"Everything is Copy"
A look at the work of Nora Ephron
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I indulged in a re-watch of Nora Ephron’s 1989 romcom When Harry Met Sally over the Easter break. It must be a couple of decades since I last watched it.
Often revered as the queen of the 90s romcom, in this New Yorker piece, journalist Rachel Syme argues that Nora Ephron’s real subject matter was not the ‘sappy romance’ for which she is better known, but as a commentator on how words could unite us - as well as tear us apart.
Born in New York City in 1941, Ephron’s parents were playwrights, Henry and Phoebe Ephron, so her introduction to the writers who would influence her was all around her. She confessed to a lifelong obsession with Dorothy Parker, member of the infamous Algonquin Round Table, whom she met twice: once as a child at one of her parents’ parties, and again when she was twenty. Like many young female writers, she wanted to live Parker’s perceived life as a woman writer in New York City, firing out clever one liners.
“All I wanted in this world was to come to New York and be Dorothy Parker. The funny lady. The only lady at the table.”
When Ephron was five, her family moved to Los Angeles, where her parents wrote for the movie industry. Both parents reportedly struggled with alcoholism, as well as being accused of being Communist sympathisers.
Ephron later attended Wellesley, writing for the school newspaper, and in the summer of 1961 she was a summer intern in the Kennedy White House. She was quoted as saying in a New York Times article of 2003 that she was probably the only intern that President John F Kennedy never hit on.
After graduation, she moved to a series of small apartments in New York City. Her aim was to become a journalist, and she initially worked in the typing pool of Newsweek whilst constantly reading in her own time, learning how to read a text and make it her own.
Her break came during the newspaper strike of 1962, when Ephron’s editor friend Victor Navaskt began printing a parody of the New York City publications, asking Ephron to write a parody of Leonard Lyons’ gossip column which appeared in the New York Post. Ephron did her homework: reading into the Newsweek archives, she located clippings of Lyons’ columns, and copied his voice to recreate her parodied versions. This caught the eye of the Post’s publisher, Dorothy Schiff, landing Ephron her first job as a staff reporter.
Ephron’s timing couldn’t have been better: a new sense and style of journalistic writing was becoming en vogue, and she, embodying this, soon moved to Esquire, where she wrote popular essays on topics including feminism and the media. She also found her voice in personal essays with a hint of humour, such as pieces on her small breast size. Unlike many of her peers, she wrote more intimate, conspiratorial pieces which readers enjoyed.
Ephron took this voice into her first published novel, Heartburn, a fictionalised story about her own failed marriage after her second husband Carl Bernstein cheated on her whilst pregnant. The novel is a thinly-veiled account of their divorce through the voice of Rachel Samstat, a food writer. As she writes about original recipes, the narrator Rachel dissects her marriage. The book became a bestseller, leading to a film in 1986 starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, with Ephron writing the screenplay.
“The first day I did not think it was funny. I didn’t think it was funny the third day either, but I managed to make a little joke about it.” Heartburn
Now a single parent of two young children, she turned her pen to writing more scripts to pay the bills.
After working on a few television scripts, Ephron co-wrote her first feature film, Silkwood in 1983 with Alice Arlen, and for which she won an Academy Award, before writing the screenplay for Heartburn. She went on to win more academy awards for what became her signature romcom format. She found her voice through her portrayal of witty, strong female characters, examining her cynical viewpoints on love and relationships through characters who are good with words.
As an example of this, when re-watching When Harry Met Sally, what struck me was how much dialogue the film has. Many of the scenes see Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal musing on the ideas of love, relationships, and friendship, whilst not doing very much else. I love the wordplay in the film, but it did make me wonder if newer audiences with perhaps shorter attention spans would find their verbal sparring still as entertaining.
The couple spend a decade in this way, talking to each other, in perhaps one of the longest will they/won’t they courtships in film history.
“I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich.” Billy Crystal as Harry in When Harry Met Sally
Many of Ephron’s screenplays are also about readers and writers, suggesting that words and language are at the heart of romantic relationships.
In Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Ephron again makes it all about the words and language. Annie, played by Meg Ryan (once again playing a journalist, as in WHMS), falls in love with widower Sam, played by Tom Hanks, after hearing him speak about his dead wife on a radio station.
Whilst in 1998’s You’ve Got Mail, Meg Ryan plays Kathleen, a children’s bookshop owner who falls for Tom Hanks’ corporate bookshop owner, Joe. They exchange a vibrant correspondence in an over-thirties chat room, mainly about their love of New York City.
“Don’t you love New York in the fall?” Joe writes. “It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.” Joe, played by Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail
Ephron’s final film, Julie & Julia, appeared in 2009, exploring slightly different themes, though writers still feature. This time, the story moves between the life of food writer Julia Child in the 1950s and Julie Powell, who ran the blog Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (which was later published in hardback in 2005, with the paperback edition re-titled Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously). An aspiring novelist, Powell decides to cook each of the recipes in Child’s book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking over a year and write a blog about her experiences.
The film explores the work of the writer, as both women struggle to write and be published; the modern day Julie finds that, by unlocking the words of the earlier Julia, she can find her own writing voice once again.
Ephron’s own romantic partner came in the form of her third husband, Nicholas Pieggi, the creator of the 1990 film Goodfellas and 1995’s Casino, and whom she married in 1987 until her death in 2012.
Ephron’s infamous quotation “Everything is copy” was apparently coined from her own mother, Phoebe Ephron, which she believed was her mother advising her that life only hands you material that you can use in your work.
“I now believe that what my mother meant was this: When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you,” Ephron once said. “But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh, so you become a hero rather than the victim of the joke.”
Ephron’s essays and other writings were assembled in various collections including; Wallflower at the Orgy (1970), Crazy Salad (1975), and Scribble, Scribble (1978). I Feel Bad About My Neck (2006) was her first published collection in almost thirty years.
“When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.” Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck
A final collection, The Most of Nora Ephron (2013), features many of her newspaper columns, blog posts, speeches and other writing, as well as the play Love, Loss, and What I Wore (2009) which premiered on Broadway a year after Ephron’s death of pneumonia due to complications of leukaemia on 26th June 2012 at the age of 71.
Poignantly, I Remember Nothing, written in 2010, concludes with two lists of things she will or won’t miss. Among the ‘won’t miss’ are things like ‘the sound of the vacuum cleaner’, and ‘panels on “Women in Film.”’
Whilst the list of things she will miss begins with “my kids”, “Nick”, and ‘Taking a bath. Coming over the bridge to Manhattan. Pie.”
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What a wonderful nostalgic trip. Thanks Kate. I’d always thought of WHMS as a mid-90s film, and was surprised when I recently discovered it was ‘89. That and her other films are such a reminder of a fabulous time!
Thank you for bringing this look into Ephron! I am an avid You've Got Mail watcher, and since introducing it to my partner we have made it a Christmas tradition to watch it on the 25th (I know most people feel it's a fall movie, but hey...)!