How Julie & Julia Was Really Cooked
A 30-minute conversation with Susan Spungen about food styling the movie (plus a crème brûlée fiasco).
The Amateur Gourmet Book Club — Week 2
Sometimes in life, all you have to do is ask.
As I prepared to conquer Julie and Julia: Part Two for second iteration of the Amateur Gourmet Book Club, I reached out to Susan Spungen, creator of the fantastic Substack newsletter Susanality, to see if she’d be up for doing a video interview with me to talk about her time doing the food styling for the movie.
Can you imagine a more high-pressure situation than having to cook for Nora Ephron (one of the great American food writers) and to teach Meryl Streep how to make an omelette just by shaking the pan?
Lucky for me, Susan immediately said “yes!” and talked to me for thirty minutes from her car. Here’s a short clip where she describes the drama surrounding the sole meunière sequence that opens the movie:
It’s such a great talk. We cover:
The lunch that Nora Ephron had her cook at her apartment for the table read;
Whether it matters if the food actually tastes good;
Training Meryl Streep in omelette-making;
Julia Child cooking dinner for her and Martha Stewart!
Before we get to that though, I had a Julie Powell-like fiasco of my own involving Crème Brûlée….
