Everything Is Copy (2015) - full transcript

When I was a kid,
I wanted very badly to be

the president's daughter,

'cause I thought
you would get a lot
of dates that way, you know?

Sure, sure.

Now, every so often,
I'm just sitting
in the house

and I think,
I really want to be
the first lady.

I want to be sort of
a cute Eleanor Roosevelt.

You know?

We all grew up
with this thing

that my mother
said to us over and over
and over and over again,

which was,
"Everything is copy."



You know, you'd come home
with some thing

that you thought
was the tragedy
of your life...

someone hadn't asked you
to dance,

or the hem had fallen
out of your dress

or whatever you thought
was the worst thing

that could ever happen
to a human being...

and my mother would say,
"Everything is copy."

I now believe that what
my mother meant is this:

When you slip
on a banana peel,
people laugh at you,

but when you tell people
you slipped on a banana peel,

it's your laugh,
so you become the hero

rather than the victim
of the joke.

I think
that's what she meant.

On the other hand,



she may merely have meant,

everything is copy.

♪ ♪

My mom, Nora Ephron,
was a writer.

I'm also a writer,
though a very different kind.

I'm a journalist,
whose job it is

to take myself
out of the equation.

Agnosticism is at the heart
of what I do.

She was an essayist
and a screenwriter

whose own life became
her central inspiration.

Certainty was a hallmark
of her brand.

After she died
of leukemia in 2012,

I began to think a lot
about what it means
to be a writer.

Where were the limits
for her?

What is the cost
of "everything is copy"?

Did my mom really believe
this mantra of hers?

Do you think
Nora would be happy
that you're doing this?

It was her philosophy
in a certain way.

But she said,
"What is there left to say?

I've said everything."

But of course,
that's never true.

I mean,
it's actually naive.

I mean, I never would say
Nora was naive,

but that's actually naive,

to think that you could
put out your version
of the story

and that that is
the only version to tell.

That's not true.

She was a very, very smart,

comic, filmmaker,
writer, reporter.

It was all of a piece,

and the voice
is quite unified.

Really terrific,
true comic writing

is impossibly hard,
and she had it.

Men and women and how
they are with each other,

that's what she knew best,
that's what she did best.

"Sleepless in Seattle"?

That's what she called
him on the show
because he can't sleep.

And now 2000 women
want his number.

There are things
that you sort of know
that men think.

Right.
Um, things like,

"How long do I
have to lie here
and hold her

before I can go home?
Is 30 seconds enough?"
You know?

A contemporary
romantic movie,

it's one of the things
you go to the movies for.

And she made it happen again

when we had lost it
completely.

She hid all these little
human interactions

inside witty, funny things.

She understood love,
I think.

Meryl did Karen Silkwood

and the Polish person
and the Danish person.
Blah, blah, blah.

But the true stretch,

if I do say so,
was playing me...

in Heartburn.

She was the best essayist
I've ever read.

Her essays
are just riveting.

I mean, she created
a new form.

But Nora was bigger

than somebody who wrote
best-selling books.

She was bigger than somebody
who directed movies
or wrote plays.

She was like a combination
of all of that, plus.

I think more than anybody
I've ever known,

she knew what she wanted
and she went and got it.

Or went and did it,
which is more to the point.

She had the ability
to go back the typewriter

and write herself
out of trouble,

and she was very adept
and facile

at shape-shifting.

She was everything
that every girl like me

wished they could be...

smart, insightful, witty,

sexy without trying,
ambitious in all
the good ways,

and she was a great girl, too.
She was a great girl.

I think for many women,
she became a feminist icon.

She broke through
a lot of glass ceilings.

That meant a lot
to women I know.

So it made sense
that for many, many people,

her death was personal,
people who didn't know her.

When Nora died,
I remember one of my friends

said, "It's like a light
went out in New York."

Like so many friends,
I never knew
that Nora was ill.

Did you have a sense
anything was wrong

those last six years?

You know, that's the thing
that was so, um, shocking,

is to find out
that Nora had been sick.

Did you have any sense
she was sick?

Not at all.

Did you have any idea?
No, no. No, no.

You knew early on.
She hadn't told us.

Yeah, she hadn't told you.

And Mona said,
"You have to tell the kids

'cause they're not kids.
They're grown-ups."

For decades, my mother
put her private life

front and center,

writing about her feelings
of physical inadequacy,

the indignities of aging,

and the breakup
of her marriage to my father.

But at the end of her life,

she chose to stay silent
about the blood disorder
that killed her.

Why after being so open
about everything else

did she choose
not to address

the most significant crisis
of her life?

You know,
I think this was a story
that she couldn't control.

You know, the other stuff,
she could control.

She told it her way.

The Legend.

I grew up
in Beverly Hills,

in a Spanish house
in the flats.

My parents
had a large group of friends,

almost all of them
transplanted New Yorkers

who were in the business.

That's what it was known as,
the business.

The men were screenwriters
or television writers.

Their wives did nothing.

Our mother was different.
She worked.

This was long before
the concept of having it all,

but my mother had it all.

When I was a kid,
I went to the movies,

and I not only didn't believe
there was a Hollywood,

I can't imagine
that there could be anyone
who could grow up out there

and then become
a reasonably normal person
besides, you know?

And you did.
It's quite a thing.

Well, I did not have
the kind of Hollywood
childhood

that, you know, some...
My parents were screenwriters,

which was already
getting sort of dignified.

I mean, we didn't have
a projection room
in the house,

which there were people
who had, you know?

- I was born in New York.
- Right.

And I had been
completely happy
in New York

till I was five,
when I was ripped

out of New York City
and plopped

into Beverly Hills
by my parents,

who went out there
to become screenwriters.

And did!

They got credits
on 15 or 16 movies.

I once counted it up.
It's somewhere in
that vicinity,

including Daddy Long Legs

and Carousel
and The Desk Set

and a whole bunch
of movies.

There eventually
were four daughters.

And, you know,
my sister Delia
got her head stuck

between the banister rails
in our house,

and the Beverly Hills
Fire Department

had to come and cut
the wrought iron away

so that she could
be extricated.

Daddy?
Shh, shh, quiet.

Daddy, I'm stuck.

And less than a year later,

in a movie called
The Jackpot came out,

with Jimmy Stewart.

My parents just took it
and recycled it,

just like that.

Their story
of falling in love

was that my father
and mother met at a party

and he asked her out
on a date,

and by the end of the date,
he said, "Will you marry me?"

And she said,
"Can I read your work?"

And we were told that story
over and over again.

And they just loved it,
and they thought it was like
the most romantic story.

And it wasn't until
I got older that I thought,

that is really weird,
you know?

My dad had written
a bunch of plays,

and I think Mommy got tired
of his plays not selling.

And she said,
"I'll write one with you."

And it was sort of a hit,
and then they moved to LA.

And I think Mommy thought,
and rightly so,

that she had broken
some kind of glass ceiling.

Was it good to have
a mother like that?

What was she like
as a mother?

Weird.
She wasn't...

Warmth was not really
up her alley.

I once asked her
about friends of theirs.

I had liked the wife
very much,

and I said to her,
"What does she do?"

And my mother said,
"Her nails."

To me, everything
in our family began

at the dining room table.

That was where
you were groomed

to be the writer
that you became.

I mean, that was
when every time I said
something funny,

my dad said,
"That's a great line.
Write it down."

The thing about my mother
was she loved words.

She would recite poetry
at the dinner table.

She read to us.
She certainly read to me.

Maybe less to Amy.
Probably Nora got read
the most to.

Nora got the most
of everything.

Well, tell me what
your first memory is
of my mom.

My first memory is of her
biting into a tomato

in such a perfect way
as to squirt juice
in my eye.

That's it...
that's what I remember,

perfect sibling moment.

She really took charge of me
in a very sort of bossy way.

I think I was an opportunity.

♪ ♪

We met definitely at school.

I think we met when I went
to Beverly High as a freshman,

and Nora was, I think, junior.

And what was she like?

Well, Nora has
always been Nora.

So I don't know that there's...
that there's much, though...

She fired me,

or she says she didn't,
but she definitely fired me

from the high school
newspaper.

I mean, four or five times,
we had this discussion.

I say, "Nora, you fired me."
"I did not fire you.

"I didn't do it because of
this, this, that and that.

And I was not there
when you were there
at this exact time."

I said, "Nora, I promise you,
I was 14 years old.

I hadn't been fired before.
I remember."

She always,
even at that young age,

had an attitude.

It wasn't always, like,
the friendliest attitude.

She was more
of a brainy girl.

And I was more of, like,
the cheerleader girl.

And I think she had
a little disdain for that.

We were 309 people

when we graduated
high school,

and Nora was number one.

Gave the valedictorian
speech.

But there was not
a lot of feminine

about Nora during that period.

And at the time,
she had one eye

that was kind of
unevenly closed, or open.

I don't think Nora
was that well-endowed.

I think that was
a little something that
she wasn't thrilled about.

- A Few Words About Breasts.
- Esquire, 1972.

"Here's some things
I did to help:

"Bought a Mark Eden
Bust Developer.

"Slept on my back
for four years.

"Splashed cold water
on them every night

"because some French actress
said in Life magazine

"that that was what she did
for her perfect bustline.

"Ultimately, I resigned
myself to a bad toss

"and I began
to wear padded bras.

"And my girlfriends, the ones
with nice, big breasts

"would go on endlessly
about how their lives

"had been far more miserable
than mine.

"Their bra straps
were snapped in class.

"They couldn't sleep
on their stomachs.

"They were stared at
whenever the word 'mountain'

"cropped up in geography.

"I have thought about
their remarks,

"tried to put myself
in their place,

"considered
their point of view,

and I think
they are full of shit."

I don't think Mom
ever said to any of us,

you know,
"You're so beautiful.
You're adorable."

Any of that stuff.
And we were all
pretty cute kids.

And we were all...
but even if we weren't,

we were her daughters,
you know?

So I think if your mom
never tells you that,

how would you ever know it?

You graduate
from Wellesley College

and you want
to live in New York.
You come to Manhattan.

You get a job
as a researcher for
Newsweek magazine?

- Mail girl.
- Mail girl.

Mail girl.
There were no mail boys,
actually.

Yeah, 'cause mail room
is where a lot of people

like Barry Diller and others
started at the agencies.

At the agencies,
yes, where there were
no mail girls, by the way.

If you were a mail boy
at an agency,

you would eventually
become an agent.

If you were a mail girl
at Newsweek,

nothing ever really
happened to you

except that you kind of
continued to serve
men forever.

And at some point
along this road,

there was a strike,
a New York newspaper strike.

Right.

This is a copy
of the New York Post,

an 84-day-old copy
of the last edition

to be printed
before the strike began.

Buried inside was the story
of a federal...

During the strike,
we got the idea

of publishing parodies
of the four main newspapers.

And Nora thought
of doing a parody

of Leonard Lyons,
who was the leading columnist

of the New York Post,
which we called the "Pest."

The editors of the Post
wanted to sue.

But the publisher,
Dorothy Schiff, said,
"Don't be ridiculous.

"If they can parody the Post,
they can write for it.

Hire them."

And that's how
I got a try-out
at the New York Post.

And so you're now writing
and you're now a reporter.

Yes.

I loved the Post.

Of course, it was a zoo.

The editor
was a sexual predator.

The managing editor
was a lunatic.

Sometimes it seemed
that half the staff
was drunk.

I can't tell you,
it was the most
wonderful job.

I thought I was
Brenda Starr or Lois Lane

or any one of those,
and I was.

I adored it.
I covered murders.

I always felt that I was going
to be arrested for the murder

because I felt so guilty

about having so much fun
on the story.

You know?
I mean, someone was dead

and I was getting
front-page stories from it.

I didn't know
how good she was, though.

You can't tell
on a daily newspaper often

how good a writer can be.

I mean, when she started
writing those pieces
for Esquire,

those essays, as a columnist,

or sometimes just an essayist,
she had that voice.

She had such a deftness,
that she could use
the first person.

"I feel sorry for what
I'm about to do."

She somehow heard a voice
that worked

and she was able
to do something completely,

really revolutionary.

My mom was dangerous too.

She didn't have any trouble
going after people...

people who had helped her,
people she'd dated,

people she'd worked for.

It was part of the fun
of reading her.

Dorothy Schiff
and the New York Post.
Esquire, 1975.

"I feel bad about
what I'm going to do here.

"What I'm going to do here
is write something about
Dorothy Schiff,

"and the reason
I feel bad about it

"is that a few months ago,
I managed to patch things up
with her,

"and now
I'm going to blow it.

"Dorothy Schiff has a right
to run her paper

"any way she likes.
She owns it.

"But it seems never
to have crossed her mind

"that she might
have a public obligation

"to produce
a good newspaper.

"Gail Sheehy
quite cleverly compared her
with Scheherazade,

"but it would be more apt,
I think,

"to compare her
with Marie Antoinette...

as in,
let them read schlock."

I mean, she had a...
you know, a luminous smile,

and she had a very easy way
of introducing herself,

but she had a razor
in her back pocket.

She might have been cruel
and wicked,

and she always was
pretty cruel and pretty
wicked on one level.

As long as you weren't
the recipient of her wrath,

you were pretty happy
about it.

And she was funny about it.

I thought
she was very funny
and very mean.

And at one point,
she was mean about me.

And then
I just had to remember

that she was funny.

It was part of her whole
Dorothy Parker thing

to cut people to the quick.

You can be malevolent,
can't you?

Oh, sure.
It's kind of fun
to be malevolent.

No, I mean...
I tell you something
you were malevolent in.

In your piece
on Julie Nixon.

You have a soft spot
for Julie Nixon.
I like Julie, yes.

Well, I don't.

I think she's
a chocolate-covered spider.

Look, her voice in print
really replicated her voice,

almost, in life,

and in life,
she could be a little mean

and a little wicked,

and... what's the word
we're never allowed to say...
judgmental.

Nora was tough. Nora was
very, very, very tough.

But, you know,
tough is good.

There's nothing wrong
with tough

any more than there's
anything wrong with ambition.

Nora would have done nothing
had she not been ambitious,

and she would not
have succeeded at everything
had she not been tough.

She came of age
in journalism

at that moment when
magazine journalism

was really coming alive,
and so you had Tom Wolfe

and The Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test,

and you had Gay Talese,

and they're writing
amazing journalism.

Esquire at that time
was doing

that kind of
literary journalism
or new journalism.

But it had
an extraordinary editor...
Harold Hayes.

When you worked for him,
if he liked you or liked
your work,

you could do
almost anything you wanted.

They offered me a column.

Harold called up and said,
"Well, what is it you want
to write about?"

It was one of those
sort of Harold moments

of, "I've offered you
the moon."

And I said, "Women."

And I don't think
I knew it until that moment.

She writes these columns
for Esquire

and she becomes a star.

I mean, a real star.
She breaks out from the pack,

and from the pack of women
as well as men.

I said, "There's
this thing happening,

"the women's movement,

"and nobody's really
writing about it

with any edge
or humor or anything."

I didn't know anything
about feminism

when I was 13 years old,

and I read her columns,
and they were telling me

about Gloria Steinem
and Betty Friedan

and breast size
and all the rest,

and it was all expressed
in a kind of wised-up

New York...

comic... seriousness.

Nora was able to sort of
publicly discuss,

like, her imperfections,
her anxieties,

the complexity
of being female,
the way she both...

She wasn't coming down
on the side of pure feminism...

burn your bra,
don't run a comb
through your hair...

and she also wasn't
Helen Gurley Brown

telling you to, like,
you know, hide the fact
that you had anxiety.

She was able to say,
"I want all the things

"that women are supposed
to want,

and I also hate
all the things that women
are supposed to want."

Fantasies. Esquire, 1972.

"I am somewhat liberated
by current standards,

"but I have in my head
this dreadful, unliberated
sexual fantasy.

"I have never told anyone

"the exact details
of my particular sex fantasy.

"It is my secret
and I am not going
to divulge it here.

"Anyway, without giving away
any of the juicy parts,

"I can tell you
that in its broad outlines,

"it has largely to do
with being dominated

"by faceless males
who rip my clothes off.

"That's just about all
they have to do.

"Stare at me
in this faceless way,

"go mad with desire,
and rip my clothes off.

"It's terrific.

"In my sex fantasy,

nobody ever loves me
for my mind."

For better or worse...

she might say for worse,

but at the time,
it seemed for better...

I introduced her
to her first husband,

to Dan Greenburg.

He was a very funny writer.

She and I hit it off.

I mean,
she's a very witty person,

and I love a witty person.

We were both very ambitious,

and we were both
doing very well.

At that point, my book,
How to Be a Jewish Mother,

was number one
on the bestseller list.

We would have dinner parties,

and Nora would go up
to a celebrity she had
never met

and say,
"Hi, my name is Nora Ephron.

If I invited you to dinner
at my house, would you come?"

And she was so adorable
and so appealing,

I don't think anybody
ever said no.

So we got to run
with a very vast crowd.

We had Mike Nichols
over to dinner,

we had Buck Henry,
Joan Didion.

Nobody entertained better.

Not just the food,
which was so wonderful,

which Nora somehow did
with her left hand,

but she also had
the most interesting
collection of people.

There would be opinions,
and there would be
conversation,

and there would be laughter.

I always felt that Nora
was kind of like a magnet

and that people
were just drawn to her.

I know some
of the ingredients
that magnetized her.

I mean,
she was really interesting,
she was really smart,

she was really funny,
she was really engaged
in other people's lives.

But I had
this terrible secret thing.

Sometimes I wish

my husband were dead.

I think it's...
Life would be more...

...a universal thing.
No, it's not a serious thing.

You don't really wish
he were dead.

I mean, I'm...
Mm-hmm.

The thing is that

everyone sort of wonders,
if I hadn't married

the person I married,
who could I marry?

Yeah?
And it's sort of
a vague infidelity fantasy.

You know?
Who would I like
to have an affair with?

But I am so guilty
about infidelity

that the only way
I can get into the fantasy

is to kill my husband
for a couple of minutes,
you see?

I see.
And so, he's, like,
on this plane...

it's terrible...
and then I get to marry
Mike Nichols.

In your fantasy?
Yeah.

Dan was a nice guy,
but I think we were all glad

when Nora moved on.

"My first husband
was so neurotic,
he kept hamsters.

"They all had cute names,
like Arnold and Shirley.

"I felt really sad
when Arnold died

"because Charlie
was devoted to Arnold

"and made up
a lot of hamster jokes

"he claimed Arnold
had come up with.

"mostly having to do
with chopped lettuce.

"Also, and I'm sorry
to tell you this,

"Charlie often talked
in a high squeaky voice

"that was meant
to be Arnold's.

"And I'm even sorrier
to tell you..."

"...that I often replied
in a high squeaky voice

"that was meant
to be Shirley's.

"I mean, what are you
supposed to do

"with a first husband
like that?

I'll tell you what.
Divorce him."

I want to make this
very clear.

There has never been
a hamster.

I have never dressed up
anybody in adorable outfits.

If I had a hamster,
I wouldn't dress...

it wouldn't occur to me
to dress it up

in adorable little outfits,
okay?

Cats?
That might be different.

Writers are cannibals.
Yes.

They really are.

They'll eat their own
and whatever.

They are predators,
and if you are friends
with them

and you say anything funny
at dinner,

or if anything good
happens to you,

you are in big trouble.
And you know
from where you speak.

Well, I do.

When I would see your mother
from time to time,

she was usually
either talking about
Mildred and Bernie,

as she called them,
or she was with Mildred.

Mildred Newman
was a hugely popular
psychoanalyst in New York

at that time,
and she practiced
with her husband.

There was
this whole thing that
went on in New York then,

which is a kind of
first-person journalism.

And Mildred and Bernie
were all about "me."

"How to Be
Your Own Best Friend."

Their whole philosophy
I think did more

for our generation
than any kind of

burning of bras
on Fifth Avenue.

And it was basically,
"You don't have to be
responsible

for anyone else
but yourself."

Mildred and Bernie
specialized in
creative people.

Tony Perkins, Neil Simon,
Mike Nichols.

And Nora and Rex Reed

and all of the rest of them.

Some people thought
it was kind of comical.

You know, all these people
getting together with
Mildred and Bernie,

who got involved
in their lives in ways

that people thought
was maybe inappropriate

for therapists
or psychiatrists.

But I think that Mildred
and Bernie were very good

at instilling
a kind of confidence
in people.

I mean, your mom had a way
of finding, ultimately,

the things that she needed.

My mom learned as much
from self-help

as she did
from Dorothy Parker.

And I think Mildred got her
to understand

that you are not your parents
and you don't have to be.

And just because
they screwed it up

doesn't mean
you're going to.

There was a tipping point
when I was 11

when the house went
from being

sort of a very joyful place

and everyone...
all our friends loved
to be there too

and the dinners were great,

to suddenly a place
where both my parents
became alcoholics.

Do you think that
the drinking was part

of why they lost the work,
or do you think

they lost the work
and it somehow fueled
the drinking?

I think it was a lot
of things that contributed

to a vicious circle.

Also he was having...

There were affairs,
weren't there?

I didn't believe it
when... at the time,

but I think so now.

And it was so cruel of him
not to admit it, I think.

Because as kids,
we thought she was crazy.

I feel Nora sort of had
the golden age of childhood

in this family.

She was 14 when things
got really difficult
at home.

So it became for me...
and I was 11...

it became a very,
very... oh, terrible...

I mean, I was just scared
all the time.

But it is very powerful

to have a mother
who goes to pieces
to that extent.

And my mother did die
of cirrhosis.

I mean,
she did die of drink.

- The Mink Coat.
- Esquire, 1975.

"My mother would moan
with pain,

"and the nurse
would reach under her,

"move her slightly,
and the sheets
would fall away,

"and I would catch
a glimpse of her legs,

"her beautiful legs,

"now drained of muscle tone,
gone to bones.

"The hallucinations went on.

"Then one day suddenly,
she came into focus,

"knew exactly who I was

"and, like a witch,
what I was thinking.

"'You're a reporter,'
she said to me.

'Take notes.'"

My grandmother said
everything was copy,

but in the end,
she only wrote superficially

about the things
that happened to her.

Is that part of why
she wound up being

less successful
than my mom?

In AA, they say you are
as sick as your secrets.

Did my grandmother's
failure to acknowledge

slipping on the banana peel
hasten her demise?

Did my mom's need
for control

stem from her mom's
loss of it?

The Story of My Life
in 3,500 Words or Less.

My mother died of cirrhosis,

but the immediate cause
of her death

was an overdose
of sleeping pills

administered by my father.

At the time,
this didn't seem to me

to fall under the rubric

of "everything is copy."

Although it did
to my sister Amy

and she put it into a novel.

Who can blame her?

I think that, you know,
Mommy was in some kind
of state

where there really wasn't
any there there.

I think that it was some act
of not being able

to see her like that
anymore.

I think that contributed
to his craziness.

I think one of the things
we got from them

in a sort of backhanded way

is that we got
kind of survivor tools.

Watching them
not have the equipment

to reinvent themselves

fueled the kind
of reinvention

that certainly Nora had.

A kind of...
not even a coping mechanism.

It's something
way beyond that.

It was like,
"You're not going
to knock me down."

Marie Brenner was giving
a series of parties

in New York.

And she had given a party
at which I met

my then-husband, David Obst,

who was the agent
for Woodward and Bernstein,

and at which Nora met Carl,
your dad.

I see your dad
leaning intently

in on your mother,

and I watched him
take down her phone number.

And I thought, hmm,
that's interesting.

I was dazzled.

Um, and I did not really know
who your mother was

in terms of her work.

We had this amazing
conversation.

I said I would call her
in a few days,

and I didn't wait a few days,
and I called her the next day.

The next day,
your mother called me

and said, "Are you really,
really finished?"

She said, "Have you really...
that's it?"

I said, "Oh, yeah.
Long ago."

So that was how they met.

And when had you dated
my father?

Well, I began dating
your father

before Watergate,
a month before.

May of '72.

And I remember a phone call
from Carl saying,

"I can't come up
to New York this weekend."

"Oh, why is that, Carl?"

"Oh, because I'm working
on a story.

And I said, "Oh, yes, Carl.
Sure you are. Sure."

Much of the exhausting
and aggressive investigation

on Watergate was done
by Carl Bernstein
and Bob Woodward,

who went from local
reporting on the Post

to the Pulitzer Prize
in one year.

What was he like
to go out with?

He was fun.
He was so fun.

He was intense.
He was passionate.

He was driven by outrage,
which I loved,

'cause I too
was driven by outrage...

political outrage.
It was exciting.

Mm-hmm.
And he...

He was hard to tie down,
I think.

What are you trying...
what are you trying
to ask me?

No!
Sounds like...

Let's play one
of your mother's
charade games.

Are you trying to find out
if he was wildly unfaithful

and would try
and call my friends
from my apartment

to go out with them
at the same time?

Is this what
you're asking me?
Well, did he?

I don't remember that.

She had to know this
going in,

a little bit,
didn't she?

Your dad was

so intense

in his aura

that you would be
swept away kind of

in his ferocity,

in a kind
of enchanting way.

I don't think
she questioned it.

I think they fell
madly in love.

They were just absolutely,
at that period,

made for each other.

As happens
in great love affairs,

you want the other person
to know who you are

at the most intimate
and deepest levels.

I think we came
very quickly

to a deep understanding
of who the other person was.

I... I just loved him.

He was fun to be around.

We were all star-struck.

Carl was a star.

Whatever else he was,
he was a star.

It was like
a celebrity marriage.

They were
a celebrity couple,

which clearly
they allowed to happen,

or perhaps
they wanted it to happen.

If she had a failing,

for me,
it was her overwhelming need

to have success.

Maybe that had to do
with the fact

that her parents got there,
but didn't get there,

and maybe she felt
that that's what

tipped them into whatever
drinking problems they have.

But it wasn't going
to happen to her.

I'd left New York City
to move to Washington, DC,

for what I sincerely thought
would be the rest of my life.

She was not
a Washington person.
She was a New York person.

Washington was not
her natural habitat.

I don't...
I don't think she liked it.

She did not like Washington.

She hated Washington.

To her, the city was a burg,

a place where ideas
went to die

and diversity existed
mainly as a campaign slogan.

She had to find a way there,
you know?

Well, she's very good
at that.

She managed somehow
to import New York
to Washington.

And then they had
that incredible house
in Bridgehampton, Trees.

And I would come back
from London and go out

and visit them
at that house,

and there would be
your mother cooking,

and there was
your mother pregnant,

and suddenly,
there you were in a stroller,

and there you were
in a playpen,

and there you were
always by... with her.

There was this one
incredible letter

that I got from her.

She wrote to me
the most beautiful
description

of what it meant for her
to be your mother

and to see her little baby.

And she said,
"I just stare at Jacob
all day long.

"He is a dish of ice cream.

"Nothing ever I've done
has given me the happiness

that this has."

One night
when your mother was pregnant,

and she waddled down
to our house in Bridgehampton
with Carl,

and just the four of us
had dinner in the kitchen,

sitting around
a round table.

And they left late,
I remember,

you know, it was after 11:00,

um, and they walked home,
and Binky and I looked
at each other

and said,
"Boy, are they happy."

And literally a month later,
the marriage went kaput.

When they split up,
I was dumbfounded.

I was shocked.

I... I know about you
and Thelma Rice.

I know everything.
It's all here.
Shit.

You didn't even
have the decency
to hide the evidence.

You just threw it
in a drawer.

Hotels, motels.

Oh, shit.
You couldn't even pay cash,

like a normal philanderer.

You charged everything.
I mean, look at this.

Flowers...
look at all these flowers
that bought for her!

And you occasionally
brought me home a bunch
of wilted Zinnias.

How can you do this?
If I'm such a bitch,
then tell me!

Don't do this.
We have a baby, Mark!

We have another baby
coming!

Don't you even care
about them?

I... I almost fainted

when she said,
"I want you to print this,

that Carl and I
are divorcing."

I think... I think
she wanted it to be final.

A little while later,

I went to the G7 summit

and got upstairs to the room

and I called your mom
and said,

"Why don't you
get on a plane

"and come here and let's see
what we can do here?

I don't think we really
want to go this way."

And, um, she said no.

When your brother Max
was born,

she and you

and Max and his nurse

all moved
into this house

and stayed here for about,
I don't know,

four, five, six weeks.

In fact, you used to be
in this very room.

You were last in this room,
I think, 33 years ago.

So we all lived together

in a very emotional moment
in her life,

and she
was very vulnerable.

She didn't want people
to know how hurt she was.

That was not her way.

So she determined
to put a good face on it
and she did.

She was coming back,
rebounding, to become Nora,

and looking at it
the way the person
who wrote Heartburn

came to look at it.

Well, now Nora Ephron's
first novel Heartburn

has gossips and book critics
alike asking,

"Nora, is this your life?"

You know, every novelist...
I'm not much of a novelist,

I just have written
one novel.

But everyone uses
his or her own life.

She had detachment,
so that she was able

to be her own
helicopter pilot,

flying up when she was
in front of her typewriter

and getting it down
without feeling

the need
to vomit her problems
all over someone.

Very, very few,
if any, people

that I can think of

have ever survived
being publicly cuckolded.

Nora being the exception
that it's like

those photographs of cats
that somebody took

in which they've decided
to change direction
in mid jump.

'Cause what she did
is in mid jump,

she moved
to the Gottliebs' house

and cried for six months

and wrote it funny.

And in writing it funny,

she won.

And betrayed women
all over the world knew it

and cheered.

I had gotten
on the shuttle to New York

a few hours after
discovering the affair,

which I learned about
from a really disgusting
inscription to my husband

in a book of children's songs
she had given him.

Children's songs.

"Now you can sing
these songs to Sam"

was part of
the disgusting inscription,

and I can't begin to tell you
how it sent me up the wall,

the idea of my
two-year-old child, my baby,

involved in some dopey
inscriptive way

in this affair
between my husband,

a fairly short person,

and Thelma Rice,
a fairly tall person

with a neck as long as an arm

and a nose as long as a thumb,

and you should see her legs,
never mind her feet,

which are sort of splayed.

Uh, but I mean, isn't that
an ugly circumstance?

Doesn't that strike you
as being just awful?

Well, but sort of funny,
really, when you think
about it.

Oh, boy, I don't know.

Seven-and-a-half-months
pregnant

and the heroine here
discovers

her husband is
out with Thelma.
Yes.

Oh, I don't know.

And seeing
the same psychoanalyst

at the family rate
with Thelma.

See, this is ugliness.
Yes.

This is just...

Do you think
she had ambivalence at all

about writing the book?

She was going to do this

and it was all going
to be okay.

And people who worried
about the consequences of it

didn't understand
who she was

and how she was going
to handle it.

Well, to love someone
so much, or to think
that you...

When we were
making Heartburn,

they got Jack Nicholson
to play the husband.

And Mike
was asking Nora,

"Well, don't you think
we need a little bit more

of an understanding
of him?"

And she was like,
steam coming...

And I said to Mike,
"I think, you know,

"I think it's really
that this is about

"the person who got hit
by the bus.

It's not about the bus."

When the dream breaks
into a million tiny
little pieces,

which leaves you
with a choice,

you can either stick with it,
which is unbearable,

or you can just go off
and dream another dream.

The divorce
between my parents
went on for years...

Can I have the, uh,
car keys, please?

...and like
many celebrity breakups,

had less to do
with heartbreak

than a mutual obsession
with reputation.

They fought over custody
and child support

and the movie adaptation
of Heartburn.

For my mother,

Heartburn was her central act
of resilience.

To my father,
it was steeped in revenge.

It was really about how

you would be affected

by a huge Hollywood movie
coming out

when you were six years old,

and whether
it would become a circus.

And I said,
"If you want to make
this movie so badly,

"you have to give me
joint custody.

"Also, at no time
will there be any depiction

"of the father in the movie
shown as anything

but a loving
and caring parent."

And she agreed.
Those are the terms
of the divorce.

And Mike Nichols
was a signatory

to the divorce...
it's the craziest
divorce ever.

In retrospect,

the feud between them
seems less a question
of right and wrong

than the unfortunate
untangling of two people

who took up
way too much space

to ever be right
for each other.

When the movie came out,

it was not the success
the book was.

And one thing critics debated
was which was worse:

The parent who cheats

or the parent who
essentially tells
her two children about it?

Look, there's no question.

I did not want
that movie made.

I'm sure there's
some self-interest in it

about the way
I would be portrayed,

but I thought
this would really interfere

with how you would
regard your father.

And for a while, it did.

Well, that's
really interesting,
what you say.

There you go...
"And for a while, it did."

So who do you think
it was harder on, him or her?

I think it was harder
in the long run on him.

Any time you walk around
thinking people

are talking about you,

whispering about you,
making fun of you,

um, it's hurtful.

At one moment,
he was this world-famous hero

and the next minute,
he was this goat.

And it was...
it was a very painful period.

And it lasted for him,
I think, longer than
it did for Nora.

Moving On.

In February, 1980,

two months after
the birth of my second child

and the simultaneous
end of my marriage,

I fell in love.

I was looking
for a place to live,

and one afternoon,
I walked just ten steps

into an apartment
on the Upper West Side
of Manhattan

and my heart stood still.

Ten steps in and I said,
"I'll take it."

I honestly believed

that at the lowest moment
in my adult life,

I'd been rescued
by a building.

I mean, the great thing
about Nora,

she just refused
to go down, ever,
and then she comes back,

and she had no money,
by the way.

She had no money,
and she wrote Heartburn.

And so, I'm sure
she just infuriated...

that's my speculation...
the entire community
of journalists

who thought
she was getting hers back.

And instead,
she not only

does she write
a bestseller,

but then it gets bought
for the movies,

and the next thing you know,
she's a screenwriter,

which is the move
that so many journalists
wanted to make,

and she made it.

When I had my children,

I thought, well,
I can't go on

doing journalism
'cause I have a baby,

and I can't go
and do these long
reporting pieces

that I was doing
in Esquire.

And I thought,
well, I'm going
to write screenplays now

because I need the money,
and thank goodness
I write screenplays.

Even if they aren't
being made into movies,

it pays a lot better
than journalism.

Then one of them got made
by Mike Nichols,

and he invited me
and Alice Arlen,

whom I wrote it with,
to Texas

to watch him make Silkwood.

That was really interesting.

And that was when
I think I truly became
a screenwriter.

I knew big time

that this charming,
brilliant writer

wants to be a movie director
and will be,

'cause she was out and out
studying it.

Mike Nichols, who,
because he was originally

a theater director,
was very welcoming
to screenwriters,

always wanted them there,
always wanted their input.

So I was suddenly
watching something

that I knew nothing about,

and I was riveted.

How'd that plutonium
get in my house?

Did you put it there?
Did I what?

What are you, crazy?

As my mom moved
into writing screenplays,

her work became
less autobiographical,

but she continued
to find herself in
the characters she wrote.

You know, the first time
we met, I really didn't
like you that much.

I didn't like you.
Yeah, you did.

You were just so uptight then.
You're much softer now.

You know,
I hate that kind of remark.

It sounds like a compliment,
but really it's an insult.

When Harry Met Sally
was Rob's idea.

Rob said one day
in a meeting,

"Let's do a movie
about a man and a woman

who become friends

and don't have sex
because it will ruin
the relationship,

and then they have sex
and it ruins the relationship.

That's what we started with.

So I interviewed Rob
and his producing partner

and they told me
the secrets of men.

So she interviewed us,
took all these notes,

and then went back
and crafted a screenplay.

From my script
for When Harry Met Sally.

"Why don't you tell me
the story of your life?"

"The story of my life?"

"We've got 18 hours to kill
before we hit New York."

Sally...

The story of my life
isn't even going to get us
out of Chicago.

I mean, nothing's
happened to me yet.

That's why
I'm going to New York.

So something'll
happen to you?
Yes.

Like what?

Like I'm going
to journalism school
to become a reporter.

So you can write about things
that happen to other people.

So I started
with Rob as Harry.

And, you know,
in that sort of
mathematical way,

if... if he is gloomy,
she is cheerful,

and so that gave me Sally.

I happen to be a fairly
cheerful person, so...

Sally is more or less me.

I am as big a nightmare

when ordering
in a restaurant
as she was.

I'd like the chef's salad,
please,

with the oil and vinegar
on the side

and the apple pie à la mode.

Apple... à la mode.

But I'd like the pie heated,

and I don't want
the ice cream on the top,
I want it on the side.

And I'd like strawberry
instead of vanilla
if you have it.

If not, then no ice cream,
just whipped cream,

but only if it's real.
If it's out of a can,
then nothing.

Not even the pie?

No, just the pie,
but then not heated.

Uh-huh.

There was
a really particular rhythm
on the page...

very, very short sentences
that people didn't...

we didn't... there wasn't
a lot of dialogue,

but it was rapid
and rat-a-tat-tat,
rat-a-tat-tat.

Okay, there's this guy.

What's he look like?

I don't know.
He's just kinda faceless.

Faceless guy, okay.
Then what?

He rips off my clothes.

There are parts
of When Harry Met Sally

that feel as if
they are essays,

just like the essays
I used to write,

only they're...
they're stuck in this movie

in their own
little dialogue ways.

That's it?

A faceless guy
rips off your clothes

and that's the sex fantasy
you've been having
since you were 12?

Exactly the same?

Well, sometimes
I vary it a little.

Which part?
What I'm wearing.

The great scene about,
you know, faking the orgasm.

Right.
Yeah, was that scripted
by you?

Well, no.

Um, you mean the best scene
in this movie?

What that was,
was I asked them

about their lives
as single men.

And then they said to me,
okay, we've told you

some secrets about men.
Yeah.

Now tell us something
we don't know about women.

And I said,
"Women fake orgasms."

"No, that's not possible!
That's not true.
Women, really?"

It's just that all men
are sure it never
happened to them,

and most women,
at one time or another,

have done it,
so you do the math.

You don't think
that I could tell
the difference?

No.
Get out of here.

So out of this conversation

came this scene.

Well, then we did it
in a read-through

and Meg Ryan said...

"Well, why don't I
just do it?"

And they said,
"Would you do that?"

Ooh.

Oh.

Ooh.

Are you okay?

Meg, I think,
had the idea of doing it

in an incongruous place
like a deli,

and that gave birth
to the scene.

Oh, God!

Oh, yes!

Yes, yes, yes!

Yes, yes!

Ahh! Oh, yes!

Yes, yes! Oh!

Yes, yes!

Yes, yes, yes, yes!

Oh, oh, oh!

Oh, God.

Oh.

And then Billy came up
with that...

that topper.

I'll have what she's having.

Your mother was one
of the greatest observers

of men and women

and how men and women
are with each other,

and her movies
reflected that.

Do you find
that people think

you're an expert
on relationships?

I don't know that people
think I'm an expert
in relationships,

but I definitely am.

I am.
You are?

So people can come up
to you and...

They don't come up to me,
you understand,

but if they were to,
I would be glad

to counsel them
at any given moment.

Total strangers
could come up to me

and I would be glad
to give them advice
about their relationships.

You know, little things
that come up in life,

whether it involves a career,
a relationship or whatever,

and she would always
have, you know, "Dear Abby."

She was always...
she always had
the best answer

to your "Dear Abby"
question.

You wanted a straight answer,
you went to Nora.

You wanted to test something
that you were unsure of,

you went to Nora.

And she was certain
about her opinions.

Yes.

Which a lot of people
are not.

She had such strong opinions
that they would just come out.

I mean, she really felt,
I think, a certain
responsibility

to set us all straight.

Did you get the judgment
with her?

Endless.

"You can't do this.
You mustn't do that.

I would rethink this.
You can't do that.
You can't..." Yes.

She was controlling in a way,
but not without her charm.

But she was in charge
of certain things,

and she was in charge
of your life when
you were with her.

- A mark.
- B mark.

Joanne...

She came to realize,

if she's going
to have control,

which I think her life
was in part about...

gaining control...

she had to be
a director.

Mike Nichols always
says this thing

that I love...
he says that

when you're a director,
it's like making love

in that you always
want to say,

"Is this
how other people do it?"

Trust me, Jessica...

But I knew that if I was
going to direct something,

I needed a collaborator
on the script.

So I then write it
with my sister Delia.

The reason we both
loved the book

and wanted
to make a movie about it

was that it had
so many emotional overlaps.

It was about a mother

who used the material
of her life as material,

which is what
our parents did.

How dare you?
How dare you use things

that you know about me
in public?

It's about everything
we knew.

It was about sisterhood.

It was
about working mothers.

It was about a single mother.
It was about ambition,

which we totally got.

All artists use things
from their lives, Robin,

and I am no exception.

But This Is My Life
was not a hit.

So was she going
to get another movie?

She then did a rewrite
on the Sleepless script

and got hired
as the director on it.

If you've just tuned in,

we're talking
to Sleepless in Seattle.

You called
a radio station?

Christmas Eve,
he phones in one of those
radio call-in shows,

tells them...
His dad needs a new wife.

I heard it.
This kid calls up and says,
"My dad needs a wife."

Get out here.
Come on.

Now, I'm not going
to go through this alone.

The thing about movies is,

you have to make
the tough decision,

and often
somebody got fired,

and I was very happy
to be her sister,

so it was not going to be me.

Kid needs a mother.

'Cause we did replace
the actor on Sleepless,

and thank God,
the young boy who came in

was just perfect
and wonderful.

The kid that we spent
all of this time auditioning

and getting ready and we loved
and he was so great,

freezes when
he sees Tom Hanks.
He can't act.

Phew! Man!
When she came and told me...

She didn't ask me,
"What do you think
if we replace so-and-so?"

She just said, "Listen,
we're making a change.

It's not working out."
And I said, "You're gonna
fire the kid?"

She'd give you that look,

and we called that look
the red dot.

Your mother would look...
if she got a double look,

it was like you had the...
you know, a laser from a gun

on our forehead
and you were about
to get whacked.

People got cut all the time.

They wouldn't read
a new draft,

and then you were done.

If you talked about
building the barn over here

that was taken out
two drafts ago...

"Window or aisle?"

That's all I can tell you,
you know?

"Morning
or afternoon flight?"

"Could I have a word
with you?"

I don't know the exact number
of assistants before me.

I feel like it's around 10,
maybe a dozen.

She spoke to actors
sometimes

in a way that some people
perceived as hostile,

but I didn't.
I knew her and I loved her,

and I was never afraid of her.

I always wanted
to please her,

but that's very different
than being afraid.

And the thing is,
she counseled people...

she gave counsel
to people, you know?

I mean,
she really helped people.

You know, I mean,
way beyond their career.

When you got to know her,
you could almost
ask her anything.

Her advice had, like,
a deep practicality to it.

It was like a feeling,
like confiding in a friend

and having them say,
"I understand."

Cut! Cut it!

I always felt like
I never had a mentor,

but I had that in Nora.

Kind of from
Sleepless in Seattle on,

she sort of was my mentor.

My mom was kind
and she was generous,

really generous.

She was also stern
and unfailingly honest,

and the combination
of those things made people
seek her approval.

It is very powerful
to be someone who is both
loved and feared.

Did she zing people?

Yeah, it was a little
irresistible.

'Cause I feel like
her allegiance to language

was sometimes more
than her allegiance
to someone's feelings.

It was just too good
of a setup

sometimes for her,
you know?

99-Jackson-1 marker.

I always wanted her
to like me.

I wanted her approval.
Mm-hmm.

I wanted her respect.
I wanted to make her laugh.

That was the big one.

I probably made Nora laugh
a handful of times

in the 21 years I knew her,

but it was just
like winning an Oscar.

It's now or never.

One of the things
I always tell the actors

as we work
on this movie

is that it isn't a movie
about love,

it's a movie about love
in the movies.

Winter must be cold

for those
with no warm memories.

For many of us,
a great deal of what
we feel about love

has been shaped
completely by movies.

Tell me about love, though.

I mean,
is it unrealistic

to think of love
like Annie does?

That somehow there is magic
and you can have that

in your life and...

I think people
go back and forth
their whole lives.

They start out believing
in this very pure, simple,
stupid way

about destiny and how
there's one person out there

and you're going
to meet that person,

and then things happen,

and eventually, finally,
after many mistakes

that you thought
were destiny,

you find someone
who was your destiny

and you say,
"Oh, I see.

"I had to go through
all the false destinies

to get to
the real destiny."

Sam.

It's nice to meet you.

♪ One smile
that cheers you ♪

♪ One face that lights
when it nears you ♪

♪ One girl, you're ♪

♪ You're everything to... ♪

I think there was
a side of her

that was romantic,

and she believed
in true love,

and she thought
she had it.

I don't know,
I don't remember,

we never talked about it,
whether she thought

she had it
with Dan Greenburg.

She certainly thought
she had it with Carl.

And she knew she had it
with Nick.

The man she married
in the last 20-plus years,

Nick Pileggi,
is a cousin of mine.

I really am very close
to Nick,

and I never had a brother.
Nick was my brother.

When he met Nora,
she gave him a place

where he could
feel secure.

Nick wasn't afraid
for her to be the star.

She got to have
a relationship,

she didn't have to spend
the whole time questioning.

He wasn't going
to wake up and be a drunk
at some point

or cheat on her,
or do any of the things

that people do
to disappoint you.

He wrote about guys

who were street-tough guys,

who were, you know,
Mafia types.

She wrote about love
and romance and all that.

And in real life,
he was a very soft soul
and she was tough.

I don't think
she ever realized

that she would be
in that life,

going to Vegas
and having dinner

with Shorty or Lefty
or Louie.

So she was having
a different kind of fun

that she never even assumed
would come her way.

I always thought that

she was the don
and Nick was the consigliore.

He tipped everyone
in her path

so that her life
would be better.

And I'm surprised
he never tipped you
or he never tipped me.

He did.
Oh, he did tip you?

The first date.
He had a... yeah,
he'd gotten us a soap boat,

and it was this boat
made out of soap.

And so he was fine.

He's such a guy,

and she was such a lady
around him.

I remember him
saying to me, "God,
she's got the greatest gams.

Wow, the gams on this broad."

I'm like, wow.

You know, she felt pretty
and loved.

Since Nick,
almost everything changed.

Softer, less guarded,

uh, happy.

You know,
that was a great love,

and you felt it.

As my mom got happier,

things between her
and my father improved.

There was at least
a sense of détente
between them.

Despite all the difficulties
through the divorce,

we were really great

about what was going on
with the two of you.

And the results of that,
I think we both

thought were pretty great.

Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan,
America's now king and queen

of romantic comedies,
sort of, with your help.

What is it about them...
if you could pinpoint it,

what is it that...
Two great brains

and the fact
that they look like they're
from the same food group.

When the movie came out

and it opened well,

she said to me,
"Remember this moment

because it's a hit
and they don't come along
very often."

But even the big hits
got mixed reviews.

I think there was
a disconnect in a way

for many critics
in that they knew her

from her columns
and from her books.

And when these romantic
movies showed up

that were boy-meets-girl,

boy-loses-girl,
boy-gets-girl,

and it's all beautiful
and big on the Empire
State Building,

people expected
something bad to happen,

and it didn't,

and they didn't know
what to do with her,
in a way.

How dare she
not continue this persona?

In fact,
there were attempts...

You should stay
with Steve

and then let the snowman
come in at the end.

...ones with
grittier material,

the kind that recalled
her early essays.

There was this period
of two, three, four movies,

like kind of
one after the other,

that just didn't work
for one reason or the other.

Mixed Nuts,
the Nora Ephron bomb.

"Hey, how bad could it be?"
Very bad.

It's bad. It's bad.
Ooh, is it bad.

I mean, I don't know...
It's really, really bad.

You know, in the ads,
it's going to say,

"From the director
of Sleepless in Seattle,"

- so here's our warning.
- This movie isn't sleepless,

it's not in Seattle
and it's not any good.

There you go.
Ahh!

Her career was
in some trouble.

Yeah, she was in movie jail,
I think.

Well, everybody has flops.

No one likes
to talk about them.

27!
The truth is,

I don't think
you really learn anything
from failure.

All I think
you learn from failure...
honest to God...

is that
it's entirely possible
you could have another one.

Hanging Up
also didn't work,

and that was her attempt

to take her family's
more complicated story

and put it onscreen.

It's fictionalized,

but it's certainly
the story of the sisters,

and Nora's life
is part of that story.

Hanging Up
was my novel,

and it's based on
my relationship with Dad.

And it stars
a middle child...

The Duke said,
"Your mother and dad make
a hell of a writing team."

Remember, Evie?
I didn't want her
changing my material.

So it just started
to get more difficult
at that point.

They got thorny
for a moment or two,

and I believe it was
because the material
was so close to home

in every way,
and so close to the bone
in every way.

My father had died
and Nora was shooting,

I think, Sleepless,

and the problems
of his death

really were Amy's
and mine.

Nora wasn't there.

I mean,
I had resentment for that.

So when we started
to work on Hanging Up,

I was...
I was upset about that,

and she was trying
to make it hers.

Something wrong?
I can't believe what you did.

What did I do?
And you always do it.

What do I always do?
You take my life
and you use it.

I'm the one who's been here
and not you.

Well, wait a minute!
When did I take your life...

They were sisters.
It was about being sisters,

and it was about
one sister overshadowing
the other sister,

and that was hard.

I'm sure she thinks
I was mean about it.

I thought she was mean
about it.

And, um, then,
you know, we made up.

But it was horrible,
actually,

for each of us.
I mean, just...

I mean, we've been together
our whole lives, you know,

and there we were
not speaking over a piece
of material.

In retrospect,
how stupid is that?

Nevertheless,

Delia left it
out of Hanging Up

that my mom hadn't gone
to my grandfather's funeral.

Delia was protecting her,

which seems to me to be
an essential difference

between the two sisters.

Had the positions
been reversed,

I think Mom probably
would have used it.

Do you remember
when she told you?

That she was sick?
Yeah.

Yes, of course I do.
I mean...

I had been in Paris
for the holidays,

and I got home
and I remember
picking up the phone

and there was a message
from Nora.

And it was,
"Are you home yet? Call me."

And I knew immediately
something was wrong,

and we went out that night
to see her and Nick,

and we were all
just terrified.

And at that point,
you know, they said,

you know...
they had said six months.

When did you first find out?

I remember that she called me,

and I went over to dinner.

Um, and she said,
"I have this thing."

She said that she had
a variation on it.

She didn't want
to tell me the name.

And she said,
"You'll Google it
and then it won't be good,

and you'll think
that I'm about to die
and I'm not."

She was trying
not to lie to you,

but she was trying not
to tell you the truth.

Yes, that's right.
She didn't want to worry you.

Why do you think
she didn't want people
to know?

Well, probably there were
some professional reasons,

because by now,
she was a famous filmmaker,

but I think also
she didn't want people

uh, openly concerned
about her or asking her.

The idea of physical frailty
was an anathema,

and I don't think
she wanted to have anyone
witness that.

Oh, it was epic!

You ask why she did it?

She did it because
she was a control freak.

We had a very specific
phone call.

She said, "I'm dealing
with some things to do
with my blood

"and with an illness.

"And you're not allowed
to ask me about it

or reference it,
and we didn't have
this conversation."

And she was very pointed,

in the way
that she could be.

She didn't talk about it,
but every once in a while,

she would say something
about, "didn't necessarily
have much time left.

"Couldn't necessarily
complete this project,

and another project."
All of a sudden,

her... you could feel
that her life was
being compressed.

But she...
she was determined to go on.

I'm Julia Child.

Bon appétit!

"The Julie/Julia Project."

365 days,

524 recipes...

Ooh, c'est tres chaud!

I love food.

As you know,
I'm obsessed with food.

I think about it
constantly.

And I had become
a grown-up in New York

cooking from
Julia's cookbook,

so I just loved
working on it.

From the beginning
of Julie & Julia,

I was worried about her
'cause she's always
so energetic.

I said to Delia,
"I know something's up,

"but I'm not going
to ask any more

because if Nora wanted me
to know, she'd tell me."

Okay? All right.
And...

But she kicked in,
like, you know, the end
of the second week,

beginning of the third,
and I said, "Oh, we're good."

Pièce de résistance!

The movie involved
all sorts of passions
of Nora's...

New York, Paris,

food...

Did you sense
how personal it was to her?

Well, I mean,
you couldn't miss
the parallels

between Nick and her

and Stanley's
and my character.

This is really about love.

It's really about marriage.

It's really about
a kind of marriage

that actually exists.

Um, thank God it does,

or people
would have accused me
of making this up.

But there are guys
who really do take
enormous pleasure

in their wives' growth.

It's the most
deeply emotional work
that she did, I think.

There aren't
very many movies

that are about
a romantic marriage.

The whole movie
was about her and Nick.

When he says,
description of what
butter is like...

Julia, you are the butter
to my bread

and the breath to my life.

I love you, darling girl.

To me, that was just
Nora talking about Nick.

- Happy Valentine's Dad.
- Happy Valentine's Day.

And that perfect place
two people can be
with each other.

Ahhh!
Ahhh!

I also think it was
the story of the two sisters,

of Delia and Nora.

The only scene
we ever reshot

in the entire movie
was this tiny, tiny scene

you may recall
in front of the mirror

where the two of them
are getting ready

for the party.

And they each look
at each other in the mirror,

look at both
in the mirror,

and at one point,
Meryl says...

Pretty good.

She wanted
to get it perfect.

But not great.

Did you have any idea
that she was sick

during the making of it?

No. No.

As a matter of fact,
no, absolutely not.

Did you have any sense
working on Julie & Julia

anything was wrong
with her health?

No.

She never sat down.

She had so much energy.

And happy.

Truly happy
when we were shooting that.

Considering
the Alternative. 2006.

"When I turned 60,
I had a big birthday party
in Las Vegas,

"which happens to be
one of my top-five places.

"It seemed to me
that the only way to deal
with a birthday of this sort

"was to do
everything possible
to push it from my mind.

"Nothing else about me
is better than it was

"at 50 or 40 or 30,

"but I definitely
have the best haircut
I've ever had.

"I like my new apartment.

"And as the expression goes,
'Consider the alternative.'

"I am dancing around
the 'D' word,

"but I don't mean
to by coy.

"When you cross
into your 60s,
your odds of dying,

"or of merely
getting horribly sick

"on the way to dying,
spike.

"Death is a sniper.

"It strikes people
you love,

"people you like,
people you know.

"It's everywhere.
You could be next,

"but then you turn out
not to be,

but then again,
you could be."

The essays
in the last two books are...

first of all, they're informed
by a big secret.

Especially the last book.
They're informed
by the knowledge,

"Mortality is upon me."

Those two books,

suddenly she was
the fountain of wisdom
on aging.

I mean...
She got very famous
in the end.

Really famous.

My mom did
a huge amount of work

the last six years
she was alive.

There were over 100
blog posts.

There were pieces
in The New Yorker
and Vogue.

There were two movies,
a play on Broadway,

a play Off-Broadway.

There were
the two essay collections.

She just kept going.

The book is called,
I Remember Nothing,

which is not true.
She remembers everything.

I was there for the Beatles.
I'm like Zelig.

I was there when
the Beatles came to America.

I was writing about them,
and I couldn't hear anything,

and that's what I remember.

Reading books that said
how fabulous you were

in your 60s,

how you could have
the greatest sex of your life.

I... I just...

I thought,
are these people on crack?

I feel so nostalgic
about the days

when all I felt bad about
was my neck.

Because your neck is like
the canary in the mine.

The neck is the thing
that is saying,

"Don't kid yourself.
You can do...

you can put spackle
on your face," basically.

But this is the thing
that is saying,

"Uh-oh, uh-oh."

You know, and if our elbows
faced forward,

we would all shoot ourselves.
You know.

The play is called
Lucky Guy.

Tom Hanks is playing
Mike McAlary,

a real-life reporter
and columnist

who bounced around
the rough-and-tumble world

of New York's
tabloid newspapers

from the 1980s
through his death in 1998.

Lucky Guy was the last thing
she wrote.

It was not
autobiographical,

though the parallels
to her own life

would later become
apparent to everyone.

I remember asking her
specifically,

"What's so fascinating
about Mike McAlary?

Did he write great columns?"

And she said, "Some,
but not particularly."

I said, well, you know,

"Was he a crackerjack writer
that you absolutely
had to read?"

And she said,
"No, not really."

And George Wolfe
at one point said,

"Well, Nora, why...
why are you telling
this story?"

The whole thought process
was about,

"What is this damn play
about?

"Why are you... why are you
writing this play?

Why are you...
why, why, why?"

Why are you telling
this story about this guy

who wasn't quite so good,
but rose up to the top

and fancied himself
the biggest

and for a while
was the highest-paid
columnist

in New York City?
He didn't really deserve

all this attention
or this acclaim.

And to George,
she said, "Well..."

She said, "This play
is about somebody

"who has more luck

than talent."

She said, "And I know
something about that."

When George and I
talked about it,

I was, you know,
somewhat aghast.

And George said, "I know!"
It's the last sort of thing

that you would think
you'd get from Nora.

It's said of Orwell

that one of the reasons
why so many love him

and live by him
is that he was not a genius.

I don't think Nora Ephron
was a genius,

and that made
her available to us.

There's something
really fascinating

about Lucky Guy.

McAlary, he was on chemo
when he's doing the story,

and she's on chemo while
she's working on the play.

There was this incredible
sense of time table

and this sense of urgency
and this sense of grace.

To me,
at the end of the day,

I think that
what Lucky Guy is about

is... is about a human being

who replaces ambition
for grace.

You know,
many of us noticed

the difference in Nora,

how she had mellowed.

Never put
two and two together

and came up with
that there was a reason.

She was more, uh...
more forgiving.

More tolerant.

And I think
she acquired that

with the bad news.

She was easier
and easier and easier

about, um, her own flaws,
about mine,

about other people's.
She laughed easier
about things.

She just got so porous.

The last couple years,
she'd been much
more tender with me,

um, and happier, somehow.

Nora would reach out
to people near the end

and sort of be emotionally...

you know, and I remember
getting an email

about six months,
eight months before she died,

and she said,
"Just sitting here in LA today

thinking I miss you
and I love you."

She invited me to dinner.

She was drinking
and she liked the wine
we picked.

And we had a nice dinner
at Locanda.

Though she thought
the garlic chicken
wasn't up to par that night.

But I think now,
I think in hindsight,

she invited me to dinner
to say goodbye.

It was really her

at her most
characteristic self,

except there were
odd silences,

and I was too stupid
to realize

that it was a goodbye lunch.

We had a long
four-hour lunch,

and at the end
of the lunch, she said,

"I don't feel
like going home yet."

She said, "Can we go
have cheesecake?"

Now, your mother
never ate dessert,

or she would eat two bites.
This was very unusual.

I don't even want to start.

I'm going to get emotional
even thinking about this.

So we ordered
this huge piece
of cheesecake,

which we split,
and then she said,

"Would you take me home
in a taxi?"

She lived three blocks away
and it had stopped raining.

That's when I...
You know, it was like,
something...

And so I said, "Of course."

So I dropped her,
like, three blocks,

and then she hugged me
and then three days later,

two days later,
she went into the hospital.

"I'm having a little
health crisis."

That's how she put it
when she called me

to tell me her MDS
had turned into leukemia.

We were talking
about what to tell people,

and I said, "Tell 'em
you have leukemia.

"This is not, you know,
a venereal disease.

"There's nothing
to be ashamed of.

You have leukemia
and you're going to beat it."

She said, "Well,
I don't know, I don't know,
I don't know."

And the next day,
there was a line,

and I don't know
where it came from,

which was,
"Not telling anybody."

I was horrified

'cause I saw
what was happening,

and that nobody was going
to acknowledge it

or explain it.

The chemotherapy
didn't work.

The days turned into weeks
and the weeks turned
into pneumonia.

Eventually, she began
shutting down

and I started
calling her friends.

Well, the people
that knew her best
were upset.

Well, at first,
it was weird, right?

'Cause you think,
well,

wait, I'm close...
I'm really close to her.

Like, I know her,
like, really.

There was definite anger

about this plan
she'd executed.

I felt
I was close enough to her

to go to a hospital.

What the hell
is Richard Cohen doing there,
is what I thought.

That doesn't sound
very generous, does it?

It was very hard.

Because...
because it was an ambush.

It was almost like
she was in a car accident,
you know?

I remember you called me
and you said, "Oh, I have
bad news about mom."

And I'm thinking,
well, what the hell
could it be? You know?

Like,
it didn't enter my mind

that she could be dying,
you know?

I think people
who resented the fact

that she didn't tell them
are a little self-absorbed.

It was her business
how she chose to die,
not their business.

But how interesting
it was, Jacob,

that at the end of her life,
where everything,

your mother's mantra,
your grandmother's mantra...

"Nora, this is all material.
Nora, this is material"...

at the most powerful moment
of her life,

when she was facing
her death,

it was not material,
it was not a story.

I think at the end
of my mom's life,

she believed
that everything is not copy,

that the things you want
to keep are not copy,

that the people you love
are not copy.

That what is copy
is the stuff you've lost,

the stuff you're willing
to give away,

the things that have
been taken from you.

She saw
"everything is copy"

as a means
of controlling the story.

Once she became ill,
the way to control the story

was to make it not exist.

And ultimately,
she was super private,

and all the stories
and short stories

and everything else,

she really kept her private
self really private.

She's the one who said,

"There is no privacy.

Forget privacy.
It's gone."

And this is the most
fascinating thing

in the whole world to me,

because she achieved
a private act

in a world where

the most superficial parts
of the most intimate acts

are everywhere, and sold.

They're sold.

I used to do the days,

and then you and Max
and Nick

would do nights.

I would get home
around 5:00 or 6:00,

and I remember walking
into the house and just
saying to Jerry,

"I have to go back."

That at that point,
I just couldn't be away.

And Jerry came back with me,

and we ended up
playing hearts.

And she taught me
how to play hearts.

And that was, I think,
two days before she died,
or three.

Two days before we died...

"We died."
Do you believe that?

Oh my God.

I talked to her
and she talked to me

with the understanding
that she was dying.

She was very brave.

I would talk to her
about how much she was loved,

and she could feel it.

Nora Ephron
was one of the best

and most famous
American writers
of our time.

She died last night
of leukemia at the age of 71.

Few even knew
that Ephron was sick,

causing some confusion

when word
of her illness broke

and even some premature
reports of her death,

something those
close to Ephron say
she would have found funny.

It's hard for me
because I so much
wanted her to like me.

Mmm.
And I so much wanted her
to think

that... that I was
as interesting as she was.

I was riding up
in the elevator,

after your mother died
with Mike Nichols,

and he just looked at me
and we said,

you know, "Who..."

Sorry.

"Who's going to tell us
what to do?"

It's very important
to eat your last meal

before it actually
comes up.

When you are actually

going to have your last meal,

you either will be
too sick to have it,

or you aren't going to know
it's your last meal

and you could
squander it on something
like a tuna melt.

The thing
I'm going to miss...

Yes? Yes?
...after I'm dead

is bacon.

What I Will Miss.

My kids.

Nick.

Spring.

Fall.

Butter.

A walk in the park.

Dinner with friends.

Dinner with friends in cities
where none of us lives.

Paris.

Next year in Istanbul.

Pride and Prejudice.

The Christmas tree.

Thanksgiving dinner.

One for the table.

The dogwood.

Taking a bath.

Coming over the bridge
to Manhattan.

Pie.

♪ Love is
the sweetest thing ♪

♪ What else on earth
could ever bring ♪

♪ Such happiness
to everything ♪

♪ As love's old story? ♪

♪ Love is
the strangest thing ♪

♪ No song or birds
upon the wing ♪

♪ Shall in our hearts
more sweetly sing ♪

♪ Than love's old story ♪

♪ Whatever hearts
may desire ♪

♪ Whatever life may send ♪

♪ This is the tale
that never will tire ♪

♪ This is the song
without end ♪

♪ Love is
the strongest thing ♪

♪ The oldest ♪

♪ Yet the latest thing ♪

♪ I only hope
that fate may bring ♪

♪ Love's story to you ♪

♪ Love is
the sweetest thing ♪