I guess pretty honestly.
In this book that came out three months after the movie.

(42:38):
So I think the idea was the movie is going
to really endear everyone to Julie Powell, and then we'll
want to read her new book. But I think it
sort of ended up in a way that feels very
connected to late Aught's misogyny, kind of blowing up in
her face in an unfair way where she's writing very
I mean, I hope with her husband's permission and they

(43:00):
remained married. Let's hope, so but you know, being too
imperfect or writing about something that was so at odds
with the movie character that had done so well over
the summer. And I vaguely remember that, and it seems
like in retrospect it was like very unfair to her.
They wanted to just share something from an essay by

(43:22):
I write her named Emily Ferris in Bonapetite that was
released in late twenty twenty two, shortly after she passed away.
That seems really kind, because I guess Julie Powell became
very well known for mentoring young writers, which not enough
people do. She said, when I was broken in between apartments,
she paid me to house it when I probably should
have been paying her to sublet. When I cracked the

(43:44):
screen on my laptop. A few weeks before my book
was due, she took me to the Max Doore in
front of me the money for a new one until
I got my next advance check from my publisher. And
when I found myself without a place to stay while
covering a food blogging panel, she sent me to her parents' house.
Even when her life got messy, both peron similar professionally,
she continued to give to me, to her other friends
and families, to animal rescue organizations, and to a public

(44:06):
that seemed to turn on her when she showed them
more of who she really was. So yeah, I just
wanted to shout out Julie Powell and yeah, gone far
too soon.

Speaker 4 (44:18):
That's so sweet. Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
I know I was like anytime I read about like
mentorship in general, but especially like mentors between like women
and famis, I'm like, ugh, she seemed like a really
lovely person. And I'm kind of curious about her second
book me too.

Speaker 4 (44:34):
I never read it. I read her first one, and
you know, she writes about her husband so wonderfully. I
think that's like, honestly bummer. But my favorite part of
the book, it's the way she writes about her husband,
and I think it'd be I don't know, I kind
of do want to read the second one, and just

(44:54):
I don't know if you're going to read blogs and
personal essay writing and then be cruel to people when
they're honest. It's like, well, read a different genre.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
Right right. It's like they only like the version of
her that is rom com her and actual her is
not acceptable. Yeah. The book is called Cleaving, a Story
of Marriage, Meet and Obsession, which, according to scholarly journal Wikipedia,
details her experiences learning to butcher at Fleischer's butcher Shop

(45:24):
in New York and the effects of affairs by both
her and her husband on their marriage. And yeah, it
seems like most of the negative reviews were just like
how dare you talk about this? So fuck that? And
then we have Julia Child, who was in the CIA,

(45:45):
Like just she's in the CIA, unclear. I also like,
don't trust anything that is published on the CIA website.
Julia Child has her own like clickbait page on c
i A dot gov. You're like, this is some skill,
good Jesus. So if there's ever been a time to

(46:07):
consider the source, it's here. But yeah, the Julia Child
CIA landing page says that she was with the so
it was called the OSS at the time. That turns
into the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services. It is
said that she joined the CIA because she was too
tall to be in the military. What a sentence. Okay,

(46:33):
so this is very CIA website. Working as a research
assistant in the Secret Intelligence Division, Julia typed up thousands
of names on little white note cards. What what are
the names? What happened to the why? That's all it
says about what she was up to, and then it
gets to the fun part, which is the shark repellent.

(46:57):
Julia then worked with the OSS Emergency c Rest You
Equipment section, where she worked in close proximity to offers
who developed shark repellent, and that she met her husband
in the CIA, and then he got promoted in the
CIA and they got to move to France for the CIA. Okay,

(47:18):
So it feels like this very bizarre two hander where
on one hand, she is a woman in the early
twentieth century who clearly very much wants a career in
a way that was not acceptable at the time, and
then the career is in the CIA, and so it's
like a real girl boss pickle that we're getting ourselves

(47:40):
into with all this. And she's also comes from a
lot of money and is basically rich her entire life,
which I think is the way that class is dealt
with in this movie. I think is really interesting. That's
my context corner. Nora Afron not much to know other
than she like, I love food, and so that's why

(48:03):
she wanted to make this movie. She loved food.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
To speak to the movie, because a lot of that stuff,
especially with Julia Child, is like pretty glossed over as
far as her like former work in the CIA, and
what Paul's job is. Again, I thought he was like
an artist or an architect or something, because they're like
he designed the rooms that won World War Two, and

(48:27):
I'm like, what is his job anyway, So as far
as what the movie presents, I do appreciate that this
is a movie largely about women finding purpose and pursuing
something that they love and sticking with it despite obstacles
along the way. And maybe those obstacles are lobsters, maybe

(48:50):
they are McCarthyism, you know, who's to say. But I
also appreciate that it's very rare that there is a
movie where we can talk about a female character and
her husband, because it's almost always talking about a female
character because she's his wife. So I like the kind

(49:11):
of framing of everything here, and I do want to
talk about the husbands and their level of support, but yeah,
I just I like that this is a movie where
it's like, Wow, women should pursue their dreams.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Or even just to like speak to the in even
lower Bar a movie where like women are eating as
much as they want the whole time, and it's like
two women who love to eat and they're not like
caught in like Gilmore Girl syndrome where they still look
like they go to forty pilates classes a week even
though all they do is eat, like you know, and

(49:50):
it's still very movie fied. But that yeah, like there's
so few stories about like women and food that is
like celebratory, so right.

Speaker 4 (50:00):
And I think there's minimal there. Definitely is like just
mentions of like, oh, I'm gaining a lot of weight
because I'm eating fattening food, you know, But there's way
less like kind of yeah, body shamey or like language
that would lead you to have an eating disorder in
this movie that I think you would expect right, which

(50:21):
is fun. It's another reason why I like it so much.
It is so much about the indulgence and enjoying food
and allowing yourself to enjoy it, you know, like Julie
doesn't stop cooking because she feels tired from eating a
lot of butter. You know, Yeah that happens. And yeah,
it feels very counter to other films of this type
and time. You don't really walk away from it being like,

(50:41):
oh god, you want it, you want to eat the
chocolate cake.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Yeah, you don't leave the movie being like they should
have eaten less.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
Like, yeah, more, they should have eaten more. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
There are definitely like dated and it is a period
piece even at the time is coming out. Yeah, like
dated ways of talking. But it was mostly negative self talk.
I can't think of a lot of examples. I don't
know if any of like someone commenting Onlie and Julia's body.
It was more of mostly Julie being hard on herself.

(51:14):
But I mean again, Barra on the floor. But I think,
you know, like a lesser movie would have had like
the husband's commenting on their bodies. True, and the fact
that it was mostly relegated to some good old fashioned
negative self talk felt at least like a less bad version.

(51:34):
And I also don't know from Julie's book if that
is like something that is from the book. I just
don't know a little bit.

Speaker 4 (51:41):
Yeah, she's funny, you know, like she has the Quippi
Bloggie early two thousand's voice. And I think that kind
of self degradation that is mostly a joke is just
like kind of part of the flare, you know. But
I think in the context of the movie, it adds
like a realistic character dimension. It makes Julie feel like, yeah,

(52:03):
she's she's messy, it's.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
Fun, she's just like me. She hates herself. Yeah right, yeah,
I mean just the idea of a movie about women
and food. And I mean I get like the parallels
between the two of them are significant. I think that
an interesting big chasm between them that the movie doesn't

(52:29):
really look at. And also it's like, I don't know,
I don't go to Nora Ephron for thoughtful commentary on class,
but this movie, Yeah, it's interesting because of the stories
they're based on. Class has to be present, and we're
still firmly in the middle to upper middle class when
it comes to Julie. But there is a not insignificant

(52:53):
class difference between Julie and Julia, and I feel like
a lot of how like listening to Julie be like,
why can't I be more like Julia? And I kept
being like, money, Yeah, money kind of your personality, but
it's a lot of it is money, Like where Julia Child,
for all of her valid struggles, never had to worry

(53:15):
about money, and that tends to make you a more
pleasant person if you never have to worry about jack
shit like and the ways that class colors Julie's story,
it is kind of a Cinderella story where she has
to write her way out of her insurance claims job,
but even stuff with like she can't afford to live

(53:36):
in the area of town she wants to and that
has an effect on her career when she gets canceled
on because it's too far, which again I celebrate that cancelation,
but like, there's a little class stuff in there, and
I don't know, it's not perfectly done. I just thought
it was, Like one of the more bizarre parts of
this movie to be is that doesn't seem to really

(53:58):
register in the constant comparison between these women's life trajectories.

Speaker 4 (54:05):
I think Julia Child is often used as like fake
deep inspiration of like, Julia didn't learn to cook until
she was in her forties, and it's like, well, because
she lived a very privileged life in which she didn't
have to learn how to cook for herself and then
had an incredible abundance of time in which all she
had to do was what she wanted, right, And I

(54:27):
don't see that really being engaged with culturally until recently,
maybe even it's a member. I think a lot of
us are very distracted by the reality of what growing
up wealthy can do for a person and trying to
like we don't all have the same hours in the day,
the like part, especially like coming home to cook six

(54:52):
hour meal, Like that's so commendable. I would I when
I did have to go to an office when I
came home, I would never do something that would takes
that long. And just thinking, well, if you have a
husband who's supporting me, you have theoretically family money, although
you know she doesn't have a great Julia didn't have
a great relationship with her father as we see, But

(55:13):
of course you can do the thing that takes hours
and hours and hours right, it's not glamorous to think
about that, I guess.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
Right, Yeah, But it's like with Julie, do you do
see that, Like it's taking more of a toll on
her life than it took on Julia's because she has
to have a normal job and commute and do all
the things that most people need to do. Yeah, and
she's still privileged to be able to, you know, find
the energy to have the hobby. Like there is still

(55:39):
a degree of privilege in that. But yeah, they're operating
in different levels of privilege, which feels kind of wild
to say because they are, you know, they're both white
women that have you know, sort of the world bows
to them both eventually anyways, And again, like Nora Afron,
this is not really anymore than I'm not trying to

(56:00):
compare them outside of this, but Nora Efron also grew
up very wealthy, you know, the odds she had had
a lot to do with misogyny and not a lot
to do with class. And I feel the same way
about Emerald Finelle, where you're just like, here's a director
that I'll always give their stuff a shot, but I'm

(56:20):
not going to them for valuable insight on class. Because
they're just like not equipped to do it.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
What you didn't think Saltburn had important comment to And
I'm kidding.

Speaker 3 (56:30):
Well, it's like she's like a jewelry heiress or something,
and you're just like, yeah, this is not the director
I'm going to for this. But I like to look
at pretty thing.

Speaker 4 (56:40):
I do like the way the PayPal is a detail
of a plot point to show that Julius readers love her. Yes,
I love the early two thousands and of it. I
love the beginning of blogging and just hearing those things.
It's so fun. I love when Christmasina explains blogging.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
It's really great, just like the herculean effort of beginning
a blog on Salon dot com. You're like, wow, what
a moment of time. Or when she gets competitive with
her friend who's it just is like the way that
female friends work in Julie's world is weird to be
in Julia's world. I kind of love it, Like I
don't really have any notes there Julie's world. I'm like,

(57:24):
what is Nora try to say to us here or Julie.
I'm not sure where it's coming from. But the friend
that humiliates her also has a blog about having sex
in a plane question Mark and yeah, honestly not out
of the I don't know. Early blogging was so wild.

(57:44):
People were just saying.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
Whatever, yeah, yeah, Well, to speak a little bit more
to Julie's friends, yes.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
What's going on?

Speaker 1 (57:55):
She has the mean girl boss friends who are very condescended.
One of them is Casey Wilson. The other one writes
this like rude piece about Julie becoming thirty or something.
I don't even know what the topic is.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
If I were Julie, that would have affected me far worse.
I was glad that for Julie. She was like, oh,
I need to start writing again. I was like, oof,
My takeaway would have been far more negative.

Speaker 4 (58:24):
How could a friend write a hit piece on you
and then you just keep going?

Speaker 3 (58:29):
When it happened on Sex and the City, it wasn't
her friend, No, it was a person.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
It was a person.

Speaker 4 (58:35):
I don't know. I really love viewing this like incredibly
inaccessible version of female friendship to me and like, I
simply do not. This doesn't register to me, just incredible
like coterie of girl bosses.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
I don't know, Yeah, I don't know what the intent
is there. But then she has another friend, Sarah played
by mary Lynn Rushcub, who seems not mean, She seems
to be supportive. She comes over and helps Julie cook.
Sometimes she doesn't have that much you know, screen time
or narrative significance, but at least like Julie is given
a friend who is kind to her and we like that,

(59:11):
especially in contrast to her mean friends. And then she
has these other friend that we mentioned Ernestine. It's Julie's
one black friend. It's like the only person of color
on screen with any sort of speaking.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
Role, truly. Shot for shot, you see like her eyes was,
you see the back of her head several times, and
then you see her whole face in the final shot
she appears in like it could not be more careless.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Yeah, the movie doesn't care at all about her character.
But then so there's a scene where I think it's
Julie Eric and her friend Sarah. Sarah comes over and
Julie's like, what do you think it means if you
don't like your friends, referring to her mean girl boss friends.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
Right, who she's right to not let like?

Speaker 4 (01:00:02):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
Yeah, that seems so confusing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
And Sarah responds with it's completely normal to not like
your friends. And then Eric says, well, men like their friends,
and then Sarah says, we're not talking about men. Who's
talking about men? Which I think passes the Bachdel test.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
But anyway, it also I'm like, okay, Eric, where are
your friends at haven't seen them in the movie? Where
are these friends you like so much? Doesn't seem like
they're really around, are they? Yeah? That felt very boomery
logic to me. I like couldn't quite get my head
around it because it was like, if we're talking about
that friend, Yeah, she shouldn't be your friend anymore. They're

(01:00:43):
me like she betrayed you and like humiliated you in
a national magazine. I don't think that has to do
with like friendships between women. It has to do with
this woman being a bad person.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
Right, And to Julie's credit, it seems like they're not
friends anymore, at least in the context of the movie.
They don't hang out after that, but who knows what
the real life situation was.

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
But it's like, do the other girl bosses cut her out?
Like what?

Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
It was really interesting in all of the Dinners when
she has people over, Yeah, those women do not return,
And I wondered if it was like, would they not
eat the food. They wouldn't, they wouldn't let her.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Have a friend's Oh yeah, they were like stop eating. Yeah,
that whole scene. I watched it a couple of times
because it's like way all over the place. It's just
really bizarre.

Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
It feels atonal for the rest of the movie too.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
Yeah, I agree, it feels cartoonish. But then the way
that friendships between women are in Julia Child's world, I
thought were like really thoughtful and gentle and like not
without conflict, but still there's a ton of support and
like there are friends of Julia Child's that are, you know,
on equal footing of like narrative importance as her husband,

(01:01:59):
and that's really nice. I mean, I love the scenes
with Juliet and Simca. I love that they're like, we're
gonna cut our third friend out of it, and then
they experience a little pushback and Julia's like, never mind,
because I would have done the same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Yeah, because they're confronting Louisette because she's not doing her
share of the work, and Julia and Simca are frustrated,
rightfully so, because they're doing all the work and they
sit Louisette down and then she's like, I'm going through
a divorce and they're like, ooh, yeah, okay, but then
they still kind of negotiate her down to like only

(01:02:39):
receiving eighteen percent or something like that. Yeah, and they're like,
your name has to be small, but then Julia is like, no,
your name can be big on the cover. It's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
I love a fellow conflict avoidant.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Yeah, sure, but I do appreciate, like, I really liked
that dynamic between those three friends and how I like
have to confront the one friend and yeah, it felt authentic.
And then she also has a deep friendship with Avis,
who she like is penpals with for eight years, and

(01:03:13):
then they finally meet on screen and the.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
AVS reveal is so honestly, this is really sweet and
also so weird because you're like, wow, it's AVS and
then it's just like a tiny Avis.

Speaker 4 (01:03:27):
I love that so much. I feel very close to
Julia Child in that way. I have many friends that
I've only communicated with online for many years pre Tumblr
a pen pal. It's so sweet.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
I think that Julia story just is less messy in general,
But like the Julia story navigates like, yeah, meeting a
friend you've only written to for the first time in
this really sweet and cathartic way. But the parasocial relationships
in Julie's worlds are weird confusing. Julie's world is weird

(01:04:02):
and confusing. Yeah, in general, I think she should divorce
all of her friends. I did like the Marilyn Ris
cub character, like she is a sweet, supportive friend, but also, yeah,
you're being a bitch, like, I mean, you know, language choice, eh,
But she is being unbelievably self centered in that scene
because she's like, by the way, I'm going through a

(01:04:22):
really big breakup and Amy Adams is like, oh my god,
I totally forgot anyways back to me, and I was like, whoop,
bad friend.

Speaker 4 (01:04:30):
So funny.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):
Yeah, she is like not a great friend either. I
don't know, MESSI is.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
That a good transition to talk about the husbands, because
that's yeah, Julie's husband, Eric's big problem with this whole project,
and I have Okay, here my thoughts on it. What
do you think? Okay, So we see him being generally
supportive to Julie, especially at first he helps her set
up the blog. He encourages her verbally and with compliments

(01:04:59):
and stuff like that he loves her cooking. But then
there's that rocky part in the middle where he gets
frustrated and he bails for a little bit, and he
calls her narcissistic and all this stuff, and I feel
like we are not given enough information to know if him,
you know, being pissed off and accusing her of being

(01:05:20):
self absorbed is justified, or if it's just a man
expecting certain behavior from a woman. And also another component
of it, which the movie doesn't like frame it this
way at all or examine, But this happens a lot
in real life in hetero couples, where men feel threatened

(01:05:40):
if their wife is doing better than them professionally or financially,
or if they're like, you know, their wife is having
success in some regard and men feel very threatened by
that a lot of the time. And I was like, okay,
is there a component of that with the Eric characters,
he threatened by this success that his his wife is

(01:06:00):
finding kind of suddenly, And again the movie doesn't examine
that or really acknowledge that, But I was like, hmm,
this does happen a lot, So I wonder if that
was part of it, or if it's just Julie being
selfish and uncompromising. But you know, who can say yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
I was also struggling to yeah. Summer thoughts.

Speaker 4 (01:06:22):
I don't know. I think every time I watch the movie,
I feel a little differently about their fight. I watched
it twice before this, and so I watched it last
week and I watched it last night, and between those
different times I felt differently. I think it is very
alienating for someone who you love and who supports you
to make you feel worse when you're having a meltdown

(01:06:44):
by responding in a way that is like, you know,
like she's very upset because something is very important to her,
and his response is kind of brushing it off. I
don't even think I feel like it wasn't kind of
a twist of like, well, let's be positi if we
have good food and you can reschedule, you know, like
with Judith Jones rescheduling, It was a little like why

(01:07:06):
is this important? And that can feel really devastating and horrible,
especially if you are someone who is prone to meltdowns.
And I think having a meltdown when something goes wrong
valid and apecially saying yes, Oh, it is very devastating
and overwhelming in the moment, and so I don't know.
Every single time I watch it, I wonder where that
comes from, Like whether it is not believing what she's

(01:07:29):
doing is important and it's like, yeah, no one will
be mad at you if someone canceled on you for dinner.
And I think that's something that she needed to hear.
This projection of like responsibility on her readers. It's warped
and it's unhealthy to feel like you owe something to
other people when you don't really because otherwise I think
he's a fantastic husband. He's so kind, he's having such

(01:07:52):
a good time with her, and he's very supportive, and
I think sometimes I wish we'd seen maybe a little
bit more of a build up of his frustration, or
in what ways is she distracted from their marriage outside
of like she spends all her free time making really
good food. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
Yeah, it feels like it comes out of nowhere.

Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
I wonder if there's like a missing scene or something.
I just feel like, I it's really hard to fall
on like a hard interpretation because I just feel like
I don't have enough information because it's not like we
haven't seen examples of Julie brushing off other people in
favor of herself and her own problems. We've saw her

(01:08:33):
do that with her friend, so it's not like there's
no precedent for this. But also we haven't really seen
her do this to him. We don't really know. I mean,
I feel like we're usually having this conversation in the reverse,
but like we don't really know much about it, Like, no,
I don't really know, like does he feel like her
pursuing this dream? There's no space within the relationship for

(01:08:55):
him to pursue his like what would he rather this
time be used for? Because it also is such a
valid and common thing to be like, actually, you know,
this started fun, but now you're getting too much attention
and I'm not comfortable with it. Yeah, but that wasn't
really who I understood that character to be up to then.
So it was just feels, honestly like an end of

(01:09:17):
Act to Contrivance where he leaves and then comes back
three days later in spite of the fact that the
one thing he asked for she blatantly ignored, which also
made me be like, maybe he was right to be
hailing her for a while because he's like, please just
don't write about me and your blog right now, and
then she did, and then he's like, actually, I don't care,
and you're like, this is just bizarre.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Is the implication being that, like she writes in a
way that is like, I had a fight with my
husband who wasn't being supportive enough, and then she deletes that,
and then she writes in such a way that it's
like she's acknowledging her own fault in the fight as
it relates to what her husband is concerned about. And

(01:09:59):
then reads that and he's like, Wow, she's acknowledging that
she was wrong, and that's why I'm coming back to her.
That's the impression I got, Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
But it's like that also is so dissonant because he's
reading about it because she didn't do what he asked.
I think that they're both acting very weird in that sequence,
and that it felt like a contrivance that this movie
is too good for kind of I.

Speaker 4 (01:10:27):
Think like a kind of overall issue with the movie
is that it doesn't affirm. It's very much about external
validation on the Julie side, not on the Julia side.
Julia is so confident in herself. But everything with Julie
is she is performing like for her readers, huh, like

(01:10:47):
I am, yes, I am a selfish person and a
bad wife sometimes for her readers, and it's not for
her husband. It's not for herself, right. And it's in
that like ending monologue where Eric is like, the Julia
in your head is what matters. It's still not about
like finding confidence in your art and your life, in yourself.

(01:11:08):
It's still this sort of manifestation of external validation. And
throughout the movie her mother is like, this isn't important.
She needs to know it's important herself, and that's kind
of what their argument feels like it's about. But it
doesn't land because she doesn't find value in the work
she's doing because she's doing it. She still finds it
because people are reading her.

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
Right, yeah, which is again like that's an interesting thing
to explore and so many I mean, I've been that
writer at various points one hundred percent, Yeah, you're given
something interesting, But then it turns into this bizarre the
way it's like touched on it has to do with
the relationship, and all of a sudden he seems threatened

(01:11:51):
and frustrated by her, and he has never seemed that way,
and we're like, what am I so about? Like am
I supposed to think this was in him the whole time?
And then like you're saying, Caitlin, like it's unclear, like
does she owe anyone an apology in this situation? It
feels more like this is a battle that needs to
happen internally for her, and they turn it into a
relationship battle instead in a way that's.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Confusing hard to say.

Speaker 3 (01:12:16):
I don't know. Yeah, I felt weird about that too.
Other than that, though, it's like the two romantic relationships
in this movie are pretty lovely.

Speaker 4 (01:12:23):
They're beautiful. They're like my favorite romantic relationships in movies,
I think, especially.

Speaker 3 (01:12:29):
Merrily and Tucci.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
Come on, come on. Yeah, So paul and we've already
talked about the level of privilege that Julia Child experiences
that allows.

Speaker 3 (01:12:41):
Cia legendary, the Cia romance of the century.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
Right, But the thing with Paula is that like he's
only ever shown to be completely supportive of Julia. He's
never calling her narcissistic or anything like that, and that
feels especially unusual considering this is like the nineteen forties
slash fifties. This is when women were not encouraged to
have careers, especially married women. So for him to be like, yeah,

(01:13:06):
do whatever you want, Try make a hat, try cooking,
do anything, and then she pursues that dream and he's
like so supportive along the way. I'm curious to know
if that's how that relationship actually manifested or not. But
at least as far as what we see in the movie,
Paul is like unwaveringly supportive of Julia Child and I

(01:13:32):
appreciated seeing that. It's not as though other men around
her are unwaveringly supportive, because you have that kind of
series of scenes where she starts that cooking class at
les codne Bleue and it's all men in the class,
and it's all people who are like already professional chefs.

(01:13:52):
I guess they're honing their skills or something. But they
judge her.

Speaker 4 (01:13:58):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
She says something like, you should have seen the way
those men looked at me, like I'm just some frivolous
housewife looking for a way to kill time, and that
is probably what they assumed when they saw her. And
she is shown having to put an extra effort and
work extra hard to prove herself, the way that many

(01:14:20):
women and marginalized people in general have to do to
earn any level of respect or to have access to
the same opportunities as their counterparts who are more privileged.
And so we see Julia doing all of that extra
work to try to like fit in and prove herself
and all that stuff, and then a letter to Avis

(01:14:42):
later on, she says something like, and now I'm way
ahead of the others in my class, all men, all
of them unfriendly, until they discovered that I was fearless.
So then they come to respect her because she displays
a trait that is traditionally considered masculine.

Speaker 3 (01:15:01):
Right, It's like you have to be exceptional to deserve
respect kind of, right.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Yeah, you know, she's brave and she's fearless. She's not
this like, you know, quote unquote timid woman that the
men expected her to be. But she's like, I'm gonna
kill this lobster, and they're like, wow, she's so cool,
and then she, you know, garners their respect. I thought
all of that was, like, you know, not a huge
part of the movie, but I'm glad it was touched
on to some degree. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):
Again, it's like it's a very like rom commy way
of touching on it, but it touches on it. I
was curious more because again I just like mainly know
about Julia Child through this movie and through what is
largely considered to be a wildly historically inaccurate mini series. Yeah,
there's literally a scene in the mini series where Betty
Fridan yells at Julia Child and it is like you're

(01:15:50):
not a real feminist, which never happened, and they're like, well,
but like we wanted to explore, You're like, you can't
do that, that's cheating. She was a person. Anyways, I
was curious, especially after seeing how wildly like over the
top the miniseries went, what Julia Child's relationship to feminism was,

(01:16:12):
because she was prominent as second wave feminism was becoming
a conversation and second wave feminism we can save that
for another day. However, it was interesting where Julia Child
never really allied herself with a feminist movement, but she
also in her time caught some shit from feminist movements

(01:16:35):
because it was characterized as like she's encouraging women to
stay in the kitchen, which I see the thinking behind it.
But I'm kind of grateful that most feminist movements have
moved past that, because what Julia Child was doing, as
we see in this spoofy, was extremely difficult for women
to do, even with the degree of privilege that she had,

(01:16:57):
And cooking does not have to be an inherently oppressive task,
but it has been put on women in that way.
But Julia Child was cooking for joy, she was producing
her own stuff. She was like bi all accounts. I
guess she was a reproductive rights champion, like she you know,
wasn't a full blown feminist. But I think in her

(01:17:17):
time was kind of unfairly criticized for pushing something that
it didn't seem like she was ever pushing really, like
she was a woman who enjoyed cooking and wanted to
make a show about it, and it was I don't know,
I think kind of like unfairly politicized to make her
look worse.

Speaker 4 (01:17:36):
I think cooking and having the ability to cook and
the skills to cook well and in a way that
is like pleasurable, like you're creating something for yourself that
is good and creating something for others that is good.
There's very interesting conversations around that being like a bougie
thing or a privileged thing when it feels like it

(01:17:58):
should just be the most basic human right, like knowing
how to use ingredients, where to get them from, how
to use them, and to nourish yourself and others. It
is a very interesting, contentious sort of conversation, and you know,
there's degrees of course, like again, like having ten hours
a day to slow cook something is a different kind
of conversation. But the act of cooking and being able

(01:18:22):
to cook for yourself and especially not relying on you know,
like the scene when they're in the first publisher meeting
and they have the book of like the Quick Houselife
kind of things. I think being able to break out
of sort of mass consumerism notions of feeding yourself and
food is a radical act and not just you know,

(01:18:44):
not to say like Julia Child's methods are radical that.
I think that a lot of relationships in like anarchist
food movements is knowing what you're using, how to use it,
and how to not use things that are destroying the
planet in our bodies right.

Speaker 1 (01:19:01):
Well, there's also a difference between the expectation for women
to do these domestic chores such as cooking and you know,
nurturing and nourishing her husbands and children and stuff like that,
and cooking as a career because historically men are chefs,
women are housewives who cook for their family.

Speaker 3 (01:19:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
Yeah, So for her to pursue being a professional chef,
and as we see in that scene where she like
goes to that class with other professional chefs who are
all men, and like, that's still a cultural thing, but
it was certainly more pronounced back then. So for her
to be like, yeah, I'm a woman, but I'm like

(01:19:44):
a professional chef who can teach it, who can like
create my own recipes and like sort of innovate different
ways to do certain things like that was not the
most common thing for women to be doing back then.
So again, the movie doesn't necessarily like examine that that thoroughly,

(01:20:06):
but you know, just from the context that we know
about it, it's like, oh, that is cool.

Speaker 3 (01:20:11):
Yeah, And I think there's so many ways to look
at what Julia Child. I don't know, it seems like
we're all fans in the chat, but like there's like
so many ways to sort of talk about it. But yeah,
I feel like what a lot of the criticism of
her missed was also that, like, what she's doing is
cool from a class standpoint. She's teaching you how to
make fancy seeming food that I think a lot of

(01:20:35):
people with less money would assume that they wouldn't be
able to have at home. And you know, her whole
thing was anyone can cook very ratitudey yet in that way,
like anyone can cook with ingredients that are affordable. I
mean the real cost is time. But also that she's
broadcasting on PBS, so anyone can watch her do it, Like,

(01:20:55):
I think that from a class standpoint, while she benefits
from all this privilege, like in her later career, she
kind of pays it forward by making what she's learned
very accessible and that's really cool too.

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 4 (01:21:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
There's also a small conversation that the movie kind of
has in regards to who the cookbook is targeted toward,
because it's specifically for American housewives who don't have servants
to cook for them, and this is like nineteen fifties,
like to me, peak housewife.

Speaker 3 (01:21:31):
Era, particularly like white housewives culture.

Speaker 1 (01:21:35):
Yeah, and so the publishers of the book in the
various scenes where you know, they're meeting with publishers and
being like, well, this isn't gonna work because housewives want
something quick and easy and this book is seven hundred
pages of sauce recipes and like how is that? And
so there's like this battle that the characters have to

(01:21:57):
deal with as far as like catering to the specific
demographic that has all of these like gender roles and
engendered presumptions, you know, foisted upon them, right, and.

Speaker 3 (01:22:07):
Like how the people telling her who her book is
for is a room full of men?

Speaker 4 (01:22:12):
You're right, yeah, yeah, you don't want to work with
someone who belittles your assumed audience, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:20):
She's cool. I love that Meryl Street played her.

Speaker 4 (01:22:23):
She's so good at it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):
I just wish she had gotten to do it for
the whole movie. Sorry, Julie, I just wish it be
the whole movie.

Speaker 4 (01:22:32):
I think the gender dynamics with Julie and Eric as
well are interesting in that she cooks dinner for them
truly because she likes it. At least the movie doesn't
sort of imply that she's doing it because she is
the wife, right. I don't remember how that's depicted in
her book or in real life, and you know, there's
always going to be the pressures of who does that

(01:22:52):
in a heterosexual relationship, but it sort of kind of
knocks it out of the way that it's like she's
doing this because she finds joy in it, and they
both eat such like gusto the way that like Christmasina
eats is like kind of gross, but it's.

Speaker 1 (01:23:05):
So too enthusiastic.

Speaker 4 (01:23:07):
You're having so much fun.

Speaker 3 (01:23:09):
He's going for it. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:23:11):
Yeah, it feels like a good kind of like efficient
way to kind of knock that, like she's doing this
because she thinks cooking is fun.

Speaker 3 (01:23:18):
Right, Yeah, sir. Anything else that y'all wanted to touch on for.

Speaker 4 (01:23:23):
I want to talk about parasociality, Yes, yes, let's do it.
I mean I am someone who gets hyper fixated on
things pretty easily, and that often lends itself towards parasocial relationships.
And it is something that is when I was a teenager,
is quite damaging to your psyche. The belief of people

(01:23:45):
that you do not know are your friends or oh
anything to you outside of maybe like if you saw
them on the street, maybe a basic respect as you
would treat your other human kind of thing. But I'm
so fascinated with the way that this movie decides in
the end. What is good in these sort of relationships,

(01:24:07):
both with Julie and Julia and then Julie towards her readers.
The reliance on her readers for validation, as well as
the continued like mantra of you're not a writer until
you're published, so interesting, people don't say that anymore. The
over affirmation of you're a writer if you write is
very prevalent. Also, you're a writer if you don't write,

(01:24:28):
and if you just want to, you know. But I
walk away with it with feeling very strange. You know.
I do think that thinking that someone you look up
to doesn't respect your work is quite crushing. And I
think a lot about in a Gilmore Girls when Mitcham
tells Rory she's not a journalist and she steals a boat, Like,

(01:24:49):
I think that's appropriate response.

Speaker 3 (01:24:53):
Yeah, On my most recent rewatch, I was like, wow,
I really turned on her when she did that the
first time, but the benefit of time, like it was
a victimless crime. Everyone should steal a boat, I think,
so a hero.

Speaker 4 (01:25:08):
But in the case of this, like, I don't know
what does it mean to value the image of someone
in your head over their actual personhood. If she did
meet Julia in real life and they did have some
sort of working relationship, I think Julie Powell went on
to do like a Julia Child show on Food Network

(01:25:29):
or something I don't know, maybe like a docu series
or something I don't quite remember. But what does it
mean to hold on to that? And I think it
is dehumanizing in a way that in this case seems
harmless in the context of a film, but can have
greater rampifications towards celebrity, towards art, like what do we
expect from someone? And I don't know, can you continue

(01:25:51):
a relationship with the person in your head if the
real person does something legitimately harmful?

Speaker 3 (01:26:00):
H It's really tricky. I don't know. Like the movie
has a very light touch with it, and I find
it a little frustrating. But I'm also like, that is
such a especially in two thousand and nine, if like
that conversation, like was it even really happening? Yeah, And
I've been in the position of Julie as well, where
it's like you're really evangelizing about someone whose work you

(01:26:22):
really love, that truly been informative to you, and then
to find out, you know, it's different. To find out
who they really are is troubling or even just not
who you doesn't square with what your image of them was.
I think on this viewing what I felt. I really
felt for Julie because it wasn't like she was actively

(01:26:43):
asking what Julia Child thought, Like she sort of found
out what Julia Child thought about the project against her will,
which is a risk, you know, doing it and it
become But I really felt for her where it wasn't
like she was banging down Julia Child's door being like,
do you like me?

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
She just got a cold?

Speaker 3 (01:27:00):
Was like, hey, just so you know she doesn't like
that is devastating, yes, you know. But also on the
Julia Child part, what is her responsibility to Julie Powell,
who objectively, I mean, we could talk about this in
the context of this very show, like if we found
out Alison Bechdel fucking hated us, right, it would hurt,

(01:27:21):
but we would have to deal, you know, like it's
not like us doing this show for seven years doesn't
invite some sort of response from her should she choose
to And yeah, it is like that parasocial question of
like how do you navigate? Like how can you love?

Speaker 4 (01:27:39):
So?

Speaker 3 (01:27:39):
Because I think what Julia is doing is beautiful in
its way where it's like she's drawing inspiration from another
person to navigate a really hard portion in like her life,
and that's what art can do and that's amazing. Yeah,
and you know, I guess the only way to get

(01:28:00):
around it is to just never become famous enough for
the person to hear about what you're up to, and
then you're safe. But I don't think Julia Child owes
her anything because at that point, Julie Powell is profiting
off of perceived proximity between the two of them, which
is also a valid discussion to have. But I also

(01:28:20):
like feel really awful when Julie finds out that Julia
doesn't like her against her will. That is devastating, I
don't know, complicated. Yeah, Anyways, anyone who has a parasocial
relationship with any of the three of us, we're so normal.

Speaker 1 (01:28:40):
And cool, we're so and actually, well to tie it
all together, if anyone wants to see me in Paris
because you feel like you have a parasocial relationship with
me and you're a fan of my comedy Harris Social whoa.
I can't even continue after hearing that, but I will.

(01:29:04):
I will be doing some stand up comedy in Paris
in early May, ahead of the Shrektannic tour that Jamie
and I are doing. But I'm going to Paris early
and I'm doing comedy, so everyone should come and see me. Sorry,
I'm just plugging my shows.

Speaker 3 (01:29:22):
I'm going to Paris after the tour. Wow, and leave
me alone, I talk. I don't want to. I want
to be alone. I want to be alone.

Speaker 1 (01:29:32):
Fair. That's totally fair. Okay, any other thoughts or No,
that's everything I had.

Speaker 3 (01:29:40):
I don't totally mean that. I mean it like mostly though.

Speaker 1 (01:29:43):
Yeah, no, that's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:29:45):
Yeah, okay, let's see, let's see. I think that's everything
that I had. Honestly.

Speaker 1 (01:29:50):
Yeah, I'm good.

Speaker 3 (01:29:51):
Yeah. I could talk about parasastional relationships forever. But then
sometimes it works out because that's like how like I
admired your work before we I met, Like it all
kind of worked out.

Speaker 4 (01:30:03):
Yeah, I fully had a para social relation with the book.
If you're been a listener to this podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:30:08):
And now you're here, wow, yeah, and look at us.

Speaker 4 (01:30:11):
Sometimes it's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:30:13):
Well, folks, this movie passes the Bechdel test a whole lot.
Oh yeah, all the time. It's mostly women talking about
food and publishing deals. Yes, what a life kind of rocks.

Speaker 4 (01:30:24):
Oh wait, okay, the missus Joy of Cooking paid fifty
seven thousand dollars. I got her book public.

Speaker 3 (01:30:32):
I can't poor.

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
What was her name, Irmaurma rum Bar.

Speaker 3 (01:30:39):
Yeah, I think that scene was so. I didn't fact
check any of that, but like, so, yeah, that was
like such a great Nora Ephron scene where it was
just like, I feel like Nora Efro movies sometimes you're like,
and here's women being really weird to each other for
five minutes. You're like, all right, so good. It was awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:31:03):
Yeah, but yes, it does pass the Bechdel test lots
and lots, but as far as the one true metric
are Nipple scale, where we rate the movie on a
scale of zero to five nipples based on examining the
movie through an intersectional feminist lens. Like I said, I
appreciate that the movie is about women finding purpose and

(01:31:28):
pursuing inactivity that they love, and they have men around
them who are supportive and to some extent friends around
them who are supportive, except when it's Casey Wilson and
all the mean girl bosses I.

Speaker 3 (01:31:44):
Love us, Like wow, Peak twenty twelve is Casey Wilson
in one scene and you're like, should have been more.
I love Casey Wilson.

Speaker 1 (01:31:53):
So on the surface, you know, there's some nice things
going for the movie that I appreciate. But as we've discussed,
there's other things that the movie either kind of glosses
over and doesn't examine very thoroughly in a very like
Nora Fron movie kind of way, such as like the
class component and the level of privilege that the women

(01:32:13):
and especially Julia Child had access to that allowed her
to do all of these things. Because like, yeah, this
conversation is happening.

Speaker 3 (01:32:21):
More and more.

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):
I see a lot of it, just like you know
people on TikTok and Instagram examining how like oh, yeah,
the things that we used to think were like a
brave thing to do, like ooh, you moved to a
new city, or you pursued this dream of yours or
you did X y Z. It's not because you were
like brave, It's because you had access to money that

(01:32:43):
enabled you to do that. And that feels very much
like the Julia Child of it all. But in any case,
you know, there's things like that, there's the one character
of color who has five seconds of screen time. Yeah,
things like that. I do appreciate Julia Child's relationship with

(01:33:06):
her sister Dorothy. I would have liked to see more
of it. They seem really sweet together. So it's things
like that. It's different relationships and again, women pursuing their
dreams that I like to see. But it is a
very like middle to upper middle class white woman version
of all of that without the movie like really acknowledging

(01:33:27):
any of it. So there's that, and with that in mind,
I'll give the movie maybe like two and a half
or three nipples. So I think is where I'm landing,
and I'm gonna give them all to Julie's Orange Cat.

Speaker 3 (01:33:44):
Oh, I'm gonna go higher. I think I'm going to
go three point seven five. Wow. Because I agree with
everything that you said, Caitlin. I think the whiteness of
this movie is undeniable. It's like showing you class, but
not the kind of just leaving everything on the table,

(01:34:05):
if you will.

Speaker 1 (01:34:07):
Right next to the bechamel sauce.

Speaker 3 (01:34:09):
Yeah, exactly. But this movie is written and directed by
one of our most iconic women directors and also based
on the writings of two women, you know, And I
think that that is unusual enough, and also the fact
that this movie did very well. It's uneven and in

(01:34:31):
some ways flat out weird, but I think that there
is a lot being explored here. A lot of it
isn't fully explored. But yeah, sorry about women and like
their ambition and how that ambition is interpreted in different
historical periods. There's like little touches where you don't really

(01:34:52):
get a lot of beats about fertility in movies that
doesn't then consume the whole movie, where you're shown like
this is an element of Julia Child's life, but it
doesn't define her. What defines her is her relationship to
people and her relationship to her work. And I thought
that was like a very subtle and well done. Yeah,

(01:35:15):
it's all over the place, but I feel like there's
a lot to love here, and yeah, so I'm gonna
give it three point seventy five. Maybe that's too many,
but it's just how I'm feeling today. I'm gonna give
one to Jane Lynch. I'm gonna give one to Merril.
I'm gonna give one to mary Lynn rys Cub and
I'm gonna give the rest to Simca. Yeah, nice Summer.

Speaker 4 (01:35:39):
I think I will go three point five. It is
a movie about two real white women, and so I
think my expectations towards racial diversity is like, well, that's
kind of probably who they filled their life with. But yeah,
similar reasons. I think that there's like a hint of

(01:35:59):
class analysis. I think it is mostly beautiful and loving
towards the act of cooking and what it means in
a gendered capacity. I will give all of my nipples
to Judith Jones because I love women who edit books
as a woman who is technically an editor, an unemployed one,

(01:36:22):
but someone.

Speaker 3 (01:36:23):
You are an editor.

Speaker 4 (01:36:25):
God damn, this is my sister in arms in book publishing.
But uh, I want to recommend a book to your listeners.

Speaker 3 (01:36:33):
Yes, is it Raw Dog?

Speaker 4 (01:36:36):
Okay? So I mean I do have a food writing
section on my shelf, and I do have Raw Dog
next to a book by Alicia Kennedy called No Meat Required,
and it's a really beautiful dichotomy of a book about
like cultural history of plant based eating next to it
Raw Dog, which I love. But it is called Tastemakers
by mayk Sen and it is a group biography of

(01:36:58):
seven immigrant women who change cooking in America. And so
if you're interested in non white women who kind of
created foundational texts in culinary history in the US and
introduce different cuisines to home cooks, I would highly recommend it.
It's beautiful. There is a little Julia Child interlude in it,

(01:37:19):
just to kind of affirm her importance as a not
immigrant women, but kind of the reverberations of her influence
on those who came around and after her.

Speaker 3 (01:37:32):
I just placed a hold on it at the library. Wow, brave,
shout out the libraries.

Speaker 4 (01:37:39):
Yeah, it's really good.

Speaker 3 (01:37:41):
And tell us before you go, please tell us about
your book, which is currently out. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:37:48):
I wrote a checkbook of poems that are inspired by
the legend of Zelda. They are weird and sad and
about Palestine. And yeah, you can get them on gameover
books dot com or you can check in with your
local bookstore. They should be able to order it. And

(01:38:10):
I'm doing a mini tour. I'll be reading in la
in March, late March, and then maybe I'll you know,
I'll be around but Yeah, it's my first book with
an ISBN and so I'm very happy.

Speaker 1 (01:38:22):
Oh congrats, I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:38:25):
So excited to read it. Congratulations And where can people?

Speaker 1 (01:38:29):
Where can people establish a parasocial relationship with you online?

Speaker 3 (01:38:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:38:34):
Please find me at Borders bookstore on Instagram.

Speaker 3 (01:38:38):
Someone had to take up the mantle.

Speaker 4 (01:38:41):
Yeah, if Borders ever makes a comeback, they owe me
a two point five million dollars for the handle O
me I else play with it.

Speaker 3 (01:38:50):
That's the only way that we're going to be able
to be home owners is by getting the good handles and.

Speaker 4 (01:38:55):
Then Twitter and far more active at.

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):
Some a this nice.

Speaker 3 (01:38:58):
Yeah, well, thank you so much for coming on this show.

Speaker 1 (01:39:02):
Thank you for having me come back anytime please, Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:39:06):
Hopefully I can come back for the Zelda movie.

Speaker 3 (01:39:09):
Oh my gosh. Yes, you're both gonna have to school
me because I know that you're both well versed.

Speaker 1 (01:39:16):
I just restarted Tears of the Kingdom because I'm sad
and I was like, I need something that I can
do for ten to fourteen hours a day, all in
one chunk to take my mind off of that. So
I'm replaying Tiers of the Kingdom. Brag anyway. You can

(01:39:36):
follow us at Bechdelcast on social media. And speaking of tours,
we will be in London, Oxford, Manchester and Edinburgh and
we're doing the Shrek Tannic Tour. What does that mean. Well,
sometimes we're doing a Titanic show, sometimes we're doing a
Shrek show.

Speaker 3 (01:39:56):
Not that complicated.

Speaker 1 (01:39:59):
You'll just have to go link tree slash Bechtel Cast
to find out more details. But we will be doing
those shows in May and then, like I said, I'll
be doing stand up in Paris, Berlin, I'm working on
some shows in Copenhagen. I don't know if you know
anything about the Copenhagen comedy scene, listeners, please.

Speaker 3 (01:40:18):
Let me know.

Speaker 1 (01:40:19):
I'm also going to be doing some shows in Dublin,
so be on the lookout for all of those.

Speaker 3 (01:40:25):
And you can also always sign up for our Patreon
aka Matreon, where you get for five bucks a month,
access to two new episodes that are exclusive, usually just
me and Caitlin, and access to one hundred and fifty
episodes of back catalog. If you can imagine, we're doing
a bunch of classic movies this month. And you can

(01:40:45):
also get our merch over at teapublic dot com, slash
v Bechdel Cast. Follow us on Instagram or Twitter. If
you're so inclined, you'll know how to find us. And
with that, oh, actually, wait, Summer, you're gonna be like
Julia Child at the end of the movie today when
you open your book for the first time.

Speaker 4 (01:41:06):
Yeah, oh my gosh, I'm doing my own boxing.

Speaker 3 (01:41:08):
And you're gonna have your Julia moments and there will
be a freeze frame.

Speaker 1 (01:41:11):
For no reason. I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:41:14):
It's the club for some reason.

Speaker 4 (01:41:17):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:41:25):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Vosskrosenski. Our logo in merch
is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit

(01:41:48):
link tree slash Bechdel Cast.

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