‘Nora Ephron at the Movies’ Reveals Why the Legendary Writer Was Everyone’s Best Friend

As Ilana Kaplan put the finishing touches on her debut book “Nora Ephron at the Movies,” she was planning a celebration that many of the acclaimed and beloved filmmaker’s own characters pine for. “I had just finished the book right before the wedding,” Kaplan told Indiewire over the phone. 

Unsurprisingly, simultaneously organizing her wedding while perfecting her visual celebration of the journalist, director, and writer behind “When Harry Met Sally,” “Sleepless In Seattle,” and “You’ve Got Mail” ascended Kaplan to a “new level of anxiety” and left her “brain a little broken.” Looking back, Kaplan calls it a “beautiful experience,” as she was able to live “in this rom-com world and plan a wedding at the same time.” Kaplan found it particularly hysterical because, growing up, she admits to being “delusional” and thinking her life would unfold like a romcom. “I would make up scenarios in my head about where I was going to meet my husband. That’s why this book was so meaningful to me.”

The eldest child of screenwriters Henry and Phoebe Ephron, Nora was seemingly destined for a life as a writer. In the 1960s, she tirelessly worked her way up to being a reporter at the New York Post, wrote legendary essays for Esquire and Cosmopolitan, as well as books throughout the 1970s. In the 1980s, she moved into movies, starting with “Silkwood,” which earned her a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination. Over the next 30 years, she wrote and directed the quintessential rom-coms, against which other entries to the genre are still judged to this day, before dying at the age of 71 in June 2012. 

While there have been books on Ephron — with Kaplan calling Kristin Doidge’s biography and Erin Carlson’s examination of her rom-coms “wonderful” — she wanted to dig into all of her career. “I wanted to explore Nora’s entire work. Her legacy. Her impact on culture.” Kaplan was initially approached by Abrams Books about the book, as she’d written extensively on romantic comedies for the New York Times, GQ, and Vulture. “I was really excited to just pour my time into studying Nora and who she was.”

Kaplan had been a fan of the genre since she was eight, when she would watch romantic comedies on TNT on Saturday and Sunday mornings. “I remember ‘You’ve Got Mail’ would often be on the channel. That was one of the first films I ever watched that quickly became one of my favorites.” But while Kaplan was obviously interested in exploring how Ephron became the definitive rom-com filmmaker and celebrating her oeuvre, she also wanted to highlight the other facets of her career.

“Rom-coms are what she is most famous for. But she was an incredible writer and essayist. We’re now at the point where she lives on essentially as an influencer online, as new generations discover her impact on style and aesthetic.”

‘Heartburn’©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

After she was approached, Kaplan spent around six months anxiously considering how exactly to start the book. “This was something I had never done. I would be lying if I said that I was super confident in myself about writing the book. My imposter syndrome will probably never go away.” After spending this time letting her anxiety get the better of her, Kaplan’s agent advised her to just look at each chapter as an article. “I hadn’t been able to break it down. I was thinking of it as a whole book. So I slowly started getting my head around it.”

As Kaplan became increasingly ensconced in Ephron, she began to realize how complex she was as a human being. While her rom-com success might make people see her as a constantly warm and positive person, Kaplan would constantly go back to Rachel Syme’s piece, “The Nora Ephron We Forget,” as it “captures the cognitive dissonance between the Nora as a person we remember and how prickly, honest, and tough she was.”

Arguably Ephron’s most famous utterance, particularly in the writing world, was “everything is copy.” This means that a writer can and should use anything that happens to them, as well as anything they hear or see, for their work. That’s exactly what Ephron did when she discovered that her husband, Carl Bernstein, was having an affair with their mutual friend, while she was seven months pregnant. This inspired her novel “Heartburn,” which she adapted into the 1986 movie of the same name, starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.

“The thing for her is, everything could be a story,” said Kaplan. “I don’t know if there ever was a completely autobiographical character. Probably the closest was Sally from ‘When Harry Met Sally.’ But Nora was in all of her work. You can see aspects of her in all of her characters and their quirks.” Being so honest and candid didn’t just make Ephron a trailblazer for female writers and directors. Her depiction of “flawed, authentic, and imperfect” female characters that audiences hadn’t seen before helped to “reinvent the rom-com and put a modern twist on it.” 

Ultimately, Kaplan hopes that “Nora Ephron at the Movies” will allow readers to have a deeper appreciation of Ephron’s work — not just because of her movies, or even as a humorist, essay writer, and journalist. But also as a human being, who was adored by pretty much everyone who knew and worked with her.

“Nora was a lot of people’s best friends. And knowing all of the stories behind her films made me want to be at her dinner parties more than ever. But I really just fell more in love with her filmmaking, especially her way of writing and how it made people feel so close to her.”

“Nora Ephron at the Movies” is now available from Abrams Books.