Well this is just great.
One of the tropes in JULIA & BUDDY is that Buddy cringes at the f-word due to his uptight Scottish boarding school background. And I only threw that in there because
a. I thought it would lead to some amusing comedy bits and
b. it drew Buddy away from the person who was the original inspiration for the character - who, while he really did go to boarding school, most certainly had no problem whatsoever with saying the word "fuck."
And then once I had that trope in there, I hooked into the whole Schopenhauerian concept that sex is considered so dirty because it leads to existence, which leads to pain. And that's why words connected to sex are the naughtiest words you can say.
I saw The King's Speech Saturday and I'm worried that everybody is going to associate JULIA & BUDDY with that movie. Although technically Buddy's issue is the opposite of the King's - he can't say the word but Bertie's issue is that he can say cursewords very well, it's other words that give him trouble.
Here is the relevant clip from the movie
I started working on JULIA & BUDDY in May of 2009, long before I ever heard of The King's Speech movie. I hope nobody thinks I got the idea from the movie. Now that I made the Schopenhauer connection I don't want to lose it.
I did quite like The King's Speech, it is well made, although not the most ground-breaking piece of cinema ever. But Colin Firth did an excellent job of making Bertie sympathetic, in spite of the fact that the film did not shirk the Royals' insistence that nobody forget their royalness. But even an hereditary monarch can have a rough life at times, is the message, and that's a good and humanistic and empathetic thing.
And I was pleased that the King gets a little monologue right before making The Big Speech where he explains why it's important that he does a decent job - he acknowledges that the role of King in 20th-century England is pretty much just a figurehead - but that is exactly why his ability to deliver an inspirational speech is so critical - that's about ALL he's good for.
And Colin Firth looks damn good in those uniforms, although not anywhere near as hot as in Regency get-up as Mr. Darcy.
