VALE NORA EPHRON

Today begun with confusion, could it be real that Nora Ephron had actually died. I was on Twitter and heard the first rumbling, but no confirmation; in fact it was quite the opposite. So I left for work with a bad feeling, after a long meeting I returned to the office and checked Twitter.

It was true, the brilliant and witty Nora Ephron was gone...but to get clichéd about it all, her legacy lives on in her writing.

I loved her style and substance, she was real through to the core, as often Jewish women of that era are. I also love Susan Sontag, Fran Lebovitz and Lily Brett, and connect with their writing in a way even I cannot understand. Maybe I was Jewish in another life!

How could she not be a writer? Her parents were screenwriters. Some of their films were Desk Set, There’s No Business Like Show Business, and Take Her, She’s Mine, which was actually based on College letter’s of Nora’s. All four Ephron daughters were writers, and two of Nora’s husbands were Carl Bernstein and Nicholas Pileggi.

As a journalist in her younger years, she covered politics (interning for the Kennedy Administration) but moved quickly to satire and essays. She focused on Women, Sex, Food and her beloved New York.  She got into writing screenplays by assisting her then husband with the script for All The President’s Men. Her work there was not used, but noticed by the studios. But it was when she turned her novel, Heartburn into a screenplay that her film writing career took off. Heartburn was based on her painful breakup with Bernstein.

Nora wrote the scripts for some classic films: Silkwood, Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally, My Blue Heaven, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail , and Julie and Julia.

It’s her Essays and When Harry Met Sally that I love the best.

Her Essays are sharp, honest, hilarious and at times painfully real. She got real women – their foibles, their hopes, their struggles. She loved food, and often wrote how food and image were a struggle, keeping the balance...something every woman understands.

I did not know her at all of course, but felt I did through all I have read over the years.

I was deeply upset today when I found out she was gone. I was thrilled for her legacy and the writing she has left behind, but mostly sad to know there would be no more. Someone wrote on twitter, if you had only left us When Harry Met Sally that would have been enough...this is true.

My love for that film needs a whole post of its own...stay tuned...

And Nora...at least you don’t have to worry about your hair anymore...