Julie and Julia - Recommended viewing for bloggers

[Julie Lomoe]

I finally saw Julie and Julia, the Nora Ephron film based on Julie Powell's book about her efforts to cook all the recipes in Julia Child's magnum opus in 365 days and to blog about it. I'd give it four out of five stars - entertaining and engaging, and Meryl Streep is great as Julia. Cooking's of limited interest to me, though the film did make me ravenously hungry. Don't see it at 5pm!

I especially liked the treatment of my namesake's blogging efforts, and how they brought her fame and fortune. The film showed her fielding multiple queries from agents and editors, but it never did reveal how much money she made. On the othr hand, it went into wrenching detail about Julia Childs' efforts to get published, and how thrilled she was about an advance of $150.00. Yes, you read that right - one hundred and fifty dollars.

Julie Lomoe's Musings Mysterioso

[I. J. Parker]

And cookbooks sell well!

[p. b. smith]

But in fact, she DID receive those 65 calls; that's how she got a book deal, a movie deal and all those newspaper and magazine articles, and all those TV guest shots. Like vultures circling carrion, editors, agents, TV producers magically appear to pull off a strip off Julie's flesh after she had done the heavy lifting and made herself famous. They knew whatever they published that Julie put her name on would have "X" number of built-in customers waiting to buy it. Likewise with TV and movies; if you already have buzz, they want a piece of you because they know your project is as close to being a sure thing they could get, at least when it comes to making money.

I wish some of those vultures would find a reason to circle me. I think most of us do.

[Julie Lomoe]

Thanks for your comments, everyone. I'm still wondering how Julie got so many visitors to her blog before the NY Times and others became interested. Hoping her book explains more about that.

[Beth Groundwater]

Thanks for bringing up yet another interesting reason to see the movie--to see how two different people obtained publishing success in two different ways--than the cooking angle. I'll definitely have to try to see it!