books and food and films, oh my!

For a feel-better treat, a week ago Sunday my husband took me to the movies to see Julie and Julia, a charming movie and a lovely distraction from the head cold that had been vexing me for days.  Go see it for the great performances by Streep and Adams, but count as an extra treat the presence of warm, engaging, and eminently watchable Stanley Tucci. Writers among you, go for the head-nodding self-identification you’ll experience while watching two disparate aspiring authors find their ways to publication.

Maybe you’ve seen the stories out this week reporting that sales of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking have “skyrocketed,” thanks to the exposure it’s getting in the film.  Nothing against the book, or against French food for that matter, but I won’t be among the crowds rushing to own a copy.  The foods I would be tempted to prepare are in most cases so incredibly rich and fabulous that I think I gained three pounds from simply seeing them prepared on film.  The well-featured Boeuf Bourguignon, however, is one of the foods I think I’ll attempt (recipe here), being slightly less of an artery-clogging delight than, say, anything made with a butter-laden pastry crust.

—And speaking of lessening my risk of clogged arteries, I’m proud to report that despite the hours I spent watching the Js cook (and eating most of a large bag of popcorn in the process), I’ve lost five of the fifteen pounds I’m aiming for by year’s end.  This is due in part to my eating a lot more fresh veggies and a lot fewer French fries, and in part to my growing enthusiasm for playing tennis.  I even let myself be recruited onto a women’s singles beginner-level team. Our first match is tomorrow. Yikes!

I’m almost done with the revisions to my next novel, and I’m eager to read the fully revised story.  I think (I hope!) it’s getting pretty close to right. And then there’s this: I’m dying to get to work on book #4. The premise is so right on, so now, and the events are so compelling to me… I feel like this will be one of those stories that pours itself onto the page. I wish I could tell you more about it, but since I haven’t even submitted the proposal yet (that will happen after I’ve turned in the book I’m finishing now), I need to keep the details under wraps.
I can tell you about a different story, one you might have already read: The Time Traveler’s Wife, which I saw in its film version on Saturday.  Have you seen it?  If you’ve read and seen, you know that the film differs from the book in some noticeable ways.  Not surprising; that’s pretty much par for the course, especially with stories as complex and lengthy as TTW.  But I worked hard to watch it with as open a mind as possible, and, for the most part, I succeeded.  I was hugely distracted, though, by one particular scene.  Remember Gomez in Clare’s parents’ house, waiting for Henry? The wallpaper in that room is a precise, exact match to the wallpaper in my powder room!

I got over it quickly enough, and in the end, found that although I still favor the book greatly, the film was effective (yes, I cried), and I had no trouble at all sitting in the dark for a couple of hours with both my husband and Eric Bana.

At an event I did recently, an audience member asked me whether “Hollywood has come calling.”  I told him that yes, the phone has rung, but so far my options are still open.  Honestly, I’m ambivalent about possibly seeing one of my stories adapted to film.  Sometimes, the outcome is fantastic (Memoirs of a Geisha) and sometimes less so (you fill in the blank here). Authors almost never get any say in the production, so if the film’s good, then sure, the book it’s based on soars in popularity. For example, TTW is back at the top of the NYT paperback list. If the film bites dead fish heads, that stench will carry over to the book.

So for now, no worries. For now, I’m happy to be just the reader and viewer. And if I indulge a stray daydream or two about visiting a movie set as an honored guest (or maybe not so honored: anyone a fan, as I am, of the brilliant State and Main?) and attending a premiere with, oh, Clive Owen or Julia Roberts or Jennifer Aniston or Stanley Tucci (have you seen the trailers with him for The Lovely Bones?) or, I don’t know, Harrison Ford, Owen Wilson, Greg Kinnear, Meryl Streep…and maybe even first getting to pow-wow with the likes of directors Julie Taymor or Rob Marshall, well, I’m a girl who has a lot of imagination, so you’ll have to forgive me.  It’s what I do.