If I hadn’t seen Eat Pray Love last night, I wouldn’t have watched this seven-month-old clip of Elizabeth Gilbert speaking on PBS’s This Emotional Life. Her “porcupines on a winter’s night” metaphor explains the dynamic of relationships (particularly among Type A personalities) pretty well, I think. There isn’t a line in the Eat Pray Love film that’s anywhere near as penetrating.
Gilbert, incidentally, is today 41 years old. Her Brazilian-born husband Jose Nunes (i.e., the real-life model for Javier Bardem‘s “Felipe,” in the film) is 17 years her senior. I don’t think that casting an older, mid 50ish actor to play Felipe would have satisfied the core audience (or most people, I suspect) as much as a 40ish Bardem.
