Nora Ephron The Last Interview and Other Conversations

I was returning home from school when I saw the big poster of When Harry met Sally, in italian "Harry, ti Presento Sally." I felt a strong energy. I couldn't go to the cinema for seeing this movie but when later appeared on VHS I remember that I started my collection of movies with this one, bought with a magazine. And of course, I fell in love for all Nora Ephron's romantic movies since there.

They're not just well constructed, they're intelligent, there is no dispersion, the story has a start, a middle and an end but they're clear in their being...dreaming.

When I noticed that Melville House Publishing published Nora Ephron The Last Interview and Other Conversations I asked to read this book. To me Ephron hasn't just been a director, a great screenwriter, but someone in grade to present a dream, and apart Woody Allen she has been the best touristic promoter for New York City letting us discover the most suggestive parts of the city. No other one can replace that important empty place in Hollywood.
It was...her way to see the world that was in grade to make the difference in her productions, that magical touch.

I read this little book in a few hours but it's simply enchanting and I think that every person who wants to enter in the sector of media, journalism, movies should read it because it is pretty informative and interesting.

Nora Ephron was born in NYC, but grew up, she didn't like at all that place, in Los Angeles. She didn't want to become who their parents were: playwrights. As she said, she wanted to become a journalist and pretty soon, once concluded her studies, she started to work for prestigious realities in New York. Not only: once she was also an editor, but she added it was devastating because she would have wanted to write the pieces that pooped up in her mind while she had to assign them to her reporters. To her, but it is physiological, living in big cities is the best thing to do for whoever want to become a reporter because there are more chances and possibilities. Nora wrote about every sort of possible current events, and to her who wants to make movies previously should have been a reporter and vice-versa, because a reporter can captures the various shades of life, in particular if he/she can writes of everything. That luggage, later, was very important for being a good screenwriter.

During these interviews she will speak of the realization of Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally because in the first case Tom Hanks forced her, Delia Ephron, her sister, to re-write together the script for obtain a bigger role in the movie. The part of the lion was in fact at first dedicated at Joshua, devastated for the departure of his mother.
In When Harry met Sally we will see also why Nora Ephron picked up Billy Crystal, and the development of the famous scene of the orgasm.

Nora Ephron will also tell that in her profession in particular the one of journalist has never written with difficult words. According to her it is essential to reach everyone and to be clear.

In the first interview I found interesting her role as full-time freelancer.
A starving situation if you don't live in big cities and if you don't have good contacts, in her case a successful and lucrative profession.

Having a husband for Nora meant more freedom because she could live with more lightness her daily schedule.
For a creative in fact there is nothing more annoying than the alteration of the daily routine. To her the answer was her husband.

It was indispensable to Ephron to see always the good side of the story. It happened to her when she broke up with her husband when still pregnant because her husband had an affair with another lady. Once, the husband of that lady, called Ephron asking her to go out together.
While she was crying hugging him, that man made her laugh.
It's important to see the good side of a story wherever it is possible. Also when your husband has an affair and you are pregnant and you decide to move on.

Ephron, was one of the creators of the Huffington Post: blogs are important because they are  places where you are there for saying what you feel in that moment.
There is more intellectual fluidity according to her than not in a written piece for a newsmagazine or a magazine or in the severe structure of a movie.

Aging means to be the same person that you have been when little and young, although the body in the while changes, adding wrinkles.

The portrait emerging from these interviews by Michael L.Lasky, Patrick McGilligan, Kerry Lauerman and Kathryn Borel the ones of a sunny lady and I suggest you this book so badly.


I thank Melville House Publishing for the physical copy of this book.


Anna Maria Polidori