The Andy / Jumanji Project
Watched Julie and Julia at the weekend. I had put up some resistance to seeing it but as my wife watched Inglorious Basterds with me, it was only fair. And it really wasn’t that bad. It sounded lame, some blogger trying to make all the recipes in some old cookbook. Who cares? It seemed a bit like those people who expect you to sponsor them for skiing every Alp or backpacking across China and expect huge applause when really you’re just thinking, ‘I wish I could ski down every Alp… how much money did you really give to Oxfam? I bet it would have been a lot more without the deductions for ski passes’.
I wish I could make Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon and then get a book deal for doing it while whining about the pissy difficulties of living in New York while throwing dinner parties and juggling a humdrum job.
Nice work if you can get it. Of course, I’m just jealous. My blog is stalled. It’s a random brain dump of fact and fiction, appearing sporadically in the small windows of time when I’m not too busy writing novels, shorts and scripts and trying to sell them.
Julie Powell’s blog has purpose and is very cute:
‘Risking her marriage, her job, and her cats’ well-being, she has signed on for a deranged assignment. 365 days. 536 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen.’
It ticks a lot of boxes for publishers: personal struggle, cat ownership (huge), redemption from dull day job, gourmet aspirations (huge), writing aspirations, life in the navel gazing hub of New York (gigantic).
I tick no boxes. It’s a seldom used graffiti space for my surreal and ranty mind.
She has a fabulous hero in Julia Childs and can use her life as an example to illuminate her own and that of all the poor women who struggle to live in unfashionable areas of New York. Who has time to jug a hare while avoiding the crazy homeless on the Subway? The price of Lobsters and how to kill them!
I refer to no heroes and do not set goals for personal change. I can buy Lobster very cheaply from the pier in Ocean Beach.
So what to do? What to do…?
Hmmm, what about the Andy / Jumanji project?
365 days, 1 film. I am going to watch the film every day for a year and blog my own decent into weary tedium and madness.
No. Silly, surreal and ranty.
Maybe I should attempt not to watch it for a year. No, too easy. Too lazy, playing into the sporadic and moribund nature of this blog. I’ve also never actually seen the film so I’ve already not watched it for years.
Ok. Get serious. Maybe I should watch the film, learn all of its lessons and secrets and then try to write a kid’s film, by adapting a whimsical old children’s book and then try and sell it in Hollywood. Along the way I’ll contact everyone associated with Jumanji under various guises and try and learn new things about the biz and the film itself.
Well, that’s better and it does have the chance to transform my life, I’ll be writing a kids film and I’ve never tried that before. It could be good. Worst case scenario; I write another new script nobody wants to buy…
But I am missing the three big boxes Julie ticked. I don’t like cats (pointless filthy creatures – no they’re not clean, they’re covered in cat spit, yes they like you, you have their food locked away in little tins). The blog subject gives me no opportunity to spout about food and wine (far too much of that going on anyway perhaps). I’m also not going to talk on and on about New York. I live in San Diego, it’s far nicer than New York (found a new waterfall while jogging on the beach last week after an El Nino storm, it cascaded down the 40ft cliff wall under the Salk Institute sparkling in the sunlight and casting rainbows everywhere). New York is far too crowded and everywhere stinks of shit in the summer (really). We have wonderful Jewish and Italian delis here thank-you very much but we don’t have to scream about how good they are because we don’t have to justify living in a stinking hellhole in a room the size of a hamster cage. New York is the capital of the publishing world though. Hence we all know something about rent-controlled apartments when we really could not care less.
Got to try and be positive. Maybe I’m not ticking those boxes but I am ticking other ones?
So, the Andy / Jumanji project? What do you think? Any suggestions for an old children’s book that’s ripe for a big screen reprisal?
Let me know at the usual address.
Sincerely,
A.N.
PS - Oscar Tip: Meryl Streep to win the award for best portrayal of a real person who had a very silly voice. They gave it to Philip Hoffman for doing Truman Capote so they have to give it to Streep.
PPS - This blog was sponsored by the word ‘So’, the cultural edifice that is blogging and a healthy disrespect of New York City. Fight the Power!
PPPS -By suggesting you ‘Fight the Power’, I’m loosely promoting a general mindset of resistance against widely held truths that are actually myths. I am not inciting anyone to try and physically assault Cat Power the singer songwriter who I have nothing against even if she loves New York and may have written a whole album about trying to find rent controlled apartments on the upper Eastside for all I know.
