Julie Christie as Lara in David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago
The Movie Star, Julie Christie , and I had a romance on facebook.
It’s not truly “real” as pundits say. It’s “fake real”. Or as Aaron said of facebook, “I think socializing on the Internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.”
At least, as far as I was concerned, the romance was very real.
I mean, we saw each other’s posts!
Having worked inside the movie business for many years, I had my fill of meeting stars and what not. But Julie Christie!
Some say that the Movie Star era was over with the death of Elizabeth Taylor.
But I disagree!
Julie, that gifted actress with the mythic face and liquid eyes, now the glorious cougar, was not only very much alive in London. She was also on facebook, and friended me…within minutes of my request!
Yes, indeedy! Take that, Aaron Sorkin!
A song was even sung about her! “Julie Christie you make me grow misty.”
When I was 13 years ago I first heard about Julie at the school bus stop. Bobby Berta, the neighborhood bully, puffed up his chest and said, “You’ll never understand Doctor Zhivago. You’re too young to understand love.”
So I made my Dad take me to that movie.
I understood all I needed to know about love after seeing Zhivago….’cause Julie Christie was in it!
And then there was the The Go Between, Darling, Heaven Can Wait, and the box office bust, Far From The Madding Crowd.
I had never met Julie Christie in real life , but now I felt part of her life in her London flat, scribbling facebook-style about her life and whom she admired and high-tea-time hallderfall like that. What a gracious cougar!
I became so bold in my infatuation, that I actually tagged her in a picture tribute I sent out on facebook when the great and prolific Ray Bradbury passed away in June 2012. It was a poster mock-up of a movie based on one of Ray’s books.
“May Ray Bradbury’s Books Never Burn,” was my caption in which I tagged Julie. I am sure she would be touched, liking my sense of anarchy!
It was a pretty cool shot and I am delighted to say that it stayed up in her photo archives until the day I had to get tough with her.
Yep, I had to get tough with Julie Christie of facebook.
One day, the head of casting at one of the studios sent me a private message.
She was also a friend of Julie Christie’s on facebook.
“Is our Julie Christie really Julie Christie?”
“What?!”
Before I could get my tough-guy shoes on to investigate it further, I saw a facebook alarm from Julie Christie’s manager and friend in Hollywood.
The message said: “The person who is claiming to be Julie Christie, my client, is not Julie Christie.”
“What?! This can not be!”
I did not want to believe that “fake real” was really fake!
Not a movie guy for nothing, I put on my best Sam Spade nose and went sniffing.
Before I could say, “Maltese Falcon”, I tracked down the perpetrator of the impersonation. He was a male blogger flogging his blog by having fake Julie praise it. He was using Julie to pimp for him!
I had to turn Julie into the Facebook Police.
What else could I do?
And as I turned her in as an imposter, Facebook did the right thing for me: the ugliest of tasks…
I didn’t have to lift a finger….
Facebook de-friended Julie Christie for me.
I only hope the real Julie knows I will always love her…
