0:00

Hello listeners, big announcement.

0:03

We have officially added the

0:05

Dublin show to our Shrek

0:07

Tannic tour, so come see us

0:09

in Dublin on May twenty ninth at the

0:11

Irish Film Institute. We are

0:13

covering Titanic and

0:16

we are so excited to be able to finally

0:18

confirm and announce that show, so please

0:20

come to it. And then, speaking of Dublin,

0:23

I am putting on a stand

0:25

up comedy show in Dublin on my

0:27

birthday on May seventeenth

0:30

at Hysteria Comedy Club.

0:32

There are going to be some amazing

0:35

local comedians on the lineup, and

0:37

then I'll be doing a longer stand up

0:39

set, so please come to that as

0:41

well. It's my birthday, so you kind

0:43

of have to be there. And then we'll

0:45

all go out for a little birthday pint

0:48

at a birthday pub after the show.

0:50

It's gonna be so much fun. And then

0:52

tickets are of course still available for

0:55

the rest of the tour. The two shows in

0:58

London on May twenty second, the show show

1:00

in Oxford as a part of the Saint

1:02

Audio Podcast Festival on May

1:04

twenty fourth, the show in Edinburgh

1:07

on May twenty sixth, and the show in Manchester

1:09

on May twenty eighth, and then again Dublin

1:11

on May twenty ninth. All of the

1:13

ticket links for all of these shows can be

1:15

found at link tree slash Bechdel Cast.

1:18

We're so excited and we can't wait to see

1:20

you there.

1:22

On the Bechde Cast, the questions asked

1:24

if movies have women and them,

1:27

are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,

1:29

or do they have individualism? It's

1:31

the patriarchy, zephim fast

1:34

start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

1:37

Bojo Bojo,

1:41

bonapadie.

1:42

Oh my god, this movie is so silly.

1:44

I think my favorite part in the movie is when

1:47

Jane Lynch and Meryl Streeper are just yelling

1:50

in muppet voices for like twenty

1:52

seconds and they're.

1:53

Like, whooooooo.

1:55

You're like that is sort of like the experience

1:58

of having a sibling, but

2:01

just like on a noise strictly

2:03

noise level. I love it. I

2:05

love it.

2:06

Yeah, I love their sister relationship.

2:09

Can you imagine how thrilled Jane Lynch

2:11

must be every time they're making a movie

2:13

about a woman that's sticks to like She's

2:15

like, I'm in a cast.

2:18

Done. Yeah, you can't not put her

2:20

in a movie that requires

2:23

there's So, okay, let's can we start. I'm just

2:25

excited. Name's

2:27

chef Jamie.

2:29

Oh, and my name is Chef Caitlin.

2:32

And this is the Bechdel

2:35

cast. Although so

2:37

we get this sent to us a lot where

2:39

people are like, if one something

2:41

something cooking ingredient speaks to another

2:44

blah blah blah, but then it passes

2:46

the Bechamel test.

2:48

What maybe I don't read the messages

2:51

we get.

2:52

I don't know if I'm saying it correctly. Bechamel

2:55

sauce question mark.

2:57

Is a thing, right, Okay.

2:59

And there's this like

3:02

I don't know meme where people are like if

3:04

one something or other talks

3:06

to another something other because bechamel

3:09

looks very close to Bechdel when

3:11

it's spelled out just a few extra letters,

3:13

so people are like ha

3:16

ha ha. And so I feel

3:18

like this episode, this movie is

3:20

the most relevant episode

3:22

to bring that up on.

3:24

It's true, we did it, we did it.

3:26

Do I know what bechamel sauce is

3:29

or what any of the ingredients are? Absolutely

3:31

not?

3:32

Wait, what's your not to be? Like first

3:34

day of college? But like, what's your favorite

3:37

food? What's your favorite food? Ice

3:40

breaker time?

3:41

Oh my gosh, I don't even

3:43

know how to answer that question.

3:48

I love food, though I eat it

3:50

every day.

3:51

I'm realizing I don't think I know the answer

3:53

to either. I think obviously

3:56

hot dogs hot dog from

3:58

Waltz. But I think all So is

4:01

the Philadelphia role the least respected

4:03

sushi role because it's my favorite. I feel

4:05

like sushi heads are like, sure,

4:08

you know, but I don't know. I

4:10

might be projecting.

4:12

I mean, it's very tasty, but

4:14

I feel like it might be like a very like American

4:16

eyed bastardized.

4:18

Kind of for babies. A little bit could

4:20

be well, I like it, Wait

4:22

what's in it?

4:23

Salmon, cucumber and cream cheese?

4:26

Okay, yeah, and.

4:27

The cream cheese. I think the cream cheese is where

4:29

they're like, do you really need it? And like

4:32

I need it badly. It's important.

4:34

I want my sushi to taste like a bagel.

4:36

Yes, exactly.

4:37

Anyway, So yeah, I don't know. I mean,

4:40

I love food. Indian cuisine is probably

4:42

my top, but also I loved

4:44

Taigh food, and also I love sushi,

4:46

and also I love Mexican food, and I love Peruvian

4:48

food, and I love French food, and I

4:50

love Brazil. I like basically every

4:53

food.

4:54

Wow, I always forget until I rewatch

4:56

this movie what we mean when we say

4:58

French food. So

5:00

that's okay. Anyways, great opening

5:03

to the episode. This is the Bechdel Cast,

5:05

where we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional

5:08

feminist lens. But Caitlin, we

5:11

don't know what the Bechamel test is

5:13

because we have unrefined palettes.

5:16

But what's the Bechtel test?

5:18

The Bechdel test is a media metric

5:21

commonly called the Bechdel Wallace test because

5:23

it was sort of co

5:25

created by Allison Bechdel and

5:28

Liz Wallace, and it

5:30

is a media metric that has many different

5:33

versions. The one that we

5:35

use is do two characters

5:38

of a marginalized gender? Do they have names?

5:40

Do they speak to each other? And is the conversation

5:43

about something other than a man?

5:46

And then a little caveat that we like to add,

5:48

is is it a narratively relevant

5:51

conversation or is it kind of throwaway

5:53

dialogue? So that is

5:55

the Bechdel test, the Bechamel test, We

5:57

don't know, but yeah,

6:01

let's introduce our guests.

6:04

Yeah, we're so excited to have her. She

6:06

is a Palestinian American poet and

6:09

author of the book I Could

6:11

Die Today and Live Again with Game

6:13

Over Books. It just came out. It's

6:16

Summer, Farrah.

6:17

Hello, welcome, Thank

6:20

you for having me. I'm so excited to talk

6:22

about this movie.

6:23

Oh my gosh, we're so excited.

6:26

What is your relationship with this

6:28

movie?

6:29

To Julie, to Julia? Also, we're covering

6:31

Julia and Julia. Have we said that yet?

6:33

Oh?

6:33

Yeah, probably didn't say

6:35

it recovering Julia.

6:38

So yeah, Summer, was your history with this

6:40

movie or to either of the

6:42

food people women in it? Yeah?

6:45

So I did not say this when

6:47

it came out in theaters, but I think

6:49

my family rented it on DVD as

6:52

soon as it did come out, and

6:54

basically since then, I don't

6:57

know. I think that was like twenty ten. Maybe it was on

6:59

the DVD. I've it every year

7:01

since. It

7:03

is my biggest comfort

7:05

movie, and it also has shaped

7:07

a lot of like it was my first exposure

7:09

to food writing, I think, and like understanding

7:12

food writing is something that people

7:15

do and care about. And

7:17

I mean, I'm not a food writer, but

7:19

I am a poet who writes

7:22

a lot about food. Both in my poetry

7:24

and in my critical work

7:26

on poetry, I look at food

7:29

as image and motif, and I

7:32

think cooking and the kind of culinary

7:34

stuff is very important to like my

7:37

identity formation as a Palestinian,

7:40

very like kind of typical daughter of immigrants,

7:42

like my mom cooks food for our

7:45

culture, and those are the only words I know in

7:47

Arabic kind of things. But

7:50

yeah, and I think a lot of this movie

7:53

kind of made me start thinking about that critically

7:57

and like, oh, well, this is actually something that could be

7:59

important out side of the home, in the kitchen,

8:02

And then I think later now

8:05

when I watch it, I think about parasocial

8:08

relationships.

8:10

Yes, yes, it's

8:12

a movie.

8:12

About parasocial relationships and how

8:15

they're good.

8:16

I don't know, to

8:18

be determined.

8:19

Yeah, well, if we're going to figure it out today.

8:22

Yeah, wait, so we just get to

8:24

ask you what is your favorite food?

8:27

Oh yeah, oh goshm

8:30

okay, top of my head, shishbrook,

8:33

which is like lamb dumplings

8:35

cooked in yogurt broth, is

8:38

my favorite food. It is it's

8:41

not that labor intensive, but it's more labor intensive

8:43

than like other things, because you gotta like make

8:46

the little dumplings and fill them. But it's so good.

8:48

The broth is like with garlic and

8:50

lemon and mint, and it is my

8:52

favorite food in the world.

8:54

God, that sounds incredible.

8:57

And most of the time our restaurants do not have it, and

8:59

so it's very much a thing that I only have at

9:01

home. But yeah, and so

9:03

now I write a lot of poems about parasocial

9:06

relationships because I want to recover

9:08

from them, and so this movie

9:10

is like, it's got everything for me.

9:13

Nice Jamie, What is your relationship

9:16

with the movie?

9:17

I saw this movie when it came out. I

9:19

don't remember if it was in theaters

9:22

or shortly after, but

9:25

this was a movie I definitely saw when

9:27

it came out. I was sort of wondering,

9:29

I think that they're like on the rewatch because I haven't seen

9:32

this movie in years, but I think I have

9:34

seen it like four or five times now. It's

9:36

a fun movie to have on and I

9:38

was wondering, I'm like, is this the viewing

9:41

that Julie is gonna win me over? And

9:44

I also like want to be careful

9:46

to separate real

9:48

life Julie from movie Julie.

9:51

And this was not

9:54

the time I feel like since I saw

9:56

this movie for the first time, I was just

9:58

like, Wow, this Adam's

10:00

story keeps interrupting this Meryl

10:02

Streep story that I'm way more interested

10:04

in. And yeah,

10:07

I still honestly do sort of feel

10:09

that way. Every time they cut back

10:11

to Amy Adams in that goddamn wig,

10:14

I'm like, here we go and the

10:16

wig is I have questions

10:18

about the wig that we need to talk

10:20

about the Wig. However, I

10:22

really like this movie. I think, especially talking

10:24

about it in the context of this show, there's

10:27

a ton to talk about. I'm really

10:29

interested in Julia Child's

10:32

life. I couldn't get through. Did either

10:34

of you give the new HBO

10:36

series from last year a try?

10:38

Yeah?

10:39

Yeah, I thought it was weird, and.

10:42

Well, we can talk about it later if it's not.

10:44

I mean, like, watching that make me

10:47

appreciate Julia and Julia Moore because ultimately

10:49

we got Meryl Streep playing Julia Child

10:52

like that feels like a

10:54

victory in and of itself. And this is

10:56

Nora Frown's final movie, and I think,

10:58

like Norah f on Is, I

11:01

don't know, like so many themes from her

11:03

work and her writing are coming together in this

11:05

movie. Whether I like Julie or

11:07

Not, where it's like

11:10

women turning their lives around and

11:12

women connecting with food and the cities

11:15

they live in, and you know, very

11:17

little diversity, just like things that are

11:19

inherent to the Nora Efron canon. And

11:22

I love nor ef I especially, I think

11:25

more so than any of her movies. I really love

11:27

her essay collections the most.

11:29

Everyone should listen to a Nora Efron audio

11:32

book. They're very soothing. But

11:34

yeah, my issues with this movie have been very

11:36

consistent, but I think they are

11:38

really fun to talk about because

11:40

you get to be like, you're never gonna

11:42

believe what Amy Adams character

11:45

talks about all day at work, and it

11:47

is nine to eleven. You

11:49

don't expect nine to eleven to be such a major

11:51

plot point in the Julia Child movie,

11:55

but that's why this movie's built

11:58

different. Caitlin, what's your history with this movie?

12:01

I will tell you in a second, but first I looked

12:03

up Bechamel sauce. Oh my

12:05

god, I'm gonna tell you what it is

12:07

in my finest Julie Child impression.

12:11

Bechamel sauce is one

12:13

of the mother sauces of

12:15

French cuisine. This sauce

12:18

is made from a white roue and

12:21

milk seasoned with ground

12:24

nutmeg. The main ingredients are

12:26

butter, flour and milk. The

12:29

end. That's what I pulled from Wikipia.

12:32

That was really good.

12:33

We're standing and cheering. That's

12:36

pretty good.

12:37

Anyway.

12:38

My relationship with this movie, I had

12:40

seen it once before, not long after it

12:42

came out, and I was like, wow,

12:45

I like Meryl Streep.

12:49

You're also part of the movie Julie Hater

12:51

Patrol.

12:52

Well, sorry if this is blasphemy,

12:54

but I've never been a fan of Amy Adams.

12:57

I find her a bit irritating

13:00

most roles she's in.

13:01

Sorry, everyone really fucked

13:03

up to say.

13:04

I can't help it.

13:05

We've done a whole Amy Adams months

13:07

on the Patreon and we've never talked about

13:10

this.

13:10

Wait did we?

13:12

Yeah, we did Amy Adams. She can do it

13:14

all month?

13:15

Oh whoa wait?

13:16

Okay, arrival and enchanted

13:19

because she can do it all.

13:21

Yeah. I guess I was

13:23

just like holding my tongue

13:26

because I was like.

13:27

This is shocking to me. This

13:29

was like two years ago.

13:31

Yeah, I remember now, but yeah,

13:33

I don't know. I've always found her a bit I

13:36

don't know, just not for me, not for me.

13:38

Look, it's okay, speaker truth, thank

13:41

you.

13:41

Really brave to come forward with.

13:43

That, honestly, really brave because Amy

13:45

Adams fans don't fuck

13:48

around. There's like a whole

13:50

section of YouTube that's dedicated to discussing

13:52

why Amy Adams does not yet have an

13:55

oscar. And I've watched a

13:57

lot of videos.

14:00

Well, don't ask me that question because

14:02

I'll be mean about it anyway.

14:05

But I do love Meryl Streep and I love Stanley Tucci,

14:07

so I'm having fun

14:09

when they're on screen. I generally like

14:11

the movie, you know, I like Nora Efron's

14:14

work, and I'm

14:17

excited to talk about it. Although

14:19

if it's a movie about like French

14:23

food making, I'm gonna choose Chaco

14:25

Lot every time. I mean, okay, Alfred

14:27

Molina alert.

14:28

For Velina Chocolate coma like hard

14:31

to top. I think that there's like a bunch

14:34

of actor parings in this movie, where like Meryl

14:36

Streep had just worked with Amy Adams on

14:38

Doubt the year before, so they're like

14:41

engaging in a pretty severe vibe

14:43

shift in this movie,

14:45

and then she had also worked with I mean more famously,

14:48

I guess worked with Stanley Tucci. And Devilwaar's Prada

14:50

a few years before this. Right, anyways,

14:53

that's six degrees of Beryl. I

14:55

do think it's weird that, Yeah, doubt and then this

14:57

movie coming out less than a year apart

14:59

is bold.

15:01

Yeah truly. Yeah,

15:03

but in a case, let's take

15:05

a quick break and then we'll come back for

15:08

the recap.

15:17

And we're back.

15:19

Okay. So here is

15:22

Julie and Julia, based

15:25

on two books,

15:27

based on two true stories. It's

15:30

the late nineteen forties.

15:32

When the movie opens, we meet Julia Child

15:35

played by Meryl Streep and her

15:37

husband Paul Wait.

15:39

I kept meaning to look up how tall Meryl

15:41

Streep actually is. I was just

15:43

gonna ask because

15:46

I thought that there are so many,

15:48

like funny, practical camera

15:51

tricks to make her Yeah, she's five six,

15:53

Julia Child is six to two. I appreciate

15:56

that the movie is like, she was six too, and

15:58

we'll prove it. Jane Lynch is her sister. But

16:02

I feel like the whole movie, Meryl Streep

16:04

is standing on an apple

16:07

box in a lot of shots, and

16:09

she's often standing a little

16:11

closer to the camera than everyone else,

16:13

so she looks bigger and

16:16

I was like, wow, movies are amazing.

16:19

It's just like Lord of the Rings.

16:23

It's true.

16:23

Yeah, Gandalf is so tall in

16:25

The Hobbit, and so in this scenario, Stanley

16:28

Tucci is a Hobbit Merylyn Streep

16:31

is gandalfrual, brutal.

16:34

This is a good short King movie

16:37

as and also it's I

16:39

was looking at the letterbox reviews for this movie

16:42

and one of the top ones was like, this movie

16:44

takes place in a fictional world

16:46

where husbands are supportive, and I was like,

16:48

yeah.

16:49

I cannot wait to talk about the husband

16:52

one. But

16:54

anyway, so we meet Julia Child and her husband

16:56

Paul, played by Stanley Tucci. They have

16:58

just moved to Paris. They are

17:00

Americans, but Paul is a

17:03

diplomat, so you know he's abroad

17:05

working.

17:06

He's in the CIA, which I feel

17:08

like, where is really He's

17:10

in the literal CIA, and they didn't call

17:13

it the CIA yet, So I feel like the movie really

17:15

gets away with not being like Julia

17:17

Child's career is brought to you by the CIA,

17:21

much like here comes my Bummer

17:23

thing I love to bring up. Ina Garten's

17:25

career is brought to you by

17:28

the Blackstone Group aka some

17:30

of the darkest, most fucked up Wall Street

17:32

money in the world. In a Garden's

17:34

adorable husband Jeffrey, Right,

17:37

Jeffrey he worked for Nixon, Ford and

17:39

Carter and then went to Wall Street working

17:41

for Lehman Brothers and the Blackstone Group.

17:44

That can't be good, Like, there's

17:46

just so there's just like

17:48

two extremely iconic

17:51

women chefs who got

17:54

some kickback from some of the worst institutions

17:57

in the world. But the Julia

17:59

Child's CIA pipeline,

18:01

I don't know. We'll talk about this in the context

18:03

area too, because this movie is

18:06

not going to touch the CIA stuff. They're

18:08

like, well, they're a good part of the

18:10

CIA, right, so already

18:14

we're struggling.

18:16

I was unclear what his job was because

18:18

in an early scene he seems to be at

18:20

like an art exhibit for art

18:23

that he made question mark. I was like, okay, he's

18:25

an artist, but wait a minute, he works at the embassy.

18:28

But also he's a spy question

18:30

I don't. I don't.

18:32

Season two of Julia

18:34

on HBO.

18:35

Is oh very.

18:38

Much about their past, catching

18:40

up to them.

18:42

Look at you. Watching season two.

18:46

I had like a fever for like four

18:48

days, and I was like, well, my school what

18:51

you do?

18:51

Yeah, that is how you end up watching something

18:53

like that. Wait did they get into it

18:56

in a meaningful way?

18:58

I still walk away from it uncertain of

19:00

both what they did during World War two

19:03

and what their politics were after World

19:05

War Two. But basically

19:07

the last half of the season is about the

19:10

TV station where like the Julia

19:12

Child Show is made getting investigated

19:15

by the FBI for leftist dissidents,

19:18

and they rally everyone together to thwart

19:21

the FEDS so that they can all keep

19:23

on doing their progressive

19:26

work.

19:27

God it yay.

19:29

But it's very much like we

19:31

believe in anti war movements.

19:33

We believe in fighting against

19:36

institutionalized racism, but we do not

19:38

believe in communism. Don't

19:40

think that we do. It's very funny, not

19:42

like funny, haha, but like, oh I don't understand

19:44

what's happening.

19:45

Yeah, So like, tell me what do you believe in?

19:48

Rent it bag?

19:49

I really don't know. I think personally, I like

19:51

to imagine Paul Child was a bisexual

19:54

communist.

19:55

Yes, God, I would love

19:57

that. I want to believe. I mean, it's like this movie.

20:00

He certainly succeeds in making you want to believe the

20:02

best in him because you don't cast Stanley

20:04

Tucci if you want to be rooting

20:06

against him unless you're watching The Lovely Bones,

20:09

and in that case, very much so. But

20:11

yeah, I know the history stuff. It's so the

20:14

Cia origin story. We can get more

20:16

into it. She like had to do

20:18

with the invention of shark repellent. It's

20:20

all very bizarre. We'll

20:22

get back to it.

20:23

Yeah, okay. Still on the first

20:26

sentence of the week, Julia

20:29

Child and her husband have just moved to Paris Frans

20:31

ever heard of it? And they are eating

20:34

delicious French food and Julia

20:36

is just like reveling in it.

20:38

She's making noises. She's like,

20:40

oh, so

20:43

many cummy noises. It's

20:47

in this movie. Across the twentieth

20:49

century, people are making coummy noises.

20:52

That's true. That's because eating is

20:54

like basically better than sex.

20:57

I would say in almost every example. Damn,

21:01

yeah, take that. All of the men

21:03

that I've had sex with, take that sex.

21:06

You weren't very good the

21:08

tight race for me, I don't

21:10

choose between my passion.

21:13

Mmmm. That's brave of you. Anyway.

21:15

We cut to two thousand and two and we meet

21:18

Julie Powell played by Amy Adams

21:20

and her husband Eric,

21:23

played by Chrismasina. They

21:25

have just moved to Queen's. She

21:28

works at this government call center

21:30

answering like devastating phone calls

21:32

all day from people affected by

21:35

nine to eleven.

21:36

Her job is nine to eleven. Yes, well,

21:39

Summer, you've read the book. I

21:41

don't quite understand the movie.

21:44

I don't think does a great job of telling you what her

21:46

job actually is.

21:48

From what I remember, it's like she's processing

21:51

insurance claims of people

21:53

affected in the various aftermath

21:56

of nine to eleven. But what's fun

21:58

about her book is she doesn't about

22:00

nine to eleven. She's writing very

22:03

soon after the events and with an

22:05

apathy that I have only seen

22:07

in like shit posters in

22:10

the twenty eighteens.

22:13

That is a great way to Yeah, there is like a

22:15

moment in the movie where it's like, oh no, she

22:17

cares, Yeah, But most of it

22:19

is like these phone calls are so annoying,

22:22

and the people that are trying

22:25

to get their insurance claims processed

22:28

are bombing her out and

22:30

they're rude, and you're just like, yeah,

22:33

now, Julie, like.

22:34

And it is a department made specifically

22:37

after nine to eleven to deal

22:39

with nine to eleven, which I think is interesting

22:43

in just like how do you get into

22:45

that? And it was as temping,

22:48

which you know, temping is a great way to get

22:50

a full time job, but you often don't care

22:53

about it totally to it.

22:55

Yeah, and her job is

22:57

established to basically be like what

23:00

a hard job she has? So she comes home

23:02

and finds comfort in cooking.

23:05

Ye, because that becomes her whole thing. And

23:07

then after a string of events

23:10

where Julie's mean friend writes

23:12

a rude article about her and

23:15

then starts a blog. This sort of also

23:17

happens in Sex and the City too. Yes,

23:19

do you remember this from Sex and This happens

23:21

to Carrie Bradshaw at one point

23:23

where they're like you're so cool and yet you're

23:25

thirty And then there comes out like

23:28

this woman sucks, like on.

23:30

The cover of a magazine.

23:34

Yeah. So Julie

23:37

is inspired to start her own blog

23:40

about cooking because she's like, well, if my mean friend

23:42

can have a blog, I can have a blog.

23:45

She doesn't have a nice friend, It's

23:47

like not really and also she's not a

23:49

nice friend. No, it's

23:52

interesting, and I was like, Nora, what are

23:54

you getting at with this. I don't understand,

23:58

not sure, but yeah, that first thing with her friends,

24:00

all of her friends are like, Julie,

24:03

shut up, Like anytime she opens

24:05

her mouth, they're like, can you stop talking?

24:08

They're just like calling her a loser. And then

24:10

you're like, I feel for Julie, And then later

24:12

on I'm like that she is the worst. Wait a

24:14

second, would I bully her? I don't know, movie

24:18

Julie.

24:18

In any case, she decides to start

24:20

a blog about cooking, and

24:23

specifically, she will blog about

24:25

cooking her way through Julia Child's

24:27

cookbook entitled Mastering

24:30

the Art of French Cooking, and

24:32

she'll do all five hundred and twenty four recipes

24:34

in the book over the course of one year.

24:38

We then cut back to Julia Child

24:40

in Paris again. Paul

24:42

is a diplomat and he's busy

24:44

with that, and so Julia wants to find

24:46

something to do with her time. She

24:49

tries a few things like making hats

24:51

and playing bridge, but what

24:53

she really loves to do is eat,

24:56

so she decides to take

24:58

up cooking. She tries to buy

25:00

a French cookbook in English, but

25:03

no such thing really exists, so

25:05

she decides to go to culinary school.

25:08

We cut back to Julie Powell. She

25:11

has started her blog and she started

25:13

cooking the recipes from Julia's

25:15

cookbook. It's a rocky start.

25:18

It seems like no one is reading her blog.

25:21

Her mom is not supportive of this project.

25:23

Who can relate? Who can relate?

25:26

You're writing for no one and

25:29

your mom doesn't understand what your job

25:31

is.

25:34

Also, one of the recipes requires

25:37

that she bone a duck, and

25:40

she's dreading doing that, and

25:42

that's going to pay off later in a not

25:44

very significant way.

25:46

Check out's duck.

25:49

Yep. Meanwhile, Julia starts

25:52

at Li Corombleau and

25:55

she ends up in a class with men

25:58

who judge her because her skills are are

26:00

not as advanced, so she works

26:02

extra hard to prove herself. She's chopping

26:04

onions about it, and then soon she

26:06

outperforms everyone

26:08

else in the class. Back

26:11

in Queen's Julie's readership

26:14

is growing. People are leaving comments

26:16

on her blog.

26:17

We mostly hear about people

26:20

that as her blog is growing through something

26:22

that I remember noticing the last

26:24

time I watched this movie. The only non

26:27

white character in the movie

26:29

whose face we see once

26:32

we see her face once it's aggressive.

26:35

She has a friend. I

26:37

guess, do we ever learn what her name? Should?

26:39

We do?

26:40

We learn her name? But

26:42

she's on screen for a total of maybe

26:44

five seconds, and that might even be

26:47

generous.

26:47

Part of it is doing a cute little like

26:50

hand class.

26:51

They're good enough friends to have a secret handshake.

26:54

She also works at nine to eleven. That's

26:56

all we know.

26:58

Her name is Ernestine. Yes, and

27:01

I'm going to try to figure out. Oh, she's played

27:03

by Crystal McCreery. Again,

27:06

she's on screen for

27:08

five seconds, but yes, that

27:10

is one of Julie's friends,

27:13

and she's talking about this project

27:15

with Ernestine at work. She's also talking

27:17

about how by doing this project,

27:20

Julie feels like she and Julia

27:22

Child have this like deep spiritual

27:24

connection and that it

27:26

feels like Julia is always in

27:29

the kitchen with her watching over her. But

27:32

also along the way, Julie

27:34

has several meltdowns

27:36

because, oh, she's got a murderal

27:38

lobster. Oh, some of the recipes are

27:41

hard. Oh, she drops food all over

27:43

the floor. But then she

27:45

gets a call from a journalist at

27:48

the Christian Science Monitor who wants to

27:50

arrange a dinner with her and

27:52

a very special guest, but we don't

27:54

know who it is yet because then we cut

27:56

back to Paris. Julia Child

27:59

meets two women, Louisette

28:01

and Simca, who are

28:04

teaching French cooking to Americans, and

28:06

they invite Julia to join

28:08

them. Then there's this whole sequence

28:11

where Julia's sister, Dorothy

28:13

played by Jane Lynch, comes for

28:15

a visit.

28:17

N The economy of Jane

28:19

Lynch's time is so amazing.

28:22

She's in there for like a

28:24

weirdly really long scene that just seems

28:27

to be there so that she and Meryl can

28:29

be like yelling together and it's really fun.

28:31

And then they're like, we're going to introduce you to a tall

28:33

guy, and then instead she meets

28:35

a short guy. Cut too. They're married,

28:37

and then she's gone from the movie

28:40

right wild.

28:41

But before she's gone, well

28:43

I get after she's gone, she sends a letter to

28:46

Julia saying that she's

28:49

gregnant, that Dorothy has gotten gregnant,

28:52

and this is basically there to establish

28:55

something that's not like explicitly stated,

28:57

but it seems like Julia has she's like

29:00

struggling with infertility, and yeah,

29:03

she really wants to have children, but she

29:05

and Paul are not able to and so like.

29:07

Learning that her sister is gregnant

29:10

is better sweet. Obviously she's happy for her sister,

29:12

but she's like, but I want

29:14

to be gregnant too, And she's

29:16

sad.

29:16

But I think is true to her

29:19

life as well.

29:20

Yeah, I believe so. Meanwhile,

29:22

Julia's friends Luisette and Simca

29:25

ask Julia to collaborate with them

29:27

on their cookbook. Their publisher

29:30

had rejected them, saying that they need to

29:32

make the book more accessible to Americans,

29:35

so they ask for Julia's help in doing that, and

29:37

she is delighted to help.

29:40

We cut back to Julie, who

29:43

reveals her mystery dinner guest.

29:46

It's Judith Jones, the editor

29:48

who was responsible for getting Julia Child's

29:50

cookbook published, and

29:53

Julie is making.

29:57

I love try to

30:00

say.

30:01

I'm like, how do you say this?

30:03

Bof Aby Adams doesn't sound one hundred

30:05

percent?

30:06

No, I love the like legend

30:08

of that dish recurring throughout the

30:10

movie. I've never eaten that in my life.

30:12

I've only heard of it in the

30:14

context of this movie. Speaks

30:17

to my ignorance towards French cuisine. I do

30:19

not care. It's beautiful it's a mystical

30:21

dish.

30:22

I just love the word bof Boo's

30:28

how it's like trying to say

30:30

ewan regret.

30:34

Boof

30:38

is it? I'm good

30:40

for yes, absolute

30:42

you. So Julie

30:44

is making this dish and she prepares it the night

30:47

before the dinner, but she falls

30:49

asleep while it's still in the oven and

30:51

it gets all burnt and ruined, and

30:53

she's freaking out. We cut back

30:55

to Julia. She's working on

30:58

the cookbook right now. It's

31:00

just a bunch of recipes. There's like no

31:02

fun or flair, and so

31:05

she's trying to liven

31:07

it up. I guess. Julia sends some

31:10

of the pages of the book to her pen

31:12

pal, Avis, who

31:14

then we learn is a

31:17

literary scout or something. She works in publishing,

31:19

and she shows them to an editor

31:22

at the publishing house Hutton Mifflin

31:25

in Boston, who loves the book

31:27

and wants to publish it. Julie

31:29

meanwhile makes a new

31:35

for her dinner with Judith that night,

31:38

and Julie is hopeful that maybe she'll

31:40

get a book deal after a meeting with

31:42

Judith, but then Judith cancels at the last

31:45

minute and they never reschedule. I guess

31:47

I know.

31:48

I was like damn, wow, Like yeah, she really

31:50

ends up getting her ass handed to her.

31:53

Julie is very upset and her husband

31:56

Eric is frustrated by this

31:58

whole project and all of her like

32:00

mishaps and meltdowns and he can't

32:02

wait till this year's over. He feels

32:04

like she's being very self absorbed

32:08

and that she's focusing more on her

32:10

readers than their marriage.

32:12

And they argue and he storms off, and

32:15

she's very upset. She keeps blogging,

32:18

but she stops cooking for a little while.

32:20

What I think is interesting and this like is

32:22

kind of dropped within the movie,

32:25

but like he makes a point

32:27

I think reasonably to say,

32:29

like, well, please don't write

32:31

about this argument

32:33

or me in your blog. And then

32:35

she almost does, and then she doesn't,

32:38

and you're like, okay, she's like learning how to

32:40

set boundaries a little better. But then

32:42

she just does any eyes and

32:45

then he's like, all right, I'm back. I was like,

32:47

she didn't you made one request,

32:49

like and I don't know. I was kind of on his side

32:52

on that. I was like, yeah, if someone doesn't, I feel

32:54

like it's the same deal. Like if you're in

32:56

like stand up. I'll always like be like, is it

32:58

okay if I talk about un stage? If

33:01

not, I won't do it. He's

33:03

like, don't blog about me. She's like, okay,

33:05

but what about in one day

33:08

and he's like, okay.

33:09

It's fine, okay, So back

33:11

to Julia. She and

33:13

Simca go to Boston to

33:16

meet with Julie's penpal Avis

33:20

in real life for the first time. They

33:22

also meet with the publishers

33:24

at Hutton Mifflin, but they

33:27

think the book is too long and complicated,

33:30

so Julia and Simca get

33:32

to work on revising it.

33:34

Meanwhile, Julie and

33:37

Eric make up and she starts

33:40

cooking again, and then a writer

33:42

from The New York Times comes over for dinner

33:44

to do a piece on her. And once

33:46

it's published, people are calling

33:48

her left and right. She's got publishers,

33:51

lit agents, TV producers. They're

33:54

offering her deals and then one

33:56

person calls her who is

33:58

writing a piece about Julia Chi Child's

34:00

ninetieth birthday, and apparently

34:02

Julia knows about Julie's blog

34:05

and thinks that Julie

34:07

is not serious or respectful.

34:10

So crushing, I know.

34:13

So she's like speculating as to why

34:15

Julia thinks that she's so

34:17

sad.

34:18

Her real life comments were not as

34:21

bad.

34:22

What did she say?

34:23

So, the piece that I

34:26

am pulling from is from tastingtable

34:29

dot com. I don't know if this is a

34:31

historically verifiable source, and so I can't

34:34

vouch for tasting table dot com. But it

34:37

seemed like the comments sounded very

34:39

cruel, and they like certainly weren't nice. But

34:41

it had more to do with Julia Child

34:44

didn't understand what a blog was.

34:46

Yeah, she's a ninety and was.

34:48

Like, why would she cook all of my recipes?

34:50

Like?

34:51

So she said she must not be much of a

34:53

cook, meaning like she must not be able

34:55

to write her own recipes. Why would like she didn't understand

34:57

the concept of a stunt blog because

35:00

she was ninety. So, but

35:03

I believe obviously that like if you just

35:05

heard that quote out of context in your Julie

35:08

crushing, miserable, horrible,

35:11

never meet your heroes. I hope your heroes never learn

35:13

you exist. Yeah,

35:16

I don't know. I guess I think it had more to do with

35:18

her being old and grouchy

35:21

and being like, what what is this?

35:24

Yeah, this sceneedd instill like a

35:26

deep fear in me, just like, oh, like,

35:28

I never want anyone that I ever admire to ever

35:30

know about me or see what I do or comment

35:33

on my work ever, because I won't be able to handle

35:35

it.

35:36

And I think it's like interesting too, at

35:39

least for the script. I don't know where the book lands on

35:41

it, but like where the movie lands

35:43

on it, where Christmasina

35:45

is like all that matters is that Julia Child

35:48

that lives in your head. And I was like, hmm,

35:50

I don't know that I agree with that at all.

35:54

It feels kind of like a bizarre

35:56

moral. I don't know. Yeah, I

35:58

was having difficulty with where because it's

36:01

like it is crushing and I think it's a

36:03

really interesting thing to explore, but that She's

36:05

just like, well, I guess I just am

36:07

gonna go with the fictional character Julia

36:10

instead, right, But that's the

36:12

parasocial relationship conversation we get

36:14

to have, I guess.

36:15

And then Julia Child

36:18

I think, dies before Julie

36:21

Powell ever gets a chance to meet her in real

36:23

life. And then I'm just like, oh, I did feel

36:26

bad for that is sad Julia in that

36:28

moment, But yeah, what I wrote in the

36:30

recap here is Julie's

36:32

very sad about Julia Child,

36:35

thinking that she's not like respectful

36:37

or serious. But then Julie

36:40

realizes that what Julia

36:42

thinks of her doesn't matter. What matters

36:45

is what Julie thinks of herself

36:48

question mark or something sort.

36:50

Of really unclear.

36:53

I don't know. I was like, Okay,

36:55

if I had like made all of act

36:58

cast right and then found out that Kathy

37:00

guys White was like, You're

37:03

not a serious person, it would be

37:05

crushing. But I feel

37:07

like it would just be really weird to be like, I actually

37:09

don't care what she thinks because it's like so

37:12

obvious that I

37:14

really do or why would I have

37:16

done any of this? But then it's I don't

37:18

know. I feel like maybe it's just like the Christmas

37:20

in a line of dialogue sort of being like, and

37:23

this is the lesson because

37:25

Julie, it seems like Julie at the end,

37:28

she goes to the exhibit

37:30

and is like, I love you, Julia, but like

37:32

which Julia the one in her head

37:34

or the real one?

37:35

The real one? Will never know, We'll never

37:37

know. In any case, we cut

37:40

back to Julie Child, Houghton,

37:42

Meflin rejects the book,

37:45

and so Julia is unsure what to do

37:47

next. She feels like she's wasted

37:50

eight years of her life writing this

37:52

book. But then, thanks

37:54

to her pen pal Avis, the

37:57

book comes across the desk of a

37:59

publisher named Judith Jones,

38:02

the one who was supposed

38:04

to meet with Julie and then it was

38:06

raining, so she canceled, and then they never rescheduled.

38:08

A question mark not sure, but anyway.

38:10

I mean, I'm on Ja's side

38:13

there too.

38:14

I love to cancel plan.

38:16

I know surely she's like, yeah, it's a little far,

38:18

sorry.

38:21

But yes. We meet Judith Jones

38:23

when she's a young publisher and she

38:26

loves the cookbook and

38:29

she wants to publish it and she thinks it's going

38:31

to revolutionize cooking in

38:33

the US, and Julia

38:36

is ecstatic. Back

38:38

to Julie, it's her last

38:40

day of this year long project and the last

38:42

of her five hundred and twenty four recipes where

38:45

she has to bone the duck,

38:47

and it is presented by the movie

38:49

as though it's gonna be this big

38:53

event because they keep referring to it,

38:55

and it feels like it's really building up to something. But

38:57

then she's like I did it and

39:01

there's no special moment or anything anyway.

39:03

Yeah, the cookie scene I remember is the lobster scene

39:06

from this movie. Yeah, the lobster scenems

39:08

fun.

39:08

That seems much scarier to me. Yeah,

39:11

especially, I mean, hygiene

39:14

doesn't really matter in a movie, right,

39:17

but like she's like touching the

39:19

phone with her raw chicken hands. She's

39:21

like, yeah, on the yenging

39:23

on the ground with raw chicken residue,

39:25

and she's like very brave, unafraid

39:28

of that. Yeah, and so like the grossest thing

39:30

to me about deeboning the duck is

39:32

like touching raw meat. Yeah, but she

39:34

seems fine with that, So I don't know. The live lobster

39:36

thing, I was like, oh, I simply would never do that, but

39:39

yeah, the raw meat is gross.

39:42

The rob meat is pretty nasty. Yeah,

39:45

the lobster. I think the lobster scene sticks with

39:47

me mainly because I would be petrified

39:49

to do that, and because

39:52

I like the music choice, like putting

39:55

Psycho, Like it's.

39:55

So silly, it's really fun.

39:57

Yes, there's talking heads in

40:00

the Meryl Street Julia Child

40:02

movie. That's fun.

40:04

Anyway, So she bones the duck and it

40:08

is fine. There's no problems

40:10

and she celebrates with her friends, and

40:13

then Julia and Eric go to the Julia

40:15

Child Museum in Cambridge,

40:18

Massachusetts.

40:19

Ever heard of that?

40:22

And then text on the

40:24

screen at the end of the movie says that mastering

40:27

the Art of French Cooking is in its forty

40:30

ninth printing. Julie

40:32

Pal's book Julie and

40:34

Julia was published in two thousand and five

40:36

and then made into a movie, and we

40:38

were like, I'm sorry, you mean the movie that we are

40:41

watching right now?

40:42

What?

40:44

Yeah, which is sad because it's like the last

40:46

frame that Nora Efron ever produced. But my boyfriend

40:48

was like, oh, fuck you. Like when they show at the end

40:50

where they're like and it's a movie,

40:52

You're like, I know, I know where I've been the last

40:55

two hours.

40:57

Yes, So that's the movie. Let's

40:59

take another quick break and we'll come back to

41:01

discuss

41:11

and we're back.

41:12

Is it cool if we talk about the real life

41:15

women before we get into

41:18

sultanly, because this is

41:20

the first time I've seen this movie since Julie Powell passed.

41:23

Yeah, she passed away very young, She's forty

41:25

nine. It was a brief sudden

41:27

illness and so I

41:29

want to be clear when I'm talking about the Julie

41:32

of this movie, I'm not talking about Julie Powell by

41:34

all accounts. She's a lovely person,

41:36

and God help you if

41:38

you are judged by blog

41:41

posts from the early two thousands for

41:43

the rest of your life, truly. Yeah,

41:46

So I just wanted to share a

41:48

little bit about her. There were a number

41:50

of lovely essays eulogizing

41:53

her when she passed in twenty twenty

41:55

two. That also touches on something

41:57

that I memory hold but vaguely

42:00

remember about the time that this movie

42:02

came out, which was that Julia and Julia

42:04

came out in two thousand and five. It was a very

42:06

successful book. It was turned into this movie in nine

42:09

and Julie Powell released her only other

42:11

book shortly thereafter, and

42:13

she was torn to shreds

42:16

over it because it dealt

42:19

with the marriage that we see

42:21

presented very lovingly, and they remained

42:23

married until her death. So I don't

42:25

know about it, but there was a lot of infidelity between

42:27

the two of them, and Julie Powell

42:30

wrote about it. I haven't read the book, but

42:32

I guess pretty honestly. In

42:35

this book that came out three

42:37

months after the movie. So I think the idea was

42:40

the movie is going to really endear

42:42

everyone to Julie Powell, and then we'll want

42:44

to read her new book. But I think it sort of ended

42:47

up in a way that feels very connected

42:49

to late Aught's

42:51

misogyny, kind of

42:53

blowing up in her face in an unfair way

42:55

where she's writing very I mean,

42:58

I hope with her husband's permission and

43:00

they remained married. Let's hope, so but

43:03

you know, being too imperfect

43:06

or writing about something that was so at

43:08

odds with the movie character that had

43:10

done so well over the summer. And

43:12

I vaguely remember that, and it

43:15

seems like in retrospect it was like very

43:17

unfair to her. They wanted to

43:19

just share something from an

43:21

essay by I write her named Emily Ferris

43:24

in Bonapetite that was released in

43:26

late twenty twenty two, shortly after she passed away.

43:29

That seems really kind, because

43:31

I guess Julie Powell became very well known

43:34

for mentoring young writers, which not enough

43:36

people do. She said,

43:38

when I was broken in between apartments, she paid

43:40

me to house it when I probably should have been paying

43:42

her to sublet. When I cracked the screen

43:44

on my laptop. A few weeks before my book was due,

43:46

she took me to the Max Doore in front of me the money

43:49

for a new one until I got my next advance check

43:51

from my publisher. And when I found myself

43:53

without a place to stay while covering a food blogging

43:55

panel, she sent me to her parents' house.

43:58

Even when her life got messy, both peron similar professionally,

44:01

she continued to give to me, to her

44:03

other friends and families, to animal rescue organizations,

44:06

and to a public that seemed to turn on her when she

44:08

showed them more of who she really was. So

44:11

yeah, I just wanted to shout out

44:14

Julie Powell and yeah,

44:16

gone far too soon.

44:18

That's so sweet. Oh my god.

44:20

I know I was like anytime

44:22

I read about like mentorship in general,

44:24

but especially like mentors between like women

44:26

and famis, I'm like, ugh, she

44:29

seemed like a really lovely person. And

44:31

I'm kind of curious about her second

44:33

book me too.

44:34

I never read it. I read her

44:36

first one, and you know, she writes

44:39

about her husband so wonderfully.

44:42

I think that's like, honestly bummer.

44:44

But my favorite part of the book,

44:49

it's the way she writes about her husband, and I think

44:51

it'd be I don't know, I kind of do want to read the second

44:53

one, and just I don't know if you're

44:55

going to read blogs and personal essay writing

44:58

and then be cruel to people when they're honest.

45:00

It's like, well, read a different genre.

45:02

Right right. It's like they only like the version

45:04

of her that is rom

45:07

com her and actual her

45:10

is not acceptable. Yeah. The book

45:12

is called Cleaving, a Story

45:14

of Marriage, Meet and Obsession, which,

45:17

according to scholarly journal Wikipedia,

45:20

details her experiences learning to butcher

45:23

at Fleischer's butcher Shop in New York

45:25

and the effects of affairs by both

45:27

her and her husband on their marriage.

45:30

And yeah, it seems like most

45:32

of the negative reviews were just like

45:35

how dare you talk about

45:38

this? So fuck

45:41

that? And then we have Julia Child, who

45:44

was in the CIA, Like just

45:46

she's in the

45:48

CIA, unclear. I also

45:50

like, don't trust anything

45:53

that is published on the CIA website.

45:55

Julia Child has her own like clickbait

45:58

page on c i A dot gov.

46:01

You're like, this is some skill, good Jesus.

46:04

So if there's ever been

46:06

a time to consider the source, it's

46:09

here. But yeah, the Julia

46:11

Child CIA landing page says

46:14

that she was with the so it was called

46:16

the OSS at the time. That turns into the CIA,

46:18

the Office of Strategic Services.

46:22

It is said that she joined the CIA

46:24

because she was too tall to be in the military.

46:30

What a sentence. Okay,

46:33

so this is very CIA website. Working

46:36

as a research assistant in the Secret Intelligence

46:38

Division, Julia typed up thousands

46:40

of names on little white note cards.

46:43

What what are the names? What

46:46

happened to the why? That's

46:50

all it says about what

46:52

she was up to, and then it gets to the fun part,

46:54

which is the shark repellent. Julia

46:57

then worked with the OSS Emergency c Rest

47:00

You Equipment section, where she worked in close

47:02

proximity to offers who developed shark

47:04

repellent, and that she met

47:06

her husband in the CIA,

47:10

and then he got promoted in the CIA

47:13

and they got to move to France

47:15

for the CIA. Okay,

47:18

So it feels like this very bizarre

47:21

two hander where on one hand, she

47:24

is a woman in the early twentieth

47:26

century who clearly very much wants

47:28

a career in a way that was not acceptable

47:30

at the time, and then the

47:33

career is in the CIA, and so it's

47:36

like a real

47:38

girl boss pickle that we're getting ourselves

47:40

into with

47:42

all this. And she's also comes from

47:45

a lot of money and is basically rich

47:47

her entire life,

47:49

which I think is the way

47:51

that class is dealt with in this movie. I think is really

47:53

interesting. That's

47:56

my context corner. Nora

47:58

Afron not much to know other than she like, I love

48:00

food, and

48:02

so that's why she wanted to make this movie. She loved

48:05

food.

48:07

To speak to the movie, because a lot of that

48:09

stuff, especially with Julia Child, is like pretty

48:12

glossed over as far as her like

48:14

former work in the CIA,

48:17

and what Paul's job is. Again, I thought

48:19

he was like an artist

48:22

or an architect or something, because they're like he designed

48:24

the rooms that won World

48:26

War Two, and I'm like, what is his job

48:29

anyway, So as far as what the movie

48:31

presents, I do appreciate

48:34

that this is a movie largely about women

48:37

finding purpose and pursuing

48:40

something that they love and sticking

48:43

with it despite obstacles

48:46

along the way. And maybe those obstacles

48:48

are lobsters, maybe they

48:50

are McCarthyism, you

48:52

know, who's to say. But I

48:54

also appreciate that it's very

48:57

rare that there is a movie where we can

48:59

talk about a female character and

49:02

her husband, because it's almost always

49:04

talking about a female character because she's

49:07

his wife. So I

49:09

like the kind

49:11

of framing of everything here,

49:13

and I do want to talk about the husbands

49:17

and their level of support,

49:19

but yeah, I just I like

49:22

that this is a movie

49:24

where it's like, Wow, women

49:26

should pursue their dreams.

49:30

Or even just to like speak to

49:32

the in even lower Bar a

49:34

movie where like women are eating as

49:36

much as they want the whole time,

49:39

and it's like two women who love to eat

49:41

and they're not like caught in

49:43

like Gilmore Girl syndrome where they still

49:45

look like they go to forty pilates classes

49:48

a week even though all they do is eat, like you

49:50

know, and it's still very movie fied.

49:53

But that yeah, like there's so few stories about

49:55

like women and food that

49:57

is like celebratory, so right.

50:00

And I think there's minimal there.

50:02

Definitely is like just mentions

50:05

of like, oh, I'm gaining a lot of weight because

50:07

I'm eating fattening food, you know, But

50:09

there's way less like kind of yeah,

50:12

body shamey or like language

50:15

that would lead you to have an eating disorder

50:17

in this movie that I think you would expect

50:20

right, which is fun. It's another reason why I like

50:22

it so much. It is so much about the indulgence

50:24

and enjoying food and allowing

50:27

yourself to enjoy it, you know, like Julie

50:29

doesn't stop cooking because she feels

50:31

tired from eating a lot of butter. You know,

50:34

Yeah that happens. And yeah, it feels very

50:36

counter to other films of this type

50:39

and time. You don't really walk away

50:41

from it being like, oh god, you want it, you want

50:43

to eat the chocolate cake.

50:44

Yeah, you don't leave the movie being like they should

50:46

have eaten less.

50:47

Like, yeah, more, they

50:49

should have eaten more. Yeah.

50:52

There are definitely like dated

50:54

and it is a period piece even at the time is coming

50:56

out. Yeah, like dated ways of talking.

50:58

But it was mostly negative

51:01

self talk. I can't think of a lot

51:03

of examples. I don't know if any of

51:05

like someone commenting Onlie

51:08

and Julia's body. It was more of

51:11

mostly Julie being hard on herself.

51:14

But I mean again, Barra on the floor.

51:16

But I think, you know, like a lesser

51:18

movie would have had like

51:20

the husband's commenting on their

51:22

bodies. True, and the

51:25

fact that it was mostly relegated to

51:27

some good old fashioned negative self talk

51:31

felt at least like

51:33

a less bad version. And I also don't

51:35

know from Julie's book

51:37

if that is like something that is from the book. I just

51:40

don't know a little bit.

51:41

Yeah, she's funny, you know, like

51:44

she has the Quippi Bloggie early

51:46

two thousand's voice. And I think that kind

51:48

of self degradation that

51:50

is mostly a joke is just like

51:53

kind of part of the flare, you know. But

51:55

I think in the context of the movie, it adds like

51:57

a realistic character dimension.

52:00

It makes Julie feel

52:02

like, yeah, she's she's

52:04

messy, it's.

52:05

Fun, she's

52:07

just like me. She hates herself. Yeah right,

52:13

yeah, I mean just the idea of a movie

52:15

about women and food. And

52:18

I mean I get like the parallels

52:20

between the two of them are significant.

52:23

I think that an interesting big chasm

52:26

between them that the movie doesn't

52:29

really look at. And also it's like, I don't

52:31

know, I don't go to Nora Ephron for thoughtful

52:34

commentary on class,

52:37

but this movie, Yeah, it's interesting because

52:39

of the stories they're based on. Class has

52:41

to be present, and we're still

52:44

firmly in the middle

52:46

to upper middle class

52:48

when it comes to Julie.

52:51

But there is a not insignificant

52:53

class difference between Julie and Julia,

52:55

and I feel like a lot of how like

52:58

listening to Julie be like,

53:00

why can't I be more like Julia? And I kept

53:02

being like, money, Yeah, money

53:05

kind of your personality, but it's a

53:07

lot of it is money, Like where Julia

53:11

Child, for all of her valid struggles,

53:14

never had to worry about money,

53:16

and that tends to make you a more

53:18

pleasant person if you never have to worry

53:21

about jack shit like and the

53:23

ways that class colors Julie's

53:25

story, it is kind of a Cinderella

53:27

story where she has to write her way out

53:29

of her insurance claims

53:33

job, but even stuff with like she

53:35

can't afford to live in the area of town

53:38

she wants to and that has an effect on

53:40

her career when she gets canceled on because

53:42

it's too far, which again I

53:44

celebrate that cancelation, but like, there's

53:47

a little class stuff in there, and I

53:49

don't know, it's not perfectly done. I just thought it was,

53:52

Like one of the more bizarre

53:54

parts of this movie to be is that doesn't seem

53:56

to really register

53:59

in the constant comparison

54:01

between these women's life trajectories.

54:05

I think Julia Child is often

54:07

used as like fake deep

54:09

inspiration of like, Julia didn't

54:11

learn to cook until she was in her forties,

54:14

and it's like, well, because

54:16

she lived a very privileged life in which

54:18

she didn't have to learn how to cook for herself

54:20

and then had an incredible abundance of time

54:23

in which all she had to do was

54:25

what she wanted, right, And

54:27

I don't see that really being engaged with

54:29

culturally until recently, maybe

54:32

even it's a member.

54:34

I think a lot of us are very distracted by

54:36

the reality of what growing up

54:39

wealthy can do for a person and

54:41

trying to like we don't all have the same hours

54:43

in the day, the like part,

54:47

especially like coming

54:50

home to cook six hour

54:53

meal, Like that's so commendable.

54:55

I would I when I did have to

54:57

go to an office when I came home,

55:00

I would never do something that would takes that long. And

55:02

just thinking, well, if you have a husband

55:05

who's supporting me, you have theoretically family

55:07

money, although you know she doesn't have a great Julia

55:09

didn't have a great relationship with her father as we see,

55:12

But of course you can do the

55:14

thing that takes hours and hours and hours

55:17

right, it's not glamorous to think about that, I

55:19

guess.

55:19

Right, Yeah, But it's like with Julie, do you

55:22

do see that, Like it's taking more

55:25

of a toll on her life than it

55:27

took on Julia's because she has

55:29

to have a normal job

55:31

and commute and do all the things that most

55:33

people need to do. Yeah, and

55:35

she's still privileged to be able to, you know, find

55:38

the energy to have the hobby. Like there is still a

55:40

degree of privilege in that. But yeah, they're operating

55:42

in different levels of privilege,

55:44

which feels kind of wild to say because

55:46

they are, you know, they're both white women

55:49

that have you know, sort of the world

55:51

bows to them both eventually

55:53

anyways, And again, like Nora Afron,

55:56

this is not really

55:58

anymore than I'm not trying to compare

56:01

them outside of this, but Nora

56:03

Efron also grew up very wealthy,

56:06

you know, the odds she had had a lot

56:08

to do with misogyny and not a lot to

56:10

do with class. And

56:12

I feel the same way about Emerald Finelle,

56:15

where you're just like, here's a director

56:17

that I'll always give their stuff a shot,

56:20

but I'm not going to them for valuable

56:22

insight on class. Because they're

56:24

just like not equipped to do it.

56:27

What you didn't think Saltburn had important

56:29

comment to And I'm kidding.

56:30

Well, it's like she's like a jewelry heiress

56:32

or something, and you're just like, yeah, this is not

56:34

the director I'm going to for this.

56:37

But I like to look at pretty thing.

56:40

I do like the way the PayPal

56:42

is a detail of a plot point to show

56:45

that Julius readers love her. Yes,

56:49

I love the early two thousands and of it.

56:51

I love the beginning of blogging and just

56:54

hearing those things. It's so fun. I love when

56:56

Christmasina explains blogging.

57:01

It's really great, just like the herculean

57:04

effort of beginning a blog

57:06

on Salon dot com. You're like, wow,

57:09

what a moment of time. Or when she gets competitive

57:11

with her friend who's it

57:13

just is like the way that female

57:15

friends work in Julie's world is

57:18

weird to be in Julia's world. I kind of

57:20

love it, Like I don't really have any

57:22

notes there Julie's world. I'm like, what

57:24

is Nora try to say to us here or

57:26

Julie. I'm not sure where it's coming from. But

57:29

the friend that humiliates her

57:32

also has a blog about having sex

57:34

in a plane question Mark and

57:37

yeah, honestly not

57:40

out of the I don't know. Early

57:43

blogging was so wild. People were just

57:45

saying.

57:46

Whatever, yeah, yeah,

57:48

Well, to speak a little bit more to Julie's

57:51

friends, yes.

57:54

What's going on?

57:55

She has the mean girl boss

57:58

friends who are very condescended. One

58:00

of them is Casey Wilson. The other one

58:02

writes this like rude piece

58:05

about Julie becoming

58:07

thirty or something. I don't even know what

58:09

the topic is.

58:11

If I were Julie, that would have affected

58:13

me far worse. I was

58:15

glad that for Julie. She was like,

58:18

oh, I need to start writing again. I

58:20

was like, oof, My takeaway would have been

58:22

far more negative.

58:24

How could a friend write a hit piece on

58:26

you and then you just keep going?

58:29

When it happened on Sex and the City, it wasn't her friend,

58:32

No, it was a person.

58:34

It was a person.

58:35

I don't know. I really love viewing

58:37

this like incredibly inaccessible version of

58:39

female friendship to me and like, I simply do

58:42

not. This doesn't register

58:44

to me, just incredible like coterie

58:47

of girl bosses.

58:48

I don't know, Yeah, I don't know what

58:50

the intent is there. But then she has another friend,

58:52

Sarah played by mary Lynn Rushcub,

58:55

who seems not mean,

58:57

She seems to be supportive. She comes over and helps

58:59

Julie cook. Sometimes she

59:01

doesn't have that much you know, screen time or narrative

59:04

significance, but at least like Julie

59:06

is given a friend who is kind

59:08

to her and we like

59:10

that, especially in contrast to her mean friends.

59:13

And then she has these other friend that we mentioned

59:16

Ernestine. It's Julie's

59:18

one black friend. It's like the only

59:20

person of color on screen with

59:22

any sort of speaking.

59:24

Role, truly. Shot for shot, you

59:26

see like her eyes

59:29

was, you see the back of her head several

59:31

times, and then you see her whole face in

59:34

the final shot she appears in like it

59:36

could not be more careless.

59:39

Yeah, the movie doesn't care at all about

59:41

her character. But then so there's a scene

59:44

where I think it's Julie

59:47

Eric and her friend

59:49

Sarah. Sarah comes over

59:52

and Julie's like, what do

59:54

you think it means if you don't like your

59:56

friends, referring to her mean girl boss

59:58

friends.

59:59

Right, who she's right to not let

1:00:02

like?

1:00:02

Right?

1:00:02

Yeah, that seems so confusing.

1:00:04

And Sarah responds with it's completely

1:00:06

normal to not like your friends. And then

1:00:09

Eric says, well, men like their

1:00:11

friends, and then Sarah says, we're

1:00:13

not talking about men. Who's talking about

1:00:15

men? Which I think passes the Bachdel

1:00:18

test.

1:00:18

But anyway, it also I'm like,

1:00:20

okay, Eric, where are your friends at haven't

1:00:22

seen them in the movie? Where are these friends

1:00:24

you like so much?

1:00:27

Doesn't seem like they're really around, are they? Yeah?

1:00:29

That felt very boomery

1:00:32

logic to me. I like couldn't quite get my head around

1:00:35

it because it was like, if we're talking

1:00:37

about that friend, Yeah,

1:00:40

she shouldn't be your friend anymore.

1:00:42

They're me like she betrayed

1:00:45

you and like humiliated

1:00:47

you in a national magazine. I don't think that

1:00:49

has to do with like friendships between women.

1:00:51

It has to do with this woman being a

1:00:53

bad person.

1:00:55

Right, And to Julie's

1:00:58

credit, it seems like they're not friends

1:01:00

anymore, at least in the context of the movie. They

1:01:02

don't hang out after that, but who knows

1:01:04

what the real life situation was.

1:01:06

But it's like, do the other girl bosses cut her out?

1:01:08

Like what?

1:01:09

It was really interesting in all of the Dinners when she has

1:01:11

people over, Yeah, those women

1:01:13

do not return, And I wondered if

1:01:16

it was like, would they not eat the food. They

1:01:18

wouldn't, they wouldn't let

1:01:20

her.

1:01:20

Have a friend's Oh yeah, they were

1:01:22

like stop eating. Yeah, that whole

1:01:25

scene. I watched it a couple

1:01:27

of times because it's like way

1:01:29

all over the place. It's just really bizarre.

1:01:31

It feels atonal for the rest of the

1:01:33

movie too.

1:01:35

Yeah, I agree, it feels cartoonish.

1:01:37

But then the way that friendships between

1:01:39

women are in Julia Child's world, I

1:01:41

thought were like really thoughtful and gentle and

1:01:44

like not without conflict, but still

1:01:47

there's a ton of support

1:01:50

and like there are friends of Julia Child's

1:01:52

that are, you know, on equal footing of

1:01:55

like narrative importance as her

1:01:57

husband, and that's

1:02:00

really nice. I mean, I love the scenes with

1:02:02

Juliet and Simca. I

1:02:06

love that they're like, we're gonna cut our

1:02:08

third friend out of it, and then they

1:02:11

experience a little pushback and Julia's like, never

1:02:13

mind, because I would have done the

1:02:15

same thing.

1:02:17

Yeah, because they're confronting Louisette

1:02:20

because she's not doing her share of the work,

1:02:22

and Julia and Simca

1:02:25

are frustrated, rightfully so, because

1:02:28

they're doing all the work and they sit

1:02:30

Louisette down and then she's

1:02:32

like, I'm going through a divorce and they're

1:02:34

like, ooh, yeah,

1:02:36

okay, but then they still kind of negotiate her down

1:02:39

to like only receiving eighteen percent or something

1:02:41

like that. Yeah, and they're like, your name

1:02:43

has to be small, but then Julia

1:02:45

is like, no, your name can be big on the cover. It's

1:02:47

fine.

1:02:49

I love a fellow conflict avoidant.

1:02:52

Yeah, sure, but I do appreciate,

1:02:54

like, I really liked that dynamic

1:02:57

between those three friends and

1:02:59

how I like have to confront the

1:03:01

one friend and yeah, it

1:03:04

felt authentic. And

1:03:06

then she also has a deep friendship

1:03:09

with Avis, who she like

1:03:11

is penpals with for eight years, and then they finally

1:03:14

meet on screen and the.

1:03:15

AVS reveal is so

1:03:18

honestly, this is really sweet and also

1:03:20

so weird because you're like, wow, it's

1:03:22

AVS and then it's just like a tiny

1:03:25

Avis.

1:03:27

I love that so much. I feel

1:03:30

very close to Julia

1:03:32

Child in that way. I have many friends that I've only

1:03:34

communicated with online for

1:03:36

many years pre Tumblr

1:03:40

a pen pal. It's so sweet.

1:03:42

I think that Julia story just is less

1:03:44

messy in general, But like the Julia

1:03:46

story navigates like, yeah, meeting

1:03:49

a friend you've only written to for

1:03:51

the first time in this really sweet and cathartic

1:03:54

way. But the parasocial relationships

1:03:56

in Julie's worlds are weird

1:04:00

confusing. Julie's world

1:04:02

is weird and confusing. Yeah, in general,

1:04:05

I think she should divorce all of her friends.

1:04:07

I did like the Marilyn Ris cub character, like

1:04:09

she is a sweet, supportive friend, but also,

1:04:12

yeah, you're being a bitch, like, I mean,

1:04:15

you know, language choice, eh,

1:04:17

But she is being unbelievably self

1:04:19

centered in that scene because she's like,

1:04:21

by the way, I'm going through a really big breakup

1:04:23

and Amy Adams is like, oh my god, I totally

1:04:26

forgot anyways back to me,

1:04:28

and I was like, whoop, bad friend.

1:04:30

So funny.

1:04:31

Yeah, she is like not a great friend

1:04:33

either. I don't know, MESSI is.

1:04:36

That a good transition to talk about the husbands,

1:04:39

because that's yeah, Julie's husband,

1:04:41

Eric's big problem with this

1:04:44

whole project, and I have Okay, here my

1:04:46

thoughts on it. What do you think? Okay, So we

1:04:48

see him being generally supportive

1:04:50

to Julie, especially at first

1:04:53

he helps her set up the blog.

1:04:55

He encourages her verbally

1:04:58

and with compliments and stuff like that he loves her cooking.

1:05:01

But then there's that rocky part in the middle

1:05:03

where he gets frustrated and

1:05:06

he bails for a little

1:05:08

bit, and he calls her

1:05:10

narcissistic and all this stuff, and

1:05:13

I feel like we are not given enough information to

1:05:15

know if him, you

1:05:17

know, being pissed off and accusing her of

1:05:20

being self absorbed is justified,

1:05:23

or if it's just a man expecting

1:05:25

certain behavior from a woman.

1:05:28

And also another component of it, which

1:05:30

the movie doesn't like frame it this way at all

1:05:32

or examine, But this

1:05:35

happens a lot in real life in hetero

1:05:37

couples, where men feel threatened

1:05:40

if their wife is doing better than them professionally

1:05:42

or financially, or if they're like, you

1:05:45

know, their wife is having success

1:05:47

in some regard and men

1:05:50

feel very threatened by that a lot of the

1:05:52

time. And I was like, okay, is there a component

1:05:54

of that with the Eric characters,

1:05:56

he threatened by this success

1:05:59

that his his wife is finding kind

1:06:01

of suddenly, And again the movie doesn't

1:06:04

examine that or really acknowledge that, But

1:06:06

I was like, hmm, this does happen a lot,

1:06:08

So I wonder if that was part of it,

1:06:10

or if it's just Julie being

1:06:14

selfish and uncompromising. But

1:06:16

you know, who can say yeah.

1:06:18

I was also struggling to yeah.

1:06:21

Summer thoughts.

1:06:22

I don't know. I think every time I watch

1:06:24

the movie, I feel a little differently about their

1:06:26

fight. I watched it twice before this, and

1:06:29

so I watched it last week and I watched it last night, and

1:06:31

between those different times I felt

1:06:33

differently. I think it is

1:06:36

very alienating for someone

1:06:39

who you love and who supports

1:06:41

you to make you feel worse when

1:06:43

you're having a meltdown by responding

1:06:45

in a way that is like, you

1:06:48

know, like she's very upset because something is

1:06:50

very important to her, and his response

1:06:52

is kind of brushing it

1:06:55

off. I don't even think I

1:06:57

feel like it wasn't kind of a twist of like, well, let's

1:06:59

be positi if we have good food and you can

1:07:01

reschedule, you know, like with Judith Jones

1:07:03

rescheduling, It was a little like

1:07:05

why is this important? And that can feel really

1:07:08

devastating and horrible, especially if you are someone

1:07:10

who is prone to meltdowns. And I

1:07:12

think having a meltdown when something goes wrong

1:07:15

valid and apecially saying

1:07:18

yes, Oh, it is very devastating

1:07:20

and overwhelming in the moment, and so I don't know.

1:07:23

Every single time I watch it, I wonder where

1:07:25

that comes from, Like whether it is not

1:07:28

believing what she's doing is important and

1:07:30

it's like, yeah, no one will

1:07:32

be mad at you if someone canceled on you

1:07:35

for dinner. And I think that's something that she needed

1:07:37

to hear. This projection of

1:07:39

like responsibility on her readers. It's

1:07:42

warped and it's unhealthy to feel

1:07:45

like you owe something to other people when you

1:07:47

don't really because otherwise I think

1:07:49

he's a fantastic husband. He's so kind,

1:07:51

he's having such a good time with her, and he's

1:07:54

very supportive, and I think

1:07:56

sometimes I wish we'd seen maybe a little

1:07:58

bit more of a build up of his

1:08:00

frustration, or in what ways is

1:08:02

she distracted from their marriage outside

1:08:05

of like she spends all her free time making

1:08:07

really good food. I don't know.

1:08:09

Yeah, it feels like it comes out of

1:08:11

nowhere.

1:08:12

I wonder if there's like a missing

1:08:14

scene or something. I just feel like, I

1:08:16

it's really hard to fall on like a hard

1:08:18

interpretation because I just feel

1:08:20

like I don't have enough information because it's not

1:08:23

like we haven't seen examples

1:08:25

of Julie brushing

1:08:28

off other people in favor of

1:08:30

herself and her own problems.

1:08:33

We've saw her do that with her friend,

1:08:35

so it's not like there's no

1:08:38

precedent for this. But also we haven't

1:08:40

really seen her do this to him. We don't

1:08:42

really know. I mean, I feel like we're usually having

1:08:44

this conversation in the reverse, but like we

1:08:47

don't really know much about it, Like, no, I don't

1:08:49

really know, like does he feel like her

1:08:52

pursuing this dream? There's no space

1:08:54

within the relationship for him to pursue his

1:08:57

like what would he rather this

1:08:59

time be used for? Because

1:09:01

it also is such a valid and common thing

1:09:03

to be like, actually, you know, this started

1:09:06

fun, but now you're getting too much attention

1:09:08

and I'm not comfortable with it. Yeah,

1:09:10

but that wasn't really who I understood that character

1:09:12

to be up to then. So it was just

1:09:15

feels, honestly like an end of Act to Contrivance

1:09:19

where he leaves and then comes back three days

1:09:21

later in spite of the fact that the one thing he

1:09:23

asked for she blatantly ignored, which

1:09:26

also made me be like, maybe he was right

1:09:28

to be hailing her for a while because he's like, please just don't

1:09:30

write about me and your blog right

1:09:32

now, and then she did, and then he's like,

1:09:35

actually, I don't care, and you're like, this is just

1:09:37

bizarre.

1:09:39

Is the implication being that,

1:09:41

like she writes in a

1:09:43

way that is like, I had a fight

1:09:45

with my husband who wasn't being supportive enough,

1:09:47

and then she deletes that, and then she writes in

1:09:49

such a way that it's like she's acknowledging

1:09:52

her own fault in

1:09:55

the fight as it relates

1:09:57

to what her husband is concerned

1:09:59

about. And then reads that and he's like, Wow,

1:10:01

she's acknowledging that she was wrong,

1:10:03

and that's why I'm coming back to her. That's

1:10:06

the impression I got, Yes.

1:10:08

But it's like that also is so dissonant because

1:10:10

he's reading about it because she

1:10:13

didn't do what he asked. I

1:10:16

think that they're both acting very

1:10:18

weird in that sequence, and

1:10:20

that it felt like a contrivance

1:10:23

that this movie is too good

1:10:25

for kind of I.

1:10:27

Think like a kind of overall

1:10:30

issue with the movie is that it doesn't

1:10:32

affirm. It's very much about external

1:10:34

validation on the Julie side, not

1:10:37

on the Julia side. Julia is so confident

1:10:40

in herself. But everything with Julie

1:10:42

is she is performing like

1:10:45

for her readers, huh, like

1:10:47

I am, yes, I am a selfish person

1:10:50

and a bad wife sometimes for her readers,

1:10:52

and it's not for her husband. It's not for herself,

1:10:54

right. And it's in that like ending monologue

1:10:57

where Eric is like, the

1:11:00

Julia in your head is what matters. It's

1:11:02

still not about like finding confidence

1:11:05

in your art and your life,

1:11:07

in yourself. It's still this sort

1:11:09

of manifestation of external

1:11:11

validation. And throughout the movie her mother

1:11:14

is like, this isn't important. She needs

1:11:16

to know it's important herself, and that's

1:11:18

kind of what their argument feels like it's about.

1:11:21

But it doesn't land because she

1:11:23

doesn't find value in the work she's

1:11:25

doing because she's doing it. She still finds it because

1:11:27

people are reading her.

1:11:29

Right, yeah, which is again

1:11:31

like that's an interesting thing

1:11:34

to explore and so many I mean, I've

1:11:36

been that writer at various

1:11:38

points one hundred percent, Yeah, you're given

1:11:41

something interesting, But then it turns into

1:11:44

this bizarre the

1:11:46

way it's like touched on it has to do with

1:11:48

the relationship, and all of a sudden he

1:11:50

seems threatened and frustrated by her, and

1:11:52

he has never seemed that way, and

1:11:55

we're like, what am I so about? Like am I supposed to think this

1:11:57

was in him the whole time? And

1:11:59

then like you're saying, Caitlin, like it's unclear,

1:12:01

like does she owe anyone

1:12:04

an apology in this situation? It feels

1:12:06

more like this is a battle that needs to happen internally

1:12:08

for her, and they turn it into a relationship

1:12:11

battle instead in a way

1:12:13

that's.

1:12:13

Confusing hard to say.

1:12:16

I don't know. Yeah, I felt weird about that too. Other

1:12:18

than that, though, it's like the two romantic relationships

1:12:21

in this movie are pretty lovely.

1:12:23

They're beautiful. They're like my favorite

1:12:25

romantic relationships in movies,

1:12:27

I think, especially.

1:12:29

Merrily and Tucci.

1:12:30

Come on, come on. Yeah,

1:12:33

So paul and we've already talked

1:12:35

about the level of privilege

1:12:38

that Julia Child experiences that allows.

1:12:41

Cia legendary, the Cia

1:12:43

romance of the century.

1:12:45

Right, But the thing with Paula is that like he's

1:12:48

only ever shown to be completely supportive

1:12:51

of Julia. He's never calling

1:12:53

her narcissistic or anything like that, and

1:12:55

that feels especially unusual considering

1:12:57

this is like the nineteen forties slash fifties.

1:13:00

This is when women were not encouraged to have

1:13:02

careers, especially married women. So

1:13:04

for him to be like, yeah, do

1:13:07

whatever you want, Try make a hat, try

1:13:09

cooking, do anything, and then she

1:13:12

pursues that dream and he's like so

1:13:14

supportive along the way. I'm curious

1:13:17

to know if that's how that relationship actually

1:13:20

manifested or not. But

1:13:23

at least as far as what we see in the movie, Paul

1:13:26

is like unwaveringly supportive

1:13:29

of Julia Child and

1:13:31

I appreciated seeing that. It's

1:13:34

not as though other men around

1:13:36

her are unwaveringly supportive,

1:13:39

because you have that kind of series of scenes

1:13:41

where she starts that cooking class

1:13:43

at les codne Bleue and

1:13:46

it's all men in the class, and it's

1:13:49

all people who are like already professional

1:13:51

chefs. I guess they're honing their skills

1:13:54

or something. But they

1:13:57

judge her.

1:13:58

You know.

1:13:58

She says something like, you should have seen the way

1:14:00

those men looked at me, like I'm just some frivolous

1:14:03

housewife looking for a way to kill

1:14:05

time, and that is probably what they

1:14:08

assumed when they saw her. And

1:14:11

she is shown having

1:14:13

to put an extra effort

1:14:16

and work extra hard to prove

1:14:18

herself, the way that many women

1:14:20

and marginalized people in general have

1:14:23

to do to earn any level of respect

1:14:25

or to have access to the same opportunities

1:14:28

as their counterparts who are more privileged.

1:14:31

And so we see Julia

1:14:33

doing all of that extra work

1:14:36

to try to like fit in and prove herself

1:14:38

and all that stuff, and then

1:14:41

a letter to Avis later on,

1:14:43

she says something like, and now I'm way

1:14:45

ahead of the others in my class,

1:14:48

all men, all of them unfriendly,

1:14:50

until they discovered that I was fearless.

1:14:53

So then they come to respect her because

1:14:56

she displays a trait that

1:14:59

is traditionally considered masculine.

1:15:01

Right, It's like you have to be exceptional to deserve

1:15:03

respect kind of, right.

1:15:05

Yeah, you know, she's brave and she's fearless. She's

1:15:07

not this like, you know, quote unquote timid woman

1:15:10

that the men expected her to be. But she's

1:15:12

like, I'm gonna kill this lobster, and they're like,

1:15:14

wow, she's so cool, and

1:15:16

then she, you know, garners

1:15:19

their respect. I thought all of that

1:15:21

was, like, you know, not a huge part of

1:15:23

the movie, but I'm glad it was touched on

1:15:25

to some degree. Yeah.

1:15:27

Again, it's like it's a very like rom commy

1:15:30

way of touching on it, but it touches on it.

1:15:32

I was curious more because again

1:15:34

I just like mainly know about Julia

1:15:36

Child through this movie and through

1:15:39

what is largely considered to be a wildly historically

1:15:42

inaccurate mini series. Yeah,

1:15:45

there's literally a scene in the mini series

1:15:47

where Betty Fridan yells at Julia

1:15:49

Child and it is like you're not a real feminist,

1:15:52

which never happened, and they're like,

1:15:54

well, but like we wanted to explore,

1:15:57

You're like, you can't do that, that's

1:15:59

cheating. She was a person. Anyways,

1:16:01

I was curious, especially after seeing

1:16:04

how wildly like over

1:16:06

the top the miniseries went, what Julia

1:16:08

Child's relationship to feminism

1:16:12

was, because she was prominent

1:16:14

as second wave feminism was

1:16:17

becoming a conversation

1:16:20

and second wave feminism we can

1:16:22

save that for another day. However, it

1:16:24

was interesting where Julia Child never

1:16:27

really allied herself with a feminist

1:16:29

movement, but she also

1:16:32

in her time caught some shit

1:16:34

from feminist movements because it was

1:16:36

characterized as like she's encouraging women

1:16:39

to stay in the kitchen, which

1:16:42

I see the thinking behind it. But

1:16:44

I'm kind of grateful that most feminist

1:16:46

movements have moved past that, because

1:16:49

what Julia Child was doing, as we see in this spoofy,

1:16:52

was extremely difficult for women

1:16:54

to do, even with the degree of privilege that she

1:16:57

had, And cooking does

1:16:59

not have to be an inherently oppressive

1:17:02

task, but it has been put on women

1:17:04

in that way. But Julia Child was cooking for joy,

1:17:06

she was producing her own stuff. She was like

1:17:09

bi all accounts. I guess she was a reproductive

1:17:11

rights champion, like she you

1:17:13

know, wasn't a full blown feminist.

1:17:16

But I think in her time was kind

1:17:18

of unfairly criticized

1:17:21

for pushing something that it didn't seem like

1:17:23

she was ever pushing

1:17:26

really, like she was a woman who enjoyed cooking

1:17:29

and wanted to make a show about it, and it was

1:17:31

I don't know, I think kind of like unfairly politicized

1:17:35

to make her look worse.

1:17:36

I think cooking and having the

1:17:39

ability to cook and the

1:17:41

skills to cook well and

1:17:43

in a way that is like pleasurable,

1:17:45

like you're creating something for yourself that is

1:17:48

good and creating something for others that is

1:17:50

good. There's very interesting conversations

1:17:52

around that being like a bougie

1:17:54

thing or a privileged thing when

1:17:57

it feels like it should just be the

1:17:59

most basic human right, like

1:18:01

knowing how to use ingredients, where

1:18:04

to get them from, how to use them, and to

1:18:06

nourish yourself and others. It is a

1:18:08

very interesting, contentious sort of conversation,

1:18:11

and you know, there's degrees of course, like again, like having

1:18:15

ten hours a day to slow cook something

1:18:17

is a different kind of conversation. But

1:18:20

the act of cooking and being able to

1:18:22

cook for yourself and especially not relying

1:18:24

on you know, like the scene

1:18:26

when they're in the first publisher

1:18:29

meeting and they have the

1:18:31

book of like the Quick Houselife kind of things.

1:18:34

I think being able to break out

1:18:36

of sort of mass

1:18:38

consumerism notions of feeding

1:18:40

yourself and food is a radical

1:18:43

act and not just you know, not to say like Julia

1:18:45

Child's methods are radical

1:18:47

that. I think that a lot of relationships

1:18:50

in like anarchist food movements is

1:18:53

knowing what you're using, how to use

1:18:55

it, and how to not use things that are

1:18:57

destroying the planet in our bodies

1:19:00

right.

1:19:01

Well, there's also a difference between the

1:19:04

expectation for women

1:19:06

to do these domestic chores such as

1:19:08

cooking and you know, nurturing

1:19:11

and nourishing her husbands

1:19:13

and children and stuff like that, and cooking

1:19:16

as a career because historically

1:19:19

men are chefs, women are

1:19:21

housewives who cook for their family.

1:19:23

Yeah.

1:19:24

Yeah, So for her to pursue being a

1:19:26

professional chef, and as we see in

1:19:28

that scene where she like goes to that

1:19:31

class with other professional chefs

1:19:34

who are all men, and like, that's

1:19:37

still a cultural thing, but it was certainly

1:19:39

more pronounced back then. So

1:19:41

for her to be like, yeah, I'm a woman,

1:19:44

but I'm like a professional chef

1:19:46

who can teach it, who can

1:19:48

like create my own recipes and

1:19:51

like sort of innovate different

1:19:53

ways to do certain things like that

1:19:56

was not the most common

1:19:58

thing for women to be doing back

1:20:00

then. So again, the movie doesn't necessarily

1:20:03

like examine that that

1:20:05

thoroughly, but you know, just from

1:20:07

the context that we know about it, it's like, oh,

1:20:09

that is cool.

1:20:11

Yeah, And I think there's so many ways to

1:20:13

look at what Julia Child. I don't

1:20:15

know, it seems like we're all fans in the chat,

1:20:18

but like there's like so many ways

1:20:20

to sort of talk about it. But yeah,

1:20:22

I feel like what a lot of the criticism

1:20:25

of her missed was also that, like, what

1:20:27

she's doing is cool from a class standpoint.

1:20:29

She's teaching you how to make fancy

1:20:32

seeming food that

1:20:34

I think a lot of people with less

1:20:36

money would assume that they wouldn't be able

1:20:39

to have at home. And you know, her whole thing

1:20:41

was anyone can cook very

1:20:43

ratitudey yet in that way, like

1:20:46

anyone can cook with ingredients

1:20:49

that are affordable. I mean the real

1:20:51

cost is time. But also that she's broadcasting

1:20:53

on PBS, so anyone can watch her do

1:20:55

it, Like, I think that from a class standpoint,

1:20:58

while she benefits from all this privilege,

1:21:00

like in her later career, she kind of pays it forward

1:21:02

by making what she's

1:21:05

learned very accessible and

1:21:08

that's really cool too.

1:21:09

Mm hmm.

1:21:10

Yeah.

1:21:10

There's also a small conversation that

1:21:13

the movie kind of has in regards

1:21:15

to who the cookbook

1:21:17

is targeted toward, because it's specifically

1:21:20

for American housewives who don't

1:21:22

have servants to

1:21:24

cook for them, and this

1:21:26

is like nineteen fifties, like to

1:21:29

me, peak housewife.

1:21:31

Era, particularly like

1:21:33

white housewives culture.

1:21:35

Yeah, and so the publishers

1:21:38

of the book in the various scenes

1:21:40

where you know, they're meeting with publishers and being

1:21:43

like, well, this isn't gonna work

1:21:45

because housewives want

1:21:47

something quick and easy and this book is

1:21:49

seven hundred pages of sauce recipes

1:21:52

and like how is that? And so there's like this

1:21:55

battle that the characters have to deal

1:21:57

with as far as like catering

1:21:59

to the specific demographic that has

1:22:01

all of these like gender roles and engendered

1:22:04

presumptions, you know, foisted upon

1:22:06

them, right, and.

1:22:07

Like how the people telling her

1:22:09

who her book is for is a room full

1:22:11

of men?

1:22:12

You're right, yeah, yeah,

1:22:14

you don't want to work with someone who belittles

1:22:17

your assumed audience, right,

1:22:19

Yeah.

1:22:20

She's cool. I love that Meryl Street

1:22:22

played her.

1:22:23

She's so good at it.

1:22:25

I just wish she had gotten to do it for the whole

1:22:27

movie. Sorry, Julie, I just wish

1:22:29

it be the whole movie.

1:22:32

I think the gender dynamics with Julie

1:22:34

and Eric as well are interesting

1:22:37

in that she cooks dinner for them truly

1:22:39

because she likes it. At least the movie

1:22:41

doesn't sort of imply that she's doing

1:22:43

it because she is the wife, right.

1:22:45

I don't remember how that's depicted

1:22:48

in her book or in real life, and you know, there's

1:22:50

always going to be the pressures of who does

1:22:52

that in a heterosexual relationship, but

1:22:54

it sort of kind of knocks it out of the way that it's

1:22:57

like she's doing this because she finds joy in it, and

1:22:59

they both eat such like gusto the way

1:23:01

that like Christmasina eats is like

1:23:03

kind of gross, but it's.

1:23:05

So too enthusiastic.

1:23:07

You're having so much fun.

1:23:09

He's going for it. Yeah.

1:23:11

Yeah, it feels like a good kind of like efficient

1:23:14

way to kind of knock that, like she's doing

1:23:16

this because she thinks cooking is fun.

1:23:18

Right, Yeah, sir. Anything

1:23:20

else that y'all wanted to touch

1:23:22

on for.

1:23:23

I want to talk about parasociality, Yes,

1:23:25

yes, let's do it. I mean I am

1:23:27

someone who gets hyper fixated

1:23:30

on things pretty easily, and that

1:23:32

often lends itself towards parasocial

1:23:35

relationships. And it is

1:23:37

something that is when I was a teenager, is quite

1:23:39

damaging to your

1:23:42

psyche. The

1:23:44

belief of people that you do not know are your

1:23:47

friends or oh anything to you outside

1:23:49

of maybe like if you

1:23:52

saw them on the street, maybe a basic

1:23:54

respect as you would treat your other human kind

1:23:56

of thing. But I'm

1:23:58

so fascinated with the way that this movie

1:24:01

decides in the end. What is

1:24:04

good in these sort of relationships,

1:24:07

both with Julie and Julia and then

1:24:09

Julie towards her readers. The

1:24:11

reliance on her readers

1:24:13

for validation, as well as the continued

1:24:16

like mantra of you're not a writer until you're published,

1:24:19

so interesting, people don't say that anymore.

1:24:23

The over affirmation of you're a writer if you

1:24:25

write is very prevalent. Also, you're a

1:24:27

writer if you don't write, and if you just want

1:24:29

to, you know. But I walk

1:24:31

away with it with feeling very strange.

1:24:34

You know. I do think that thinking

1:24:36

that someone you look up to doesn't respect

1:24:38

your work is quite crushing. And I

1:24:40

think a lot about in a Gilmore

1:24:43

Girls when Mitcham

1:24:46

tells Rory she's not a journalist and she steals

1:24:48

a boat, Like, I think that's appropriate response.

1:24:53

Yeah, On my most recent rewatch,

1:24:55

I was like, wow, I really turned on her when she

1:24:57

did that the first time, but

1:25:00

the benefit of time, like it

1:25:02

was a victimless crime. Everyone

1:25:04

should steal a boat, I think, so a

1:25:07

hero.

1:25:08

But in the case of this, like, I don't

1:25:11

know what does it mean to value the image

1:25:14

of someone in your head over their actual

1:25:16

personhood. If

1:25:19

she did meet Julia in real life

1:25:21

and they did have some sort of working

1:25:23

relationship, I think Julie Powell

1:25:25

went on to do like a Julia Child show

1:25:28

on Food Network or something I

1:25:30

don't know, maybe like a docu series or something I don't quite remember.

1:25:33

But what does it mean to

1:25:36

hold on to that? And I think it is dehumanizing

1:25:39

in a way that in this case seems

1:25:41

harmless in the context of a film, but

1:25:43

can have greater rampifications towards

1:25:46

celebrity, towards art, like what do we expect

1:25:48

from someone? And I don't know, can

1:25:50

you continue a relationship with the

1:25:53

person in your head if the real person

1:25:55

does something legitimately harmful?

1:26:00

H It's really tricky. I

1:26:02

don't know. Like the movie has a very light

1:26:04

touch with it, and I find

1:26:06

it a little frustrating. But I'm also like, that

1:26:09

is such a especially in two thousand

1:26:11

and nine, if like that conversation, like was

1:26:13

it even really happening? Yeah,

1:26:15

And I've been in the position

1:26:17

of Julie as well, where it's like you're

1:26:20

really evangelizing about someone whose

1:26:22

work you really love, that truly been informative

1:26:24

to you, and then to find out, you

1:26:26

know, it's different. To find out who

1:26:29

they really are is troubling

1:26:32

or even just not who you doesn't

1:26:34

square with what your image of them was. I

1:26:37

think on this viewing what I felt. I really

1:26:39

felt for Julie because it wasn't

1:26:41

like she was actively asking

1:26:44

what Julia Child thought, Like she sort of found out

1:26:46

what Julia Child thought about the project against

1:26:48

her will, which is a risk, you

1:26:51

know, doing it and it become But I really felt

1:26:53

for her where it wasn't like she was banging

1:26:55

down Julia Child's door being like, do you like

1:26:57

me?

1:26:58

She just got a cold?

1:27:00

Was like, hey, just so you know she doesn't

1:27:02

like that is devastating,

1:27:05

yes, you know. But also on the Julia

1:27:07

Child part, what is her responsibility

1:27:10

to Julie Powell, who objectively,

1:27:12

I mean, we could talk about this in the context

1:27:15

of this very show, like if we found out

1:27:17

Alison Bechdel fucking hated us,

1:27:20

right, it would hurt, but we would have

1:27:22

to deal, you know, like it's not like us

1:27:26

doing this show for seven years doesn't invite

1:27:28

some sort of response from her should

1:27:31

she choose to And yeah,

1:27:33

it is like that parasocial question of like how

1:27:35

do you navigate? Like how can you love?

1:27:39

So?

1:27:39

Because I think what Julia is doing is beautiful

1:27:43

in its way where it's like she's drawing

1:27:46

inspiration from another person to

1:27:48

navigate a really hard portion

1:27:50

in like her life, and

1:27:53

that's what art can do

1:27:56

and that's amazing. Yeah, and

1:27:58

you know, I guess the only way to get

1:28:00

around it is to just never become famous

1:28:03

enough for the person to hear about

1:28:05

what you're up to, and then you're

1:28:07

safe. But I don't

1:28:09

think Julia Child owes her anything because

1:28:11

at that point, Julie Powell is profiting

1:28:13

off of perceived proximity

1:28:16

between the two of them, which is also a

1:28:18

valid discussion to have. But I

1:28:20

also like feel really awful when

1:28:22

Julie finds out that Julia doesn't like

1:28:24

her against her will. That

1:28:27

is devastating, I don't know, complicated.

1:28:32

Yeah, Anyways, anyone

1:28:35

who has a parasocial relationship with any

1:28:37

of the three of us, we're so normal.

1:28:40

And cool, we're so and

1:28:43

actually, well to tie it all together,

1:28:46

if anyone wants

1:28:49

to see me in Paris

1:28:52

because you feel like you have a parasocial relationship

1:28:55

with me and you're a fan of my comedy Harris

1:28:57

Social whoa.

1:29:00

I can't even continue after hearing

1:29:02

that, but I will. I will

1:29:04

be doing some stand up comedy

1:29:07

in Paris in early

1:29:09

May, ahead of the Shrektannic

1:29:12

tour that Jamie and I are doing. But

1:29:15

I'm going to Paris early and I'm

1:29:17

doing comedy, so everyone should come

1:29:19

and see me. Sorry, I'm just plugging my

1:29:21

shows.

1:29:22

I'm going to Paris after the tour. Wow,

1:29:25

and leave me alone, I talk. I

1:29:28

don't want to. I want to be

1:29:30

alone. I want to be alone.

1:29:32

Fair. That's totally fair. Okay,

1:29:34

any other thoughts or No, that's

1:29:36

everything I had.

1:29:40

I don't totally mean that. I mean it like mostly

1:29:42

though.

1:29:43

Yeah, no, that's fine.

1:29:45

Yeah, okay, let's see, let's see.

1:29:47

I think that's everything that I had. Honestly.

1:29:50

Yeah, I'm good.

1:29:51

Yeah. I could talk about parasastional relationships

1:29:53

forever. But then sometimes it works out because

1:29:56

that's like how like I admired

1:29:58

your work before we I met,

1:30:00

Like it all kind of worked

1:30:03

out.

1:30:03

Yeah, I fully had a para social relation

1:30:05

with the book. If you're been a listener to this podcast.

1:30:08

And now you're here, wow, yeah, and look at

1:30:10

us.

1:30:11

Sometimes it's fine.

1:30:13

Well, folks, this movie passes the Bechdel

1:30:15

test a whole lot. Oh yeah, all

1:30:17

the time. It's mostly women talking

1:30:19

about food and publishing deals. Yes,

1:30:22

what a life kind of rocks.

1:30:24

Oh wait, okay, the missus

1:30:26

Joy of Cooking paid fifty seven

1:30:29

thousand dollars. I

1:30:31

got her book public.

1:30:32

I can't poor.

1:30:35

What was her name, Irmaurma

1:30:38

rum Bar.

1:30:39

Yeah, I think that scene was so.

1:30:41

I didn't fact check any of that, but like,

1:30:45

so, yeah,

1:30:48

that was like such a great Nora Ephron scene

1:30:50

where it was just like, I feel like Nora Efro

1:30:53

movies sometimes you're like, and here's women being

1:30:55

really weird to each other for five

1:30:57

minutes. You're like, all

1:30:59

right, so good. It

1:31:02

was awesome.

1:31:03

Yeah, but yes, it does pass the Bechdel test

1:31:05

lots and lots, but

1:31:07

as far as the one true

1:31:09

metric are Nipple scale, where

1:31:12

we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five

1:31:14

nipples based on examining

1:31:17

the movie through an intersectional feminist lens.

1:31:20

Like I said, I appreciate that the movie is

1:31:23

about women finding

1:31:27

purpose and pursuing inactivity

1:31:30

that they love, and

1:31:34

they have men around them who

1:31:36

are supportive and to some

1:31:38

extent friends around them who are supportive,

1:31:41

except when it's Casey Wilson and all the

1:31:43

mean girl bosses I.

1:31:44

Love us, Like wow, Peak twenty twelve is

1:31:46

Casey Wilson in one scene and

1:31:48

you're like, should have been more. I

1:31:51

love Casey Wilson.

1:31:53

So on the surface, you know, there's some nice

1:31:55

things going for the movie that

1:31:57

I appreciate. But as we've discussed,

1:32:00

there's other things that the movie either kind of glosses

1:32:02

over and doesn't examine very thoroughly in

1:32:05

a very like Nora Fron

1:32:07

movie kind of way, such as like the class

1:32:09

component and the level of privilege

1:32:12

that the women and especially Julia

1:32:14

Child had access to that allowed her

1:32:17

to do all of these things. Because like, yeah,

1:32:19

this conversation is happening.

1:32:21

More and more.

1:32:22

I see a lot of it, just like you know people

1:32:24

on TikTok and Instagram examining

1:32:26

how like oh, yeah, the things that we used

1:32:28

to think were like a brave

1:32:31

thing to do, like ooh, you moved to a

1:32:33

new city, or you pursued

1:32:35

this dream of yours or you did X y Z.

1:32:38

It's not because you were like brave,

1:32:40

It's because you had access to money

1:32:43

that enabled you to do that. And

1:32:45

that feels very much like the Julia

1:32:48

Child of it all. But in any case, you

1:32:50

know, there's things like that, there's the one

1:32:54

character of color who

1:32:56

has five seconds of screen time.

1:32:59

Yeah, things like that. I

1:33:01

do appreciate Julia

1:33:04

Child's relationship with her sister

1:33:06

Dorothy. I would have liked to see more

1:33:09

of it. They seem really sweet together.

1:33:11

So it's things like that. It's different relationships and

1:33:13

again, women pursuing their

1:33:16

dreams that I like to see. But it

1:33:18

is a very like middle

1:33:20

to upper middle class white woman

1:33:23

version of all of that without the movie

1:33:25

like really acknowledging any of

1:33:27

it. So there's that, and

1:33:29

with that in mind, I'll give the movie

1:33:34

maybe like two and a half or three nipples. So

1:33:36

I think is where I'm

1:33:39

landing, and I'm gonna give them all

1:33:42

to Julie's Orange Cat.

1:33:44

Oh, I'm gonna go

1:33:47

higher. I think I'm going to go three point

1:33:49

seven five. Wow. Because

1:33:53

I agree with everything that you

1:33:55

said, Caitlin. I think the whiteness of this movie

1:33:58

is undeniable. It's like showing

1:34:00

you class, but not the kind

1:34:02

of just leaving everything on the

1:34:04

table, if you will.

1:34:07

Right next to the bechamel sauce.

1:34:09

Yeah, exactly. But this movie

1:34:11

is written and directed by

1:34:14

one of our most iconic women

1:34:17

directors and also based on the writings

1:34:19

of two women, you

1:34:22

know, And I think that that is unusual

1:34:25

enough, and also the fact that this movie did very well.

1:34:28

It's uneven and in

1:34:31

some ways flat out weird, but

1:34:34

I think that there is a lot being

1:34:37

explored here. A lot of it isn't fully explored.

1:34:39

But yeah, sorry about women and

1:34:42

like their ambition and how that

1:34:45

ambition is interpreted in different historical

1:34:47

periods. There's like little

1:34:50

touches where you don't really get

1:34:52

a lot of beats about fertility

1:34:55

in movies that doesn't

1:34:57

then consume the whole movie, where

1:34:59

you're shown like this is an element

1:35:01

of Julia Child's life, but it doesn't

1:35:04

define her. What defines her is

1:35:07

her relationship to people and her relationship

1:35:09

to her work. And I thought that was like

1:35:11

a very subtle and well

1:35:13

done. Yeah, it's all over the place,

1:35:16

but I feel like there's a lot to love here, and

1:35:19

yeah, so I'm gonna give it three point

1:35:21

seventy five. Maybe that's too many, but it's

1:35:24

just how I'm feeling today. I'm gonna give one

1:35:26

to Jane Lynch. I'm gonna give one to

1:35:28

Merril. I'm gonna give one

1:35:30

to mary Lynn rys

1:35:33

Cub and I'm gonna give the rest

1:35:35

to Simca. Yeah, nice

1:35:38

Summer.

1:35:39

I think I will go three point

1:35:41

five. It is a

1:35:44

movie about two real white women,

1:35:46

and so I think my expectations

1:35:49

towards racial diversity

1:35:51

is like, well, that's kind of probably who they

1:35:53

filled their life with. But

1:35:56

yeah, similar reasons. I think that there's

1:35:58

like a hint of class analysis.

1:36:01

I think it is mostly

1:36:04

beautiful and loving towards the act of

1:36:06

cooking and what it means

1:36:08

in a gendered capacity. I will

1:36:10

give all of my nipples to

1:36:12

Judith Jones because I

1:36:14

love women who edit books as

1:36:17

a woman who is

1:36:19

technically an editor, an unemployed one,

1:36:22

but someone.

1:36:23

You are an editor.

1:36:25

God damn, this is my sister in

1:36:27

arms in book publishing. But

1:36:30

uh, I want to recommend a book to

1:36:32

your listeners.

1:36:33

Yes, is it Raw Dog?

1:36:36

Okay? So I mean I do have a food writing section

1:36:39

on my shelf, and I do have Raw Dog

1:36:41

next to a book by Alicia Kennedy called

1:36:43

No Meat Required, and it's a really beautiful

1:36:45

dichotomy of a book about like cultural

1:36:48

history of plant based eating next to it Raw Dog, which

1:36:51

I love. But it is called Tastemakers

1:36:54

by mayk Sen and it is a

1:36:57

group biography of seven immigrant women

1:36:59

who change cooking in America. And

1:37:01

so if you're interested in non white

1:37:03

women who kind of created

1:37:06

foundational texts in culinary

1:37:09

history in the US and introduce different

1:37:11

cuisines to home

1:37:13

cooks, I would highly recommend it. It's beautiful.

1:37:16

There is a little Julia Child interlude

1:37:18

in it, just to kind of affirm

1:37:21

her importance as a

1:37:23

not immigrant women, but kind of

1:37:26

the reverberations of her influence

1:37:28

on those who came around

1:37:30

and after her.

1:37:32

I just placed a hold on it

1:37:34

at the library. Wow, brave,

1:37:37

shout out the libraries.

1:37:39

Yeah, it's really good.

1:37:41

And tell us before you go, please tell

1:37:43

us about your book, which

1:37:46

is currently out. Yeah.

1:37:48

I wrote a checkbook of poems

1:37:50

that are inspired by the legend

1:37:52

of Zelda. They are

1:37:55

weird and sad and about Palestine.

1:38:00

And yeah, you can get them on

1:38:02

gameover books dot com or

1:38:04

you can check in with your local bookstore.

1:38:07

They should be able to order it. And

1:38:10

I'm doing a mini tour. I'll be reading

1:38:12

in la in March, late

1:38:15

March, and then maybe I'll you

1:38:17

know, I'll be around but Yeah,

1:38:19

it's my first book with an ISBN and

1:38:21

so I'm very happy.

1:38:22

Oh congrats,

1:38:25

I'm.

1:38:25

So excited to read it. Congratulations

1:38:27

And where can people?

1:38:29

Where can people establish a parasocial

1:38:31

relationship with you online?

1:38:33

Yeah?

1:38:34

Please find me at Borders bookstore

1:38:36

on Instagram.

1:38:38

Someone had to take up the mantle.

1:38:41

Yeah, if Borders ever makes

1:38:43

a comeback, they owe me a two point

1:38:46

five million dollars for the handle O

1:38:48

me I else play with it.

1:38:50

That's the only way that we're going to be able to be home

1:38:52

owners is by getting the good handles

1:38:54

and.

1:38:55

Then Twitter and far more active at.

1:38:57

Some a this nice.

1:38:58

Yeah, well, thank you so much for

1:39:01

coming on this show.

1:39:02

Thank you for having me come back

1:39:04

anytime please, Yes.

1:39:06

Hopefully I can come back for the Zelda movie.

1:39:09

Oh my gosh. Yes, you're

1:39:12

both gonna have to school me because I know that

1:39:14

you're both well versed.

1:39:16

I just restarted Tears of the

1:39:18

Kingdom because I'm sad

1:39:21

and I was like, I need something that

1:39:23

I can do for ten to fourteen

1:39:25

hours a day, all in one

1:39:28

chunk to take my mind off

1:39:30

of that. So I'm replaying

1:39:33

Tiers of the Kingdom. Brag anyway.

1:39:36

You can follow us at

1:39:39

Bechdelcast on social media. And

1:39:41

speaking of tours, we will

1:39:43

be in London, Oxford, Manchester

1:39:47

and Edinburgh and we're doing

1:39:49

the Shrek Tannic Tour. What does that

1:39:51