Nora Ephron

Part 1: Writer, screenwriter, and director Nora Ephron has been nominated three times for an Academy Award for Original Screenplay, and has not only written but produced and directed the romantic comedies, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Julie and Julia. She is also an essayist, and her most recent collection is entitled: I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections. In this, the first of a two-part interview, Ephron discusses her life and her published work. The daughter of two Hollywood screenwriters, she recounts how she learned the art of telling funny stories at the family dinner table. She also discusses her mother's descent into alcoholism, an event that began when Ephron was fifteen. She traces her work as a journalist and essayist, a career that included stints at Newsweek, the New York Post, and Esquire. Finally, Ephron discusses Heartburn, her comic roman à clef, in which she rendered hilarious her very unfunny predicament of being pregnant and cheated on by her husband, and I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections (2010) which showcases her frank but always funny musings about aging and the vagaries of memory.

Part 2: In this, the second of a two-part interview, Nora Ephron discusses her career as a screenwriter and director. Ephron has been nominated three times for an Academy Award for Original Screenplay, and has not only written but produced and directed the romantic comedies, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Julie and Julia. As a practicing journalist, Ephron wrote twelve unproduced screenplays until her collaboration with Alice Arlen, Silkwood, became her first major produced movie. She credits director Mike Nichols and cinematographer Sven Nykvist with teaching her invaluable lessons in the art of movie making, and wryly observes that she should have been intimidated by her first experience of movie making but wasn't. Ephron notes that scenes that appear hilarious during taping don't necessarily come across as funny on film. Citing director Rob Reiner, she compares the experience of making a movie to giving a party: you invite a lot of people to the production and let them do what they do best. Ephron praises the talent and intelligence of Meryl Streep and says she would have loved to have made a movie with Audrey Hepburn.

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  People & Blogs

[bananasrockful]

read her essay flops, or any of the essays she wrote shortly before she died. she didn't seem to like some of the movies she made either. She pretty much had to put food on the table so she made them. I never liked romantic movies as a genre so I stuck to her books and her play she collabed on with several differant people.

[dabearcub]

I have read and appreciated some of her essays, but my qualm is with her film work which is amongst the worst drivel out there.

[bananasrockful]

read the mink coat or anything she wrote about her mother... or the essay called my aruba. Definitely will change your mind

[r4b32t11]

Heartburn is one of my absolute favorite movies. The story is so attractive and touching. I bought myself the dvd and when I can't think of anything that will make me feel happy, on it goes. I had no idea that Nora Effron passed away she had it all as a writer. I am sad that we won't have more of her work to look forward to. Aurevoir Nora

[zoperxplex]

Her movies are so bullshity!

[MaleOrderBride]

Nora was so charming and so self-deprecating! A true talent...

[Jan Smith]

So shocked and sorry when I read the news that Norah had passed away. I absolutely loved the film Heartburn and the book which I read afterwards. I will definitely get her other books.

Wish there were more X

[dabearcub]

U mad brah? We already know you're gay... 

[Bradley Baldwin]

You're so sick, so so sick, fag!

[dabearcub]

Yeah, you said. Don't you have more Oscar Best Costume videos to put up? Cough.homo.