'Everything Becomes Copy'

 “My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next.” – Nora Ephron

 

Best known for her romantic comedies, Ephron was a journalist, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, producer, director, and blogger (I think that about covers every type of writing, but of course she didn’t Tweet, so maybe not).

If ever there was a “family of writers,” it would be the Ephron family.  Born this date in 1941, Ephron was the oldest of four girls who all became successful writers, and both of her parents also were writers – so it truly may have been in her genes.  Her sisters Delia and Amy are also screenwriters, and her sister Hallie is a journalist, book reviewer and novelist who writes crime fiction.

She also married a writer – and a quite famous one at that.  She and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post (and Watergate reporting fame) were married for a dozen years and had a son, Jacob, who also grew up to be a writer.  In fact, he wrote and directed the HBO production about his mother’s life,  called “Everything is Copy” -- pretty much how Nora looked at the world.

 

 Nora Ephron

Successful in almost everything, she was nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Writing for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle.  She won numerous awards for When Harry Met Sally, and if there had been an award for best original scene it definitely would have been for the one where an older woman sitting in a restaurant watching Sally tells the waitress “I’ll have what she’s having.”  

 

Ephron, who died of cancer in 2012, said this about writing women’s scenes:

“I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.”

 

 

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