Miss Julie Makes a Movie

My first name has inspired quite a few screen gems over the years. Much of the early credit for my nominal popularity belongs to August Strindberg, who wrote a 1888 stage play about love, lust, power, class warfare and death before dishonor. Though the movies were decades away -- courtesy of those judgy French of all people -- this Miss Julie is here to tell you that's the plot of pretty much all of them.

If you don't believe me, look no farther than the poster outside every brand of world theater. This time of year it's a sure bet I'm being mounted, forgiving the innuendo, on a summer stage near you. While the community player crowd can't get enough of me, how is it nobody's after new material with my name on it? Et tu, Main Street?

A longtime favorite at the cineplex, I was once played by Doris Day, according to what has to be the coolest piece of key art ever. Boy, they really laid it out for you back in the '50s, when enticing the masses into the cheap seats meant painting an extra disturbing portrait of the female psyche. "What happened to Julie on her honeymoon?" You'll have to pony up a quarter for the answer to that freaky diagnosis. Something tells me Hitchcock passed on me, the fat bastard. So what if I'm not an icy blonde with a kitchen knife? "Run, Julie, run run run for your life!"

In the seventies, Julie went to Bollywood, where I naturally became a huge blockbuster among all four quadrants of the lucrative Younger Older Sikh Sunni audience. I am a girl next door from Goa who gets dumped by my boyfriend and moves to Mumba to become a call girl. Mayhem ensues when my boyishly handsome millionaire industrialist boyfriend (think President of the Senior Caste) uncovers my checkered past. Still a very hot ticket, I likely incite many a  hallway skirmish in the rougher Punjabi film schools.











Judging from the poster pimping his good name beneath my own, Peter Sellers plays either my dad or my boyfriend in John and Julie. I'm a cheeky English schoolgirl who runs off to London to see the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Eerily similar to my real life story, my journey to that big party to which I was never invited is seriously impeded by the many questionable characters I encounter along the way. I ask you, how can one name in all its various derivations enjoy so much significance in film and so little in filmmaking?

Call it Romeo & Juliet, Gnomeo & Juliet or Homeo & Juliet, the all-new queer film certain to open a future fringe festival.
Call it Fröken Julie from Ingmar Bergman's bunch or Mademoiselle Julie of the French New Wave.
Call it blog-based The Julie Julia Project,the rare one hundred percent inconsequential Meryl Streep spot-on cultural icon vehicle. And yes, I do have an ax to grind, since I formally answer to both Julie and Julia -- and also have an eponymous blog overdue for a big screen debut. Or a small one. Seriously, would it kill someone to fund, cast and shoot me for free streaming in some obscure web series nobody's talking about?

Though that pretty much wraps it up for my on-screen credits, I also enjoy remarkable irrelevance in pop music. Look no farther than Bobby Sherman, who never once bothered to meet, date or marry me. Though I highly doubt he actually wrote "Julie Do You Love Me," that guy built an entire career on my name -- which sure makes one of us.