Film's Finest Foodie: Nora Ephron

D.C. IS IN the midst of Julia Child mania. To coincide with Friday’s release of the film “Julie & Julia,” Inox is offering a three-course menu of dishes from Child’s cookbook throughout August, and the National Museum of American History received a donation last week of items from the film’s production.

“Julie & Julia,” which was written and directed by Nora Ephron, is an adaptation of Child’s book about learning to cook in France and writing “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” and Julie Powell‘s memoir about cooking every recipe in Child’s book and blogging about it. Ephron chatted with Express about her love of food, Julia Child‘s “lusty” marriage and why she chose Meryl Streep to play the iconic chef.

» EXPRESS: What inspired you to combine the two stories?
» EPHRON: Amy Robinson, one of the producers, had the idea to put the two stories together, and the minute I heard it, I just kind of understood the movie in some, “Oh, my God, how lucky can you be?” kind of way. I had read about Julie Powell and I knew all about Julia Child, but I think that putting the stories together made each of their stories a little bit more interesting.

» EXPRESS: Food is a major character in the movie. What was it like making a movie where food plays such a prominent role?
» EPHRON: Oh, God, yes! Since it plays such an enormous part in my life, it seemed to me that food was finally playing the right role in a movie. I think about food all day, and I loved that I had a cinematographer who was excited about taking pictures of it, since not all cinematographers would have been.

» EXPRESS: Was Streep your first choice?
» EPHRON: I had met Meryl at Shakespeare in the Park a few summers ago, and when she found out what I was working on, she immediately did a Julia Child imitation. I knew that even if that hadn’t happened, she would have been at the top of my list. The tragedy, of course, is that had she not wanted to do it, no one would have made the movie. So, I got really lucky, a) that she wanted to do it, and b) that she had, in the time I was writing this screenplay, become the hottest actress in America.

» EXPRESS: Did your feelings about Julia Child change at all while making the film?
» EPHRON:I learned to cook from Julia Child‘s cookbook, and I always loved her. But I really had no idea until I read books about her that she had this lusty marriage — who would have thunk it? That was such a delicious thing to discover, that the fabric of that marriage was so romantic. They wrote so many letters to their friends and family, all of which were saved, and we know absolutely that they were just madly in love with each other.

» EXPRESS: What research did you do?
» EPHRON:I read everything, including all 2,000 pages of Julie Powell’s blog. I took a lot of notes and whittled it all down and tried to figure out how it all knit together. I knew that both stories started out in the beginning with writing the cookbook for Julia and the beginning of the blog for Julie. I knew that Julia’s story was going to end with the book, and Julie’s story was going to end when the year was over, so when you know the beginning and the end, you’re two-thirds of the way there.

» EXPRESS: Did you run into any food-related challenges in making this film?
» EPHRON:The challenges were worse for Susan Spungen, the movie’s food stylist, than they were for me. She had to make like a dozen of everything at least. But she had worked for Martha Stewart, so I’m sure she was used to the bar being set pretty high.

The trickiest part for us was knowing exactly what I wanted the food to look like, since I wanted it to look as if it was cooked from a cookbook. I cook so much from the book, and we picked things that were beautiful from it, and that were going to be delicious for the actors to eat.

» EXPRESS: What’s your favorite dish in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”?
» EPHRON:The lamb stew is a masterpiece.

» Opens Fri. at area theaters; julieandjulia.com.

Written by Express contributor Amy Cavanaugh
Photo courtesy Jonathan Wenk