Wednesday, June 16, 2021

"The Devil Wears Prada" turns 15

 Fifteen years ago this month, The Devil Wears Prada was released in U.S. theaters. While the film was a great critical and commercial success, more importantly, it represented a shift in Meryl's career that many believe skyrocketed her into a level of reverence that no other actress of her generation had ever been able to achieve. She earned her fourteenth Oscar nomination, and at the age of 57 had found herself an enormous box office draw. In only the five years after the film was release, Meryl enjoyed huge hits like Mamma Mia!, Julie & Julia, and It's Complicated, as well as three additional Oscar nominations (winning of course for 2011's The Iron Lady). 

It's difficult to overstate how important the success of this film was to the next decade of Meryl's career. Her name alone got films green-lit. And not just because she was a good actor. But because studios expected that she would make them money. That success continues to this day, much in part to how well The Devil Wears Prada was received. To commemorate the film's anniversary, the cast, director David Frankel, and costume designer Patricia Field sat down over a Zoom call with Entertainment Weekly to discuss the film's legacy. Some fun stuff packed into this 30-minute video. Enjoy. 

8 comments:

  1. What fun! Even though they indicated it was unlikely, what are your thoughts on a sequel?

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    1. I'm not a fan of Meryl doing a sequel. I'd rather we get as many characters and portrayals as possible from her. Were she to revisit Miranda, I wonder what she and we would be missing out on instead.

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  2. I have seen so many bad imitations of the movie and Miranda since 2006, and it makes me really appreciate this classic and Meryl's performance.

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  3. Hi. Jeff. I love your blog and I am a big Meryl Streep fan myself. I was just wondering if you could give me some advice on how to start a film blog. I'm a huge film fan myself but I don't want to start a YouTube channel so I can remain anonymous in case I start making films and become famous. Do you have any advice?

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    1. I guess I'd just suggest choosing a platform for how you'd like to run your blog. I use blogger, which has worked well for me. I'm sure there are others out there as well, I've just never used them. Once you get the blogger account, there are a lot of features you can use to make the layout however you want, including adding certain tags, archives, links. Was it this type of stuff you were wondering about? Thanks for reading!

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    2. Hi Jeff. Thanks for the reply. That wasn't what I was asking per say. I'm referring to stuff like how to get visitors to the blog and how much I would have to pay to start a blog with a platform like Blogger and if it is financially lucrative in the sense that I make more from the blog than I spend on the blog. I don't know you get what I mean.

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    3. I’m probably not going to be of much help then I’m afraid. I pay for the domain name of my blog, which is under $20 a year, but other than that, I have no expense. I do not run ads, so receive zero money from my blog. Any views I get are simply by luck or Google searches for info on Meryl Streep. I have previously paid for google adwords to see how that spiked viewership, and it did probably by 50% (paying around $50/month). That was more just out of curiosity than anything. I write the blog for fun, if there ever presented a financial opportunity I wouldn’t necessarily be against it, but it’s never been my intention with Word on the Streep.

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    4. Okay. That's cool. I respect that. Keep up the good work.

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