Nora Ephron

She was responsible for as many movies I like as movies I thought were dreadful. Quite a feat! Puts her in Spielberg and Stone territory.

WHMS but secret thumbs up for My Blue Heaven bc it was filmed where my grandparents live and that was kind of a big deal when you're 10.

god

dying, I take it? if not already dead? weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCoKZNFftk8

I much prefer Sleepless and You've Got Mail to WHMS, largely because I can not even stand a few moments of Billy Crystal being Billy Crystal anymore.

RT @tadfriend RIP the astoundingly lively Nora Ephron. Her funeral wishes--"I want everyone to be basket cases"--will inevitably be observed.

nyt twitter just reported her as dead

Much more amusing in asides and interviews than in the last twenty years of her film career.

Heartburn the novel is really good--never seen the film

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/movies/nora-ephron-essayist-screenwriter-and-director-dies-at-71.html?hp

dead

My Blue Heaven is a 1990 comedy film directed by Herbert Ross, written by Nora Ephron and starring Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, and Joan Cusack.

It has been noted for its relationship to the movie Goodfellas, which was released one month after this film. Both movies are based upon the life of Henry Hill, although the character is renamed to "Vincent 'Vinnie' Antonelli" in My Blue Heaven.

While Goodfellas was based upon the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, the screenplay for My Blue Heaven was written by Pileggi's wife, Nora Ephron, and much of the research for both works was done in the same sessions with Hill.

WHMS but secret thumbs up for My Blue Heaven

this. also Julie & Julia and Bewitched were surprisingly bearable so i guess she went out on a high note.

Bewitched was horrible through and through.

I meant to see Julie & Julia, but never did.

I've only seen WHMS. Might have to see My Blue Heaven though now that I know about a Goodfellas connection.

I've seen Sleepless at least 20 times and I still love it. QUIT LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!

I like Silkwood and J&J's Streep section but otherwise her taste was dire, especially in forcing a revival of An Affair to Remember. Is that what she wanted us to remember of Old Hollywood?

She seemed like an interesting woman but man do I dislike her movies after WHMS. Voted for Silkwood.

had no idea she wrote Silkwood; great movie.

starring an alarmingly sexy Kurt Russell.

that's so funny, i had no idea about the Goodfellas/My Blue Heaven thing. love the idea of a husband and wife saying 'let's tell different parts of the same guy's life story, you do the serious version and i'll do the comedy.'

One of the best stupid Family Guy gags:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERsJ22EzFdY

Silkwood in a walk, obv

rest in peace.

my blue heaven was a childhood fave of mine

idgaf I ride for you've got mail

when she was a reporter in the 60s nora ephron co-interviewed bob dylan, it's a classic. the last q/a might be my all time favorite dylan quote.

It's not the bomb that has to go, man, it's the museums

Yeah, mostly got him saying what he actually thinks, with a side-order of BobBull, as opposed to massively the other way around.

Julie & Julia and Bewitched were surprisingly bearable so i guess she went out on a high note.

The Julia parts are so good that it makes you wish that Julie had fallen down an elevator shaft early on in the movie.

The Julia parts are so good that it makes you wish that Julie had fallen down an elevator shaft early on in the movie.

this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_Ephron#Ephron_and_Deep_Throat

cool

WHMS for me, but Nicole otm re the Julia parts of Julie & Julia being great. Kill Julie with fire, def.

and my love for WHMS is not Billy Crystal, nor Meg Ryan, but Bruno mfking Kirby

BABY FISHMOUTH

Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher in that movie are perfection.

Yeah I was just thinking of the phone-calls-in-bed bit.

rip bruno kirby, you were the realest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-NrI_TMjIo

oh, man. rest in peace. her death made me immediately think of mindy kaling--i hope she's handling the news okay.

Mindy Kaling ‏@mindykaling
Her movies taught me what love should look like. I'll miss you, Nora.
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i have *complex feelings* about ephron and her body of work, including when harry met sally, but how can this not be when harry met sally.

i don't like her movies, but i like some of her journalism. in any event, this is making me real sad.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

did Seth Rogen kickstart the You've Got Mail apologists movement?

He did?

there's an episode of Undeclared where his character talks at length about how it's secretly his favorite movie

"Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, a very likable Greg Kinnear... you think you're better than it, like 'Ooh this movie's going to suck' but then you watch it and it becomes a part of you."

The Economist published a joint obit of Nora Ephron and Lonesome George the tortoise:
http://www.economist.com/node/21558219

Miraculously, it doesn't feel clumsy or cheap.

(Though YMMV.)

are joint obits (of people who didn't, say, die in the same incident buddy holly/richie valens-style) a new/emerging thing? i mean i think it's tacky sometimes when writers review two movies or albums together for no other real reason than that they share a release date, but that's on a whole other level.

that monstrous Rogen line is fitting since Ephron and Apatow have contributed to the death of American comedy in similar ways.

Heartburn the novel is really good--never seen the film

― an inevitable disappointment (James Morrison), Tuesday, June 26, 2012 8:29 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i watched this, meryl is crazy good in it; def somewhat cheesy/80s but its light, natural vibe mostly works & it magnifies meryls fears/doubts/emotions; kevin spacey has 2 scenes as a punk rock criminal; very end is literally like they had no idea what to do how to end it and sorta bizarre tbh

I've been a few younger film writers endorsing You've Got Mail. I got a library DVD copy yesterday -- never seen it.

It sucks.

I've read enough defenses of Meg Ryan and Ephron generally that I've had to reexamine my prejudices; it turns out I haven't seen many Ryan vehicles.

It's no When Harry Met Sally, and of course remaking Lubitsch is risky business, but I seem to remember the social historian in me was sufficiently diverted by the agressive 90sness of the film.

yeah i can totally see how a younger writer would find it to be an object of interest. finding it actually funny is another story...

I rewatched it a while ago & liked it more this time around, perhaps because I now have an appreciation for the Ryan/Hanks of it all

Also it gave me some really weird nostalgia/feels for the online email relationship part. Mr veg & I met through an alt.music messageboard & were pretty much email only for the back half of the 90s. the movie does weirdly capture that feeling? Like the bizarre combined thrill of skronks of the modem & the chance of a new message

yeah i can totally see how a younger writer would find it to be an object of interest. finding it actually funny is another story...

― waste of compute (One Eye Open), Saturday, August 8, 2026 12:01 PM

Look at the hostility upthread -- a generational hostility? The writers I follow like her very much.

Who are these writers? Have they seen Lubitsch?

Lest it appear I’m just being a crabapple (too late?), I saw YGM in theaters at the time, several years before I ever watched The Shop Around the Corner, and was appalled by its pro-corporate message and deathly pacing.

I can certainly understand how being a generation or two removed opens up fresh avenues to think about and enjoy them that weren't available to the audiences who saw them contemporaneously & took them at face value rather than as a examples of A Kind of Movie From A Certain Time. I dont really have a special dislike for her although shes obv made a load of absolute dogs, but even the movies I can hang with to a limited degree are imo extraordinarily dated, and seem morseo every time I see one. Which for a curious younger person can be a feature not a bug. I can remember my parents reacting with absolute disgust and confusion when I started bringing home Les Baxter and Sergio Mendes records as a kid in the 90s.

Good post. I admit my major problem here is imagining an audience that might find anything interesting or novel about You’ve Got Mail.

familiarity/comfort can also be a valid reason too though, honestly that’s most of the appeal

Absolutely valid, but Alfred’s comment about younger film writer’s taking to the film suggests to me that something else is going on.

Heartburn is an astoundingly fun, funny novel.

My memory is that audiences were expecting Sleepless in Seattle mk2 from You’ve Got Mail, whereas Tom and Meg are kind of assholes in it - interested to see how that would play watching it now. Her written work also leans more ‘assshole’ (i.e. more complicated, less cutesy).

It sucks.

I concur. I haven't seen it in ages and don't wish to refresh my memory of it. I've enjoyed the handful of essays I've read from Ephron, but I've never liked her movies, and I doubt I'll ever watch any again after a friend begged me to watch her Bewitched remake with them. (Why they had to see it, I'll never understand.) But The Shop Around the Corner should not be missed, one of the greatest films ever made by arguably the greatest filmmaker in Hollywood during the 1930s (The Shop Around the Corner was made during the final months of that decade, so I'd say he was.)

(tbf, I laughed when the sight of children dressed up as witches made a heartbroken Will Ferrell bust out in tears.)

Far be it from me to tell you how to engage w Ephron but if the ~Bewitched remake~ is your only experience then you are doing yourself and Nora a grave disservice by not seeking out at least one (1) decent movie

Like you know that’s seriously a little bit insane, surely.

Besides You've Got Mail, I've seen most of the films listed above. The more I think about them (or dig deeper into them), the more I dislike them, and a good example is Sleepless in Seattle and how it puts across An Affair to Remember - “Men never get this movie." "That’s a chick’s movie.” Complete sexist, meathead nonsense, but I especially hate the way they describe the film where it's devoid of any substance. At the time I had no idea who Leo McCarey was and was nearly convinced it wasn't worth seeing - it was a long time before I did, and it's an incredible movie. Even the melodramatic ending that's re-told in Sleepless in Seattle becomes something else in the context of the entire film - McCarey was a devout Catholic, and while it's not a religion I've ever believed in, it's still compelling to see how it informs McCarey's idea of meaningful, adult love, the way its progression is a spiritual transformation, where true love is (as many others have observed) earned through sacrifice and suffering, and even to an agnostic-leaning-towards-atheism, that feels powerful and honest. I never would've guessed that from Sleepless in Seattle, and it feels like its inability to see that in McCarey's movie betrays its own shortcomings.

Silkwood is probably the best of these - not my favorite film with Streep or by Nichols, it has paint-by-numbers approach to a real-life story, but it's fine.

Eh, I think she’s great, and I love Lubitsch too. Heartburn (the novel) and WHMS are peaks, but there’s loads of other good stuff. (I also love that essay about living in the building that Only Murders… is filmed in.) In that sense it’s not a mystery why younger folks are rediscovering her - she’s an interesting multi-faceted writer that sometimes enjoys creating complicated, unsympathetic lead characters. Some real disasters in there too, but that makes her more fun to talk about. She has a limited milieu, sure, but Woody Allen never wrote a Silkwood.

Who are these writers? Have they seen Lubitsch?

They love him too!

Y'all, you can like Lubitsch and Ephron too. It's not a binary.

As for YGM. Tom Hanks is really the surprise: a portrait of smug corporate malevolence and he's absolutely in on that conceit; it's one of his best performances, fighting against the grain of the film. otoh Ryan's expression of benumbed wonder as she wanders the hallways of Hanks' corporate bookstore is a horror, especially when I realized her character was surrendering to his vision of the world.

i get it, though! those stores were pretty intoxicating the first times i saw them.

Same for me. My first B&N experience was world-altering.