The clip she posted had, of course, gotten instant waves of lusty enthusiasm, as you'd expect.
I wrote an appreciation of the scene and when she said she was posting it, I wondered if anyone would read it.
Well, yes and no. A percentage did, but most repeated their lusty enthusiasm for the scene itself.
I figured that's what would happen, and as I read the comments, I thought of how the faux Sean Connery on an SNL parody of "Jeopardy" pronounced a category as "THE PENIS MIGHTER." The category was "The Pen Is Mightier."
Yes, the lusty picture of Catwoman is a might more interesting than anything written about her!
When Julie posts one of her own editorials on current events not many read it. BUT...if she posts a photo...the comments explode.
That's what happened on December 12th when her webmaster Pablo imbedded the clip on Facebook (not linked to fuzzy YouTube) and offered a high-definition 3 minutes of a classic seduction scene. Over A QUARTER OF A MILLION watched!
I hadn't seen the clips in years, and not in such Hi-Def. I watched and (curse of the writer) it had me thinking. So I knocked out some thoughts about it, and sent it to Julie.
She called me a day or two later, and asked if she could put my email on her website (JulieNewmarWrites, which is for her memoirs and editorials etc.) and post it to Facebook.
Here's the email :
That thing, or part of it, on Facebook?
"Love Letter" was of course, her header, not the one on my email! But sure. When my book "Sweethearts of 60's TV" came out, a guy who had a local TV show commented, "the chapter on Julie, that's like a love letter!" And I thought, well, I've known Julie longer and a lot better than Diana Rigg or Dawn Wells (only met them once each), but I thought I treated all 16 chapters with equality.
When I saw the comments, which were competing with a re-post of the visuals...
...another quote came to mind: "Well I just had to laugh. I saw the photograph..."
Yes, just another "Day in the Life" for Julie's Facebook followers. The photo is MUCH more important than the prose!
I'd say the response was 20% liking what I wrote, and 80% commenting on the picture.
The Penis Mightier than the pen? One picture of Julie is worth a thousand words. Although to be fair, I shouldn't limit this to "The Penis Mighter," as some of Julie's FEMALE fans were more enraptured with her image than my prose, too.
Back in the day, the professionals who worked on weekly TV shows were able to do some amazing and enduring things, and make them look easy.
I think writers often make it seem easy. Go ahead, your assignment would be write even 500 words on that scene between Catwoman and Batman, and don't just repeat WOW and PURRFECT 250 times each.
I once mentioned to Norman Mailer (speaking of name-dropping) how impressed I was with a moment in the film "When We Were Kings." Over some clips from the Ali-Foreman fight, Norman's DESCRIPTION of it (from his book "The Fight") didn't merely serve as play-by-play. It enhanced the viewer's appreciation of the action and, "informed" it.
I suppose there are museum guides who will rotely tell you when the painter lived and died while pointing to a masterpiece, and others who will explain the symbolism and point to the technique. (And there will be people who just want to glimpse the painting, say they saw it, take a cell phone image of it, and move on!)
I'm fine with one fifth of the comments having any reference to me. It wasn't a "piece," after all, just one of the many emails and letters I've sent to my friend over many, many years. It wasn't intended for "publication." To have it appear as is (unedited) is a nice compliment.
You might be moved to check the clip on the Internet somewhere. And if you say "well, it speaks for itself," that's fine with me.
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