This Judy Blume biopic traces her journey of pioneering the young adult literary genre, her fight against censorship, and how she tapped into multiple generations of coming of age stories through extensive correspondence with kids and teens. We break down JUDY BLUME FOREVER by Davina Pardo & Leah Wolchok.
Sundance 2023 Section: Premieres
Distribution: Streaming on Amazon Prime Video on April 21, 2023
From Sundance’s website: Generations of readers have found themselves in a Judy Blume book. Her name alone launches a flood of memories for anyone who’s gripped one of her many paperbacks. For decades, Blume’s radical honesty has comforted and captivated readers — and landed her at the center of controversy for her frankness about puberty and sex. Now the beloved American author candidly shares her own coming-of-age story.
Directors Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok trace Blume’s journey from fearful, imaginative child to storytelling pioneer who elevated the physical and emotional lives of kids and teens, to banned writer who continues to fight back against censorship today. Playful and poignant animations celebrate the magic and awkwardness of being young, while intimate conversations with acclaimed authors and artists reveal Blume’s profound impact on readers. Long-standing fans share open-hearted letters they wrote to Blume over decades.
With humor, sensitivity, and a healthy dose of adolescent cringe, Judy Blume Forever tells the story of the woman whose trailblazing books changed the way millions of readers understand themselves, their sexuality, and what it means to grow up.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.501] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. And I'm Wonder Bright. And welcome to Story All The Way Down, where we're covering the documentaries at Sundance 2023. And today we're going to be looking at Judy Bloom Forever by Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok. So this is a documentary premiere covering the life of Judy Blume, who pioneered the genre of young adult literature, writing about the lives of teenagers coming of age and tells a story where she's born in 1938, coming of a time where she was just doing this on the side and hoping that it would make a go of it and it actually got some momentum and it traces her evolution of the different novels that she's publishing and the different themes that she's able to explore. Some of the themes are exploring different dimensions of teenage sexuality to the point where she's actually landed herself on all these banned book lists and so she's had to start to fight against this level of censorship that her work has had. The thing that I also loved about this film is that you see the degree that she's able to not only have like this photographic memory of her own childhood, but also be in touch with the new generations of what's happening with the plights of young children by being in direct conversation with them through these letters that she's corresponding with all these variety of different people that are featured throughout the course of this film. You get to see the ways that she's sending a message back to people that makes a big difference to them because they see in Judy Blume somebody who is able to identify with their plight and their stories. In a lot of ways, Judy Blume is bearing witness to a lot of people across the country and to listen to those stories and to translate them into these novels that she's putting out into the world. So it was a great introduction for me to Judy Blume. I wasn't as familiar with her or her work. And so just an amazing soul who has done some great work and also some of her, God, Mark, what's the name of it?
[00:02:13.503] Wonder Bright: Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret.
[00:02:15.585] Kent Bye: And her book, Are You There, God? It's Margaret is actually it's me, Margaret.
[00:02:19.809] Wonder Bright: Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret.
[00:02:23.513] Kent Bye: And are you there, God? It's me, Margaret.
[00:02:30.900] Wonder Bright: Yes, I'm enchanted. Hi, Margaret. Hi.
[00:02:36.826] Kent Bye: Thanks for joining us. It's also actually coming out in theaters April 28th, 2023. And I think this documentary is also premiering on Amazon Prime Video on April 21st, 2023. So it's going to be the Blumasance, as some people have been calling it. the Judy Blume renaissance. And so yeah, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts of this documentary.
[00:03:03.379] Wonder Bright: Well, I mean, I loved it. She's just obvious. She's just wonderful. How could you not love her? And I also loved the readers that they got to read passages and respond and speak directly from their own personal experiences of reading Judy Blume as they grew up. It is an enchanting film about an enchanting woman who is enchanting precisely because she hasn't lost touch with the experience of being a child from her own perspective and her ability to speak directly from that in a way that is funny, empathetic, direct, and also really pragmatic. She's introducing themes that, you know, at the time that these books were released in the 70s, People just weren't writing books for children that were talking about periods and menstruation in the way that she talks about it. So she was groundbreaking. But she was also just providing some practical knowledge that, you know, kids needed and they weren't getting. So she was providing a service. And I just completely agree with you that some of the best parts of the film really come from her sitting with this treasure trove, this archive of letters that she received over the years that she was writing. And she would come across people that wrote to her again and again because she wrote back. And so she was pen pals with some of these kids. And That is just, I mean, it's so cool. It's so cool. She's exactly who you'd want her to be.
[00:04:38.463] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, as she's writing, she's also has two kids. And so she's also drawing certain things from their lives, but also her daughter is her first reader. And I was just really struck by hearing about some of the different themes of like teenage sexual experiences and they cover in this documentary with the onset of the Reagan years in the 80s, the moral majority. And there's this footage of her debating Pat Buchanan on these TV shows, and he keeps pressing her on masturbation. And she's like, what are you hung up on, masturbation? Or what's going on? And she kind of... Yeah, so she realizes at that moment that she cannot be directly in debate with these people. The best thing that she can do is to be involved with the National Coalition Against Censorship. So these different organizations who were directly fighting against all these conservatives who on one hand are all for free speech, except for when it goes against their values, then they want to ban books. And so you have this movement of people around the country wanting to ban books. And so Judy Blume's books are often at the top of the types of books that are being band. Sometimes it's just around LGBTQIA issues, or there's one book where one of the characters kind of in an offhand, she discovers masturbation in a way, but the book wasn't even about that. But all the discourse and discussion ends up being around this one little scene of a much larger book that will just get completely banned and eradicated. So you have this exiling nature of trying to erase these different things that people don't want kids to have access to. And there is this legitimate debate as to how old do kids need to be to have age-appropriate things. Are there ratings? Are there certainly systems within movies and video games that try to control this. But at the same time, from the perspective of somebody who has been a teenager and stuff, there's a way in which the type of language and discussions and topics that teenagers have are about the types of stuff that Judy Blume was talking about. And so there's some ways that she was being the pioneer of a genre that really didn't exist before her with this young adult genre that is really still to this day, a lot of her work is at the tops of these young adult charts. So even despite being banned and censored. So I felt like there was so many other layers about her work that was starting to get into the response to her work that got into this other political dimension and how it speaks to who should be the people that are making these decisions. There was one girl at some point said, I'm okay with my parents telling me what books I can have, but I'm not okay with your parents telling me what I can't have. So there's a way in which that maybe this is a matter that should be left up to parents rather than one parent making the decision for all children type of situation that we have with this dynamic of book banning here in the United States.
[00:07:43.674] Wonder Bright: It's also worth pointing out that we saw this film within a day or two of watching The Disappearance of Cher Hyatt, which is another author who is a bestselling author in the 70s and 80s writing about female sexuality. And she published three books. And the outcry against her was so fierce that her publishers dropped her and she was unable to get published in the United States. And she actually had to leave and move to Europe as a result. And, you know, Cher Height was born in 1942 and Judy Blume was born in 1938. So these are women of the same generation who are identifying the same thing in the 60s and 70s as, you know, women all over are going through this like consciousness raising process. And they're doing it from very different viewpoints. Judy Blume is a children's book author, like a pioneer in YA literature. And Cher Haidt is speaking directly to adults, but they're both talking about female sexuality. It's not like Judy Blume is writing about young boys' sexuality. She's writing about women. I would argue that part of the reason her books come under the kind of censorship that they do is because she's writing about young women touching themselves, experiencing pleasure and experiencing their body and being connected to their body and having ownership over their body. You know, like if bodily autonomy is threatened, one of the best ways to do that is to prevent knowledge. This is why Eve's fall to grace has to do with her having knowledge. Because knowledge is dangerous if women have it. Knowledge is power. So we have to silence women, you know, like clearly. because they can't be powerful. So what is delightful about Judy Blume is that she has this capacity for a kind of like innocence. And by that, I mean that she's engaging with the world as she finds it. And then she's speaking directly from that place. And unlike Cher Hyatt, who put herself time and time again under the crossfire of people who wanted to take her down and prove her wrong and all these things. Judy Blume was like, yeah, you know what, you're not my audience. Let me find a different place. You know, she had a completely different strategy for how to get her work out. And in addition to working with people who were concerned with banned books and having networks of people to fight that kind of censure, she's also just, yeah, writing directly to the next generation, speaking directly to them about bodily autonomy and like finding pleasure in your body and exploring your world around you and having the right to do that and having a singular voice around which you might be able to describe your life and your experiences.
[00:10:42.000] Kent Bye: Yeah, and the film kind of goes through the course of her career as she's doing the young adult and eventually she gets a divorce. I think she goes through two divorces actually, and she's not sure if she's going to meet someone and if she does meet somebody, but she also writes these adult themed books with wifey and exploring her own sexuality in some sense. So, you know, as she's discovering her own path of what sounded to be involved in somewhat of a loveless marriage and Her first husband didn't seem like he was necessarily interested or engaged or supportive of what she was doing. She had one success after another and was able to build up the type of career that she's had. She was of an era where she didn't really have a lot of other options for her career. But despite all that, she was able to break through. And I think the other thing that I really appreciated about this film was just to hear the different cultural critics to share their own personal experiences about different books, whether it was about bullying, whether it was about their own sense of discovery. You have people that are critiquing different aspects of that books that are more than 10 years old, one cultural critic was saying that's a part of historical fiction. Because I think there's a sense in which the ways around gender and other aspects of some of the different discussions of ways in which the Judy Blume books are not meant to be timeless, but they were meant to be reflecting that moment in time so purely, but yet they weren't necessarily written in a way to be lasting forever was one of the points that were made about it. And that they're still valid in that way, but to what degree are we going to still be looking at some of the different aspects? So that was some of the different discussions that I think I was left with, but just to hear the whole arc of her journey and the different ways that she was pushing beyond just the young adult genres and exploring other genres. And yeah, also her own discovery of sense of self, her identity, her own sexuality. So And yeah, eventually, you know, starting her own bookstore down in Florida, another aspect where she's able to carry all the books that are banned everywhere else, but she's able to still sell them in a way that she wants to get them out there.
[00:12:53.476] Wonder Bright: Yeah, this idea that, you know, any book that's over 10 years old is historical fiction, I think is certainly valid and true. And I think the fact is that she's still writing about because we haven't actually evolved beyond a lot of the things that she's described in her book. So kids still resonate with them. It should be historical fiction. Sadly, it is not. And, you know, in keeping with that, I was born in 1970. And so I'm of the generation that did cut their teeth on Judy Blume. But because I was raised with a mother who actually was born the same year as Judy Blume in 1938, and had a very different trajectory than Judy Blume, but still arrived at a similar place, I was not under any illusion about what my body was. My mom was reading a book called Where Do Babies Come From from the time I was three years old on like a little picture book. And so I got books when I was like 10 or 11 about what is a period and like all these kinds of things. So the Judy Blume books did not speak to me the way that they spoke to my generation. I read them because everybody read them. But, you know, there are themes in those books of God and religion that I couldn't relate to because I didn't grow up with a religion. I'd never heard the word God until a kid on the playground at eight years old asked me, do you believe in God? And I had to go home and say, Mommy, what is God? So I didn't have a lot of the experiences that Judy Blume writes about. I didn't have friends. Friendship is a big thing she writes about. I didn't have friends. And I was bullied. And the one book where she really does talk about bullying, Blubber, I'm sure is a very great book for a lot of people, but I did try to read it and it was very painful for me. Like I haven't experienced like a slight memory of the book where I don't actually remember it because what I remember is like just wincing like it didn't help me at all. And as I was reading an Amazon review of the book today, I was reading other people who were bullied and also had like a similar reaction to that book that because the book, I think in many ways this was like good and this is like what she was supposed to do and it reached children and probably still reaches children in a way that is necessary. But it tells a lot of the bullying story through the viewpoint of the kids who inadvertently become bullies. which is an important part of the story, but speaking as somebody who was bullied, I didn't need to identify with the people who were bullying me. So that book didn't help me very much. So, you know, I found my solace in other literature that was written for children. Oddly, though, you mentioned Wifey, and that is probably the first Judy Blume book that I ever read that I really did like. And I read that when I was maybe 19 or 20. I remember liking her more in that book than I'd liked her in others, even though her heroine in that book is a less likable character. I still found more to identify with her. And, you know, obviously, I also was reading it for the sex scenes. Judy Blume writes about sex. This is why we read Forever and Dini and Wifey. But yeah, so anyway, you know, I may not have been a fan of her work as a child, but I am 100% a fan of her now having watched this film. She's Wonderful. And it is a really compelling story, especially hearing about the impact of her work on the young readers who are maybe in the film no longer young, but really remember what those works meant to them.
[00:16:40.303] Kent Bye: Yeah, as we start to wrap up and start to think about what I'm bearing witness to in this film, I mean, obviously, Julie Bloom is a force to be reckoned with, and her vision and capacity to empathize with the experiences of young teenagers is incredible. But I think the thing that I'm really taking away is the people who were writing in and really asking for help, and these different cries for help, and Obviously, you know, this was a dilemma for Judy Blume because she can't save all these kids who are asking for her help. And, you know, that would be a full-time job and she has to keep focused on the next book and the next story that she wants to put out there. But the moments that she did intervene and reply and the people that they tracked down to have them give testimony for what that meant for them. even like having her go to like a graduation for one of these people that she was in conversation with. And so there's a way in which that she's deeply connected to the stories and the zeitgeist, these deeper archetypal flows of energies that she's just tuned into in a way that I thought it was really remarkable to see the capacity she had to connect to so many people and to see her in the Yale University archives, which is where all of her letters are stored right now, to be sifting through and reading them and for them to follow up. That was, I think, a part of the story that I am just going to take with me.
[00:18:14.391] Wonder Bright: Yeah, co-signed. That is 100% where I sit with bearing witness to the story that was told in this film is the impact that she had on a generation of young people. Those that she was in contact with and those that were just fans that still ended up Speaking about what the work meant to them It's really a testament to the power of speaking directly to young adults You know just bypassing the middleman. I It is such a direct through line into future generations to really take children seriously and to share their concerns and their experiences through being alive and alert to your own. And it's a wonderful thing to be invited into through watching this film.
[00:19:12.547] Kent Bye: Yeah, so that was Judy Bloom Forever by Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok. It's part of the doc premieres at Sundance 2023. It actually did get picked up by Amazon Prime Video streaming starting on April 21st, 2023. That's going to be a week before the Are You There God on Margaret.
[00:19:36.815] Wonder Bright: Hi, Margaret. That's a week before the feature film. Are you there God? It's me Margaret premieres.
[00:19:45.549] Kent Bye: So yeah, and thanks for joining us here on story all the way down. If you'd like more information, you go to story all the way down.com to find out more information about podcast and ways that you can support the podcast. And yeah, thanks for joining us.
