Watched Julie & Julia the other day and was pleased with the work of Norah Ephron as the script writer. She did a great job turning Julie Powell's character from a someone who makes one want to slap them with the book they wrote into a neurotic and at times annoying but still likable lady. I have read the book and more often than not I rooted for her husband to leave her for someone more pleasant. Love is blind and deaf, however, and he came back, so I just hope for his sake now that she doesn't have to kill lobsters she'll have fewer reasons to be unbearable. But I digress.
As I was reading J&J I couldn't stop feeling that a lot was a little too familiar. Then it hit me - The Devil Wears Prada. Andy Sachs and Julie Powell could be the same self-absorbed, bitchy woman in parallel universes. For them both everything is everyone else's fault, they hate their jobs but stay there and they both come out on top despite their unpleasantness. Kudos to Aline Brosh McKenna for that screenplay, by the way, I actually liked Andy while watching the movie.
Apparently in chick-lit the heroine has to be a complete nightmare for the books to fly off the shelves and get turned into movies. Then the script writer comes in and softens the angles, makes the nightmare simply a victim of the occasional circumstance or poor judgement but a nice enough person, the publisher releases another print of the book with the movie tie-in cover and they fly off the shelf once again. Then the reader is disappointed by how much the screen version differs from the book version but the damage's already done and all that remains is to watch the movie again to wash down the unpleasant aftertaste.
Julie & Julia is based on a true story, I'm reasonably sure The Devil Wears Prada isn't and that gives me some peace because, after all, it would be simply awful if to get somewhere in life all the nice girls had to turn into bitchy, whiny, pain-in-the-ass heroines.
No comments:
Post a Comment