When I heard the news about Nora Ephron's death –
twice, as it happened. Once last night as I went to bed when a blog was posted
by her good friend, columnist Liz Smith: 'I won’t say, “Rest in peace, Nora” –
I will just ask “What the hell will we do without you?”' and then
refuted via a statement from her publisher saying only that Ephron was 'very
ill'. And then again, a second, more final time, when I woke up at 5.30 this
morning (bloody birds) and logged on to twitter to find that Ephron had indeed
passed in the night – I felt like I'd lost a friend.
Nora Ephron, screenwriter, genius, woman who said what
we were all thinking, has died aged 71 of pneumonia brought on by leukaemia.
And I, 30 years her junior, 3,000 miles away, feel like a friend has died.
Melodramatic, much. But I know I'm not alone.
The eulogies from her real friends – and it seems she
had very, very many have been pouring in. And to a man/woman they have said the
same thing: Nora told it straight, she was funny, clever, acerbic, she took no
prisoners. Above all, she was honest and it was that honesty that made
generations of women (scratch that, generations of people, I know as many men
who can quote verbatim from When Harry Met Sally as I do women)
identify with her. Here's why:
She wasn't above revenge. Refusing to take
it on the chin when her second husband Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein
(father of her two sons) cheated on her with Margaret Jay – she wrote Heartburn
– only the best, sharpest, book about break up ever written.
She was a renaissance woman –
journalist, screenwriter, novelist, playwright, essayist. In a time when women
just didn't do those things. Well, not all of them.
She made it in a man's world. How
many women were writing, producing and directing movies in the 80s and 90s? How
many are doing it now? Quite.
She was nominated for three Oscars – for
When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and Silkwood.
She should have won. She didn't. Please don't insult her by giving her a
posthumous award.
She wrote When Harry Met Sally. THE
classic romcom – in fact, scratch romcom, one of THE CLASSIC MOVIES of all
time. What more do you need?
She's been described as a 'multi-media Dorothy Parker' and
she was certainly as quotable. Barely a day passes when I don't hear someone mutter
'thin, pretty, big tits, your basic nightmare'.
She wasn't afraid of failure.
People were pretty keen to stick it to her movies – they're 'chick' movies
after all. Ephron didn't give a damn. And nor should you. I love Sleepless
in Seattle and I'm not ashamed to say so.
Her mother told her 'take notes, everything is copy'.
She lived by that.
She was the original funny feminist: 'The
Wonderbra is not a step forward for women. Nothing that hurts that much
is a step forward for women,' she said in 1996.
She wrote this: Listsofnote.com/2012/06/what-i-wont-and-will-miss.html
I could go on. And on and on. The quotes are endless,
as are the achievements. All you have to do is put her name into Google and you
can kiss goodbye to the rest of the day. But I'll leave the last word to Nora.
I'm pretty sure she would have wanted it that way: 'Above all, be the heroine
of your own life, not the victim,' she said.
It's not even breakfast time yet, what are you waiting
for?
If you haven't read any of Ephron's writing, start
with the brilliant revenge-novel, Heartburn (Virago, £7.99); then try some of
her writing. My favourite is I Feel Bad About My Neck (Black Swan,
£7.99).
(This piece first appeared on my blog on www.redonline.co.uk/blogs,
27 June 2012.)
No comments:
Post a Comment