2 days, 2 posts..... WHAT?

I think I posted yesterday. Hmmm. Not really sure.

Anyways, I was thinking again (Nattie must be thinking "oh gosh, why").

When we saw Julie & Julia, I REALLY enjoyed it. I have to say it's one of my favourites. I knew it was a Nora Ephron movie and I knew that Nora Ephron was Jewish but I guess I never REALLY thought about it before we saw the movie. Anyways, I LOVED the movie so much. And then some. But I definitely had that Woody Allen/Kevin Smith feeling when I watched it. There's something about certain directors that makes me feel that way. Something else interesting that I learned on imdb is that Nora Ephron is in 2 Woody Allen movies, as an extra-sounding type of character. I just think there's something to that.

I wish I could articulate better the way I feel when I watch Woody Allen movies or Julie & Julia, but I can't because I don't understand it myself. They're not "Jewish" movies. Most of Woody Allen's main characters (in the movies where he is the main character) are Jewish, but I think that has something to do with the fact that it seems like most of those movies are kind of autobiographical. Or at least I think the characters are reflections of him. In any case, I found out that Nora Ephron also directed When Harry Met Sally, which many of you know is one of my very favourite movies. And Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail..... all of which I REALLY loved.

Not that I think it's fair to just say that just because she's Jewish I'm more likely to enjoy her movies. That's definitely not what I'm saying or thinking. I just feel like there's something there. I don't know what, and I don't know how it can transcend subject that way (if "it" does, in fact, exist). It's probably just a fluke. I mean, the fact that 2 of my 3 very favourite directors are Jewish doesn't constitute some demographic miracle or relationship. A LOT of directors (and other people in Hollywood) happen to be Jewish.

In Stars of David (one of my very favourite books), Abigail Pogrebin points out that Nora Ephron has been called a "Jewish humorist in the tradition of Woody Allen". So there's that, are they both Jewish humorists? Nora Ephron doesn't think so. She doesn't see herself as a Jewish writer anymore than she identifies as a woman writer. She says "Don't I make movies?". Which I totally agree with. I wouldn't want to be a "woman director" or a "Jewish director" or whatever, I'd just want to be a director. I happen to think that'd be a cool job anyway, but that's another tangent for another post.

I just think there's something to this though. She actually says something that I can appreciate about a certain Jewish type of humour: "one of the things that seemed very clear to me was that this thing that you call Jewish humor, whatever it is, partly comes from being ina minority. In my stereotype of Jews, one thing I love is how funny they are -- how funny at their own expense they are". I think that the "connection", should there be one, has something to do with Jews having a certain type of humour (or writing style or something. Could be anything), making something non-Jewish with that type of humour and then my interpreting it in a certain way. That definitely doesn't explain my love of Julie & Julia, When Harry Met Sally, or much else at all though. So that's great. I have a question and a totally irrelevant theory.

It was just something I was thinking about. In other happy news, I got a few books I ordered today. My new copy of Stars of David by Abigail Pogrebin, I Am Jewish edited by Judea and Ruth Pearl , and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt. YAY!

I should stop ordering books and start READING books though. My list is quite long!

<3