The Real Reason Julia Child Didn't Edit Her Mistakes, According To Julia Directors - Exclusive
It goes without saying that Julia Child transformed the modern culinary landscape, but despite her impressive cooking prowess, perfection in the kitchen was not always a given — nor was it something the superstar chef necessarily sought out. In fact, according to Julie Cohen and Betsy West, the co-directors of the recently-released documentary "Julia," which offers an inside look at the life of the cooking icon (as seen on YouTube), Child made it a point to share her cooking mistakes with her television audience.
When discussing Child's enduring legacy during an exclusive interview with Mashed, Cohen noted that the chef's relatability was a key ingredient to her recipe for success. "She just really hits people," Cohen said. "And you don't have to share her generation to feel that spirit and to get that it's really authentic, that you're really seeing the real Julia. ... You can't fake authenticity. And it's not that common."
While Cohen acknowledged that fans continue to seek out Child's kitchen tutelage for her "exuberance and joie de vivre," not to mention her easy-to-follow instructions on how to master dishes like a beef bourguignon and chocolate mousse, there is no denying that watching someone with as much talent as Child slip up from time to time is also a big part of her appeal. "People love the mistakes," Cohen noted. "She was sort of loving the mistakes, but there was actually a lot of, sort of larger life lessons that are coming out of that. Like, 'Oh, I'm going to flip this and I've totally screwed it up. And I'm going to figure out how to make the best of that. And I'm going to be completely unfazed in how I continue talking through it.' That's just something that people can connect to over a lot of generations, particularly women who are used to feeling like they need to feel really bad about when [they] mess up."
Julia Child's cake that literally fell flat
"Julia" directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West pack a lot into their documentary, but when you have a subject as prolific as Julia Child, there is obviously going to be a lot of great footage that ends up on the cutting room floor. While the directors mentioned one example — the story of how Child helped invent shark repellent – they also mentioned the wealth of options when it came to her spectacular kitchen failures.
"Like which one do we pick?" asked West. "For the film, we show how she tried to flip a potato pancake and that didn't go very well, it went all over the stove. But in fact, there was another cake that she made, a Charlotte cake, that came out and she said, [in Julia Child voice], 'You know, you have to be very careful because this cake can collapse.' And as she was saying that, the whole thing just kind of fell down and, [in Julia Child voice], 'Well, that didn't work out.' So there were a number of times, but there were only so many failures that we could show in the film."
Let's keep our fingers crossed that the Blue-Ray extras give us even more to adore about Julia Child.
If you want to bear witness to Julia Child's kitchen fails (along with her many, many culinary achievements), check out "Julia," which is in theaters now in Los Angeles, New York, and other select cities.