Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love

Eat Pray Love: Your FAQs

  • First Posted: Aug 24 2010 05:17 AM
  • Updated: 2 months ago

What does Elizabeth Gilbert's ex-husband think of all this? Did Liz end up marrying Felipe? Your non-existential questions, answered.

It’s no Inception, but if you’re among the bajillions of people who’ve taken in Eat Pray Love in the last couple of weeks, you might have a few questions. You don’t have to travel the “three I’s” (Italy, India, Indonesia) to find the answers – that’s what the fourth “I” is for (internet).

What’s that song in the trailer? The song is called “Dog Days Are Over,” and it’s by English pop act Florence and the Machine.

Is Liz still in touch with all the people from this movie? On her website, Liz says, “I am delighted to report that I am in close contact with all of them.” Well almost. Unfortunately, Richard from Texas passed away last March.

What did Liz do after she finished eating, praying, and loving? She got married again.

To Javier – um, Felipe? Yes! And she wrote another book about it.

What does the real-life Felipe look like? Not like Javier Bardem.

How’s Liz’s ex-husband taking all this? What’s he up to these days? According to The Daily Beast, Michael Cooper is keeping pretty mum about it all. But we do know that 10 years after Liz spurned him for spaghetti, Cooper married a Canadian diplomat; they have two sons. He’s working as a public interest law scholar.

Wasn’t he supposed to be publishing a rebuttal? He was, but now he’s not. Hyperion planned to release Cooper’s memoir, Displaced, which was meant to be about “a global journey of self-discovery to find himself and overcome the trauma of a marriage that ended in fights and despair.” But the memoir was cancelled, with Cooper claiming Hyperion was making “11th-hour demands” to make the book more racy.

Cooper said: "I set out to write about how, in the wake of a devastating and unexpected divorce, I slowly rebuilt my life by redoubling my already decades-long commitment to humanitarian relief and human rights work. In the end, it seemed to me that Hyperion hoped to push the book in a more controversial direction – something I was unwilling to do. I am exploring options with other publishers.”

Can you get EPL travel packages? Yeah.

All that travelling seems like a lot of effort, though. Plus I ran it by my publisher and they don’t want to pay for my year-long vacay. Isn't there an easier way to buy my spiritual awakening? You can always opt for an Eat Pray Love lip gloss, Sony e-reader, keychain, pillowcase, or bucket hat. There’s also an EPL clothing line and fragrance.

There’s a fragrance? What does it smell like? An earthy base with top notes of salty tears dissolving into a rich combination of pizza sauce, Zen, and steamy Brazilian sweat. Just kidding. Or were we? Apparently the fragrance comes as a trio: "Eat" is supposed to smell like Italian food, geddit, so it includes caramel, vanilla, and, um, basil; "Pray" pays homage to "the spices and colors of India" so it has patchouli and stuff in it; and "Love" is about "the exotic and fragrant island of Bali," and by the way, it's "the most date-worthy." Natch.

Is it true there’s a guy version of EPL? A book called Drink, Play, F@#k: One Man’s Search for Anything Across Ireland, Las Vegas, and Thailand, by Andrew Gottlieb, was published by Grove Press in 2009. Jilted hubby Bob "sets off to explore the world, experience a meaningful connection with the divine, and rediscover his passion. His travels lead him from his home in New York City to a drinking bender across Ireland, through the glitz and glamour that is Las Vegas, and to the hedonistic pleasure palaces of Thailand.”

Gottlieb, a 43-year-old American comedy writer, said he picked up Eat, Pray, Love and was “instantaneously confused by the whole thing … It just seemed to me like a crazy thing that an overprivileged, overanalyzed, self-obsessed New York City writer woman would do. So I thought, ‘What would a guy do if he had a year to do whatever he wanted?'” Warner Bros. has bought the rights for Steve Carell’s production company.

Another skeptic has suggested a memoir entitled Eat, S@#!, Die.

What are those cool foreign words Liz learns in the movie? One of them is Il bel far niente – Italian for "the beauty of doing nothing." Another is antevasin, a Sanskrit word Liz chooses as "her" word, meaning "one who lives at the border." Now go put them in your Facebook status! Everything is so much more profound when it’s foreign.

TAGS: Arts

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