Five years ago, I met Nora Ephron, the journalist-cum-film-maker (then 70) at a dinner party in New York. I was starstruck. That was partly because Ephron created some of my favourite films, such as When Harry Met Sally (1989). But in her life (she died in 2012) she was also that rare creature: a potent female role model for young wannabe journalists. She started working in the mail room of Newsweek in the 1960s, when women were rare in media, and then fearlessly ascended the career ladder to become one of the most trenchant, respected essayists of her time. Ephron’s hallmark was collecting threads from her own life — and from the lives of others — to weave provocative literary tapestries and films.
But did she have the right to use those threads of private human life in her essays? Where do the boundaries of privacy lie for Ephron — or any other writer? It is an intriguing question, and one that is doubly pertinent now since, this weekend, HBO is releasing a documentary about Ephron, made by her son, Jacob Bernstein.
I attended a preview of the movie, Everything is Copy, last week in New York (which, in a surreal twist of life-meets-art-inspires-life was also attended by many of those featured in the movie, such as Ephron’s ex-husband Carl Bernstein, Meg Ryan and the New Yorker’s Ken Auletta). I can report that the portrait is compelling. But it is also sobering for writers — of either sex.