Reel Estate: "Julie and Julia" serves up fine film fare, but the rooftop dinners are all Hollywood

By Virginia K. Smith | July 25, 2014 - 9:59AM

We'll confess: Our preferred way to revisit 2009's Julie and Julia is to skip over all of the "Julie" scenes, rendering the movie a pithy, nostalgic Meryl Streep vehicle just called Julia. (Sorry, Amy Adams). However, there's one major, semi-redeeming, though not entirely realistic, point of interest in the non-Streep scenes: Julie's New York apartment.

While it's true-to-life messy and devoid of natural light, with its spacious rooms and unbelievable rooftop, it didn't exactly look like the apartment of a struggling sad sack, either.

Again, let's take a look at that roof:

While it looks like a lot of Brooklyn rooftops we've seen, one wonders how, exactly, they got a table and full dinner setting through the tiny door we assume leads up there, or seemingly exclusive access, given how many dinners take place up there throughout the course of the movie.

Julie's supposed to live in Long Island City (as you might've guessed from the view), but her building seems like a far cry from the luxe, high-priced condos that populate most of the neighborhood now. Nonetheless, per IMDB, the rooftop scenes were indeed shot at 12-17 38th Avenue, on the border of Long Island City and Astoria, an area that could realistically be relatively cheap and a little dingy, as opposed to the heart of LIC.

One thing that would ring true for NYC viewers: Julie's tiny kitchen, which fits one person at a time, with no room for any kind of eating (their dining room table is a part of the living room).

Check out the trailer below, also featuring the sets for Julia Child's dreamy, vintage Paris apartment. We could wax on (and on) about that one, but that's a post best saved for another day:

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