I didn't know it was a horror movie....

I watched the movie Julie and Julia yesterday. Love Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci more than ever now. But I didn't realise that it was a horror movie. It was truely horrifying to realise Julia Child and Simone Beck and the sumptuously named but less involved Louisette Bertholle took eight years to complete Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julia wrote it on her typewriter with carbon paper between the sheets. What if she needed another copy? What if she wanted to edit one line on a page? How did she retain her sanity whilst writing a good proportion of a 700 page book on a typewriter? Okay it was a cookbook (instructions are less malleable) but STILL!! How long did it take to post anything across the world? And back again? And when publishers said no as Houghton Mifflin did (yes its absolutely gobsmackingly fabulicious but its too expensive to make a 700 page book that we don't think enough people will buy - okay some things don't change) the thought of rewriting it. I guess in the future people will look back on the way we do things now and wonder how we managed. You work with what you have because thats how it is, but it bends my brain cells to the point of hurting to think of how Ms Child had to work. And I wanted to throw things at the tv screen as the dvd played the part where Ms Powell has 65 messages on her answer phone from publishing editors, tv producers, magazine and newspaper editors etc.....all wanting a slice of the action after the article about her, her mission and her blog appeared in the New York Times. Throw things people. Oh for even a fraction of that response. Sigh...