The original queen of cuisine, the first rock star foodie, Julia Child became a cooking phenomenon throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, thanks to her PBS series and cookbooks. A trailblazer for sharing her love and enthusiasm for cooking and food in the mediums of books and TV, Child paved the way for today’s culture of 24/7 food programming, passing away before seeing the influx of reality TV cooking, Food Networks, and foodie social media. And she did it much later in life than most people who break out in their fields. In her fifties, Child became a celebrity on American television with “The French Chef,” and her books and TV series not only transformed food culture but opened a new career path for women in cooking.
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Now, the documentary “Julia,” premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, is set to pull back the curtain on this famous name. The touching and affectionate portrait of the icon is a revealing look at the woman many still consider a legend of French cuisine and one that brought greater taste, literally and figuratively, to the masses in North America.
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Oscar-nominated filmmakers Julie Cohen and Betsy West (“RBG“) direct the documentary, focusing on the people who knew her best along with rich archival materials. The pair — also behind critically acclaimed documentaries on Pauli Murray and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — talked to The Playlist about trying to humanize and dimensionalize a fascinating woman many only knew through a TV screen.
I saw your Pauli Murray documentary earlier this year at Sundance and now “Julia.” I’m wondering how you chose these subjects?
Julie Cohen: We’re looking for people. Honestly, we’re looking for stories that are amazing and can introduce viewers to a new world. Whether it’s a familiar figure in Julia’s case, a figure who’s familiar and kind of known but is largely known for this caricature version of herself. The idea is to introduce this woman in a fuller version of herself. That brings into context and looks at her feminist marriage, looks at how she changed the culture, looks at how she changed how we look at women. We’re just looking for stories that are both amazing and a bit under-told.
I knew the name, Julia Child. I maybe wasn’t that familiar. I had seen a clip of her but I didn’t know that much about her. I found this documentary to be incredibly revealing. You hear antidotes or myths about her. This goes far in trying to debunk some of those things. Were you surprised by some of the things you found out along the way?
Betsy West: Well, the first thing is we were trying to put Julia in a context for the time and to remind people how Americans were eating back in the 1950s and the 1960s and the impact Julia had on what people served in kitchens. I think that is something that has lasted until today. I didn’t know it took Julia some time to really become a phenomenon. Julia Child was a household name but that didn’t happen until Julia was middle-aged, well into her fifties when she found this instant success. We loved telling the story of Julia’s journey to get there.
She was someone who was brought up to have a privileged life. She rejected that; she wanted adventure. She found adventure in WWII and then she also found love. Her husband takes her to France and she discovers food. We just loved the evolution of this person who was constantly changing and opening herself up to new experiences and new ideas. We found that pretty thrilling.
I was intrigued by how she understood the concept that it was more than just cooking. Food reached out to people on numerous levels. It’s a concept that we see many chefs talking about today. It’s amazing one woman could come along and reshape an entire country’s view on cooking.
Cohen: I mean Americans did not have a great attitude towards food before Julia. It was to get your nutrition from and then move on. After WWII it was, “make it as simple and easy as possible.” That’s why TV dinners went nuts. Cake mix or brownie mix — simpler it is — pop it into the oven and it’s done. One of the ways it was marketed was that it was going to free women up. What Julia brought was the attitude that she had witnessed as a traveler and as a resident, both in China and later in France that food was something magnificent.
It’s labor but it’s a labor of love. You can spend time digging into making something delicious and then share with the people you love and not scarf it all down. Eat it slowly and savor it. She brought that whole joyous attitude towards food which is like the right way. That’s the right way to think about food. It’s really to enjoy and savor. She was responsible for Americans having that view.
I don’t think there would be a Food Network, cooking shows, cookbooks without Julia Child. I was surprised to learn how influential she was in making that happen.
West: Any major chef you talk to tips a hat to Julia Child, recognizes how significant and important she was. We take for granted that people are doing Instagrams of their dishes and watching endless episodes on the Food Network and other places but that was not the case when Julia came along. “The French Chef” was a complete novelty, something that in 1963 a Boston PBS station thought they would take a chance on. The audience responded. They just loved her. They loved how authentic she was, how funny and quirky she was, how she wasn’t afraid of failure. That’s why she remains, 15 years after her passing away, someone who is still revered and someone who chefs refer to even if they are not cooking all of Julia’s food. Julia really set the tone for the way we eat.
She was fearless about everything, about her beliefs. She didn’t care; she was sticking to it. But she was also willing to admit she was wrong about LGBTQ issues as well. I found that fascinating about her.
Cohen: Julia was just her own person and she was gonna do what she believed. Had she had a lot of consultants around her, they would have surely told her don’t go and do that for Planned Parenthood. This wasn’t really a time, first, there weren’t really any celebrity chefs then. It wasn’t a time when celebrity chefs were talking about their political views but it wasn’t a time when celebrities were getting involved in taking on political issues. Julia decided she was going to do that because it was something she believed in.
As so many of her generation, Julia was homophobic to the point she didn’t let it register that her lawyer and close friend Bob Johnson was gay. She didn’t see that because it was something that she was closing her eyes to. Then Bob Johnson gets AIDS and passes away and she is by his side through that. It just opened her eyes. Many people’s eyes are opened by a personal connection. There’s one archival clip that one of our producers Abby Lieberman found of Julia at an AIDS benefit and that’s 1988. Not a lot of public figures were speaking out about people with AIDS in 1988. Julia Child just did the local television interviews saying no we’ve got to pay attention and we’ve got to care about people who have AIDS.
West: I loved what Ruth Reichl said about Julia, that she evolved. Her whole life was about evolving. She was confident and authentic about who she was. She thought if I’ve made a mistake here then I’ve got to correct it.
What struck me about her was she had the confidence to say that. It takes a confident person to say hey I was wrong and now I get it.
West: And to do something about it.
There was something else about the documentary that I wasn’t aware of, the love story between Julia and Paul. This is a great love story between two people who, if you look at the journals of them writing about each other… I was like these two people are not going to make it.
Cohen: Yeah, it’s a beautiful feminist love story. We love stories and we particularly loved the arc of this one. It started with Paul in the leadership position — the older more sophisticated man introduced his wife to so many things in their early days together. Then happenstance unfolds in such a way she becomes a big star and Paul throws himself into helping his wife. That’s a beautiful story; excited about that aspect of the story.
He was confident in supporting her. I can’t imagine, during that time period, a man being confident in supporting his wife. He was happy for her. He was on set helping.
West: The thing that’s really remarkable, his own career had sort of faded. He was frustrated with the State Department, had quit. Didn’t really know what he was going to do and then he found his calling in supporting his extraordinary wife. That is very unusual, particularly in the early 1960s. They were very opposite personalities. Julia was outgoing and social and Paul was more of an introvert. They were absolutely devoted to each other. We loved being able to show that in the film.
If she was around today would she embrace the social media world? Would she embrace this cooking network lifestyle or, as somebody that was against commercialization, would she be more resistant to it?
Cohen: It was something that we asked some friends of Julia and their feelings were universal. She would have not liked Instagram because she would have not liked the idea of when you put a plate of food in front of someone that their first impulse would be to take a picture and put it on the internet. In her mind food was for eating and when your food is put in front of you you should dig right in. She didn’t wait for other people to be served. She wouldn’t have waited for it to be photographed.
If anybody brought a plate for her to taste she would eat the whole thing. I was so jealous of her. I can’t do that.
West: You can imagine how many people brought fabulous food for Julia to try. That was a moment at a restaurant, Julia Child is here. We’ve got to do our best.
I found myself incredibly hungry after I watched this documentary. I’m eager to try some of Julia’s recipes. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to replicate it.
West: Start with salad nicoise.
Really? That’s the easiest?
West: Pretty easy and it’s very tasty. I think you’ll like it.
Sony Pictures Classics presents the new documentary “Julia.” It premieres in New York and Los Angeles on November 5 with an expanded release to follow.