The art of letting yourself go

MANILA, Philippines - For Nip/Tuck and Glee creator Ryan Murphy a man who likes change discovering the best-selling memoir Eat Pray Love proved a real boon. The 44-year-old filmmaker read the book upon its 2006 release and felt an immediate connection. He’d even go as far as saying that the book altered his life.

“It spoke to me on such a personal level,” begins Murphy, the man who adapted the screenplay and directed the cinematic incarnation starring Julia Roberts. “I read it as a fan, I had just come through a terrible break-up, and what it said to me is that it is never too late to reinvent yourself. It is never too late to try to be happy. If you are in a bad relationship try and get out of it and if you don’t like where you are living, try and change it.”

The book, and indeed the film, tells the true-life tale of Elizabeth Gilbert, a successful travel writer who falls out of love with her husband and suffers a painful divorce. Gnawed at by guilt, she takes a year out, heading first to Rome in Italy, where she indulges her passion for food (Eat), then to an ashram in India, where she bids to find a spiritual meaning to her life (Pray), and finally to a familiar haunt in Bali, where, out of the blue, she meets, and falls for, a Brazilian man (Love). It is a hugely popular book, which spent three uninterrupted years on New York Times best-seller list.

Among the impressive supporting cast, Murphy draws performances from Javier Bardem (Liz’s Brazilian love interest), Billy Crudup (her ex-husband), James Franco (a lover who awakens her interest in spirituality) and Richard Jenkins (an older man who encourages her to let go of her guilt), while the role of Liz Gilbert herself is played by Julia Roberts, which is something of a coup for Murphy; not since her Oscar-winning turn in Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 drama Erin Brockovich has Roberts appeared in every scene of a film.

“And yet I want to see a movie where Julia Roberts is in every scene,” beams Murphy. “I grew up with Julia Roberts. I love her. I had ideas that I wanted for Julia Roberts in makeup, hair and clothes, things that she had never done before.”

Opening soon in theaters, Eat Pray Love is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.