When Harry Met Sally Growing Up Analysis

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Few filmmakers take inspiration from the lives of their mothers—but director Jacob Bernstein’s mom was portrayed by Meryl Streep in Mike Nichols’s comedy Heartburn (1986). Nora Ephron, novelist, essayist and playwright, but best-known as a screenwriter, director and producer, is the subject of Bernstein’s documentary, Everything Is Copy. Ephron, who died in 2012, penned the screenplay for Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally (1989), and she wrote and directed other romantic comedies, such as Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998). Her last film as a writer-director was Julie & Julia (2009), which starred Streep as Julia Child. Bernstein conducts original interviews with Ephron’s sisters Delia, a co-writer on You’ve Got Mail and Bewitched, Amy, also a writer and screenwriter, and Hallie, a novelist and teacher, as well as with Ephron’s close friends and frequent collaborators, including Streep and Mike Nichols. Notable for their absence are the filmmaker’s brother, Max Bernstein, and novelist-screenwriter Nick Pileggi, Ephron’s husband of 20 years. Family photos, home movies and archival footage, including clips from…show more content…
These events are discussed by several of Ephron’s closest friends in Everything Is Copy, including journalist Marie Brenner. At one point, she chides Jacob Bernstein for not asking her a direct question about his father. She dated Bernstein before he and Ephron met in 1976, and she says that during their affair, he would call his other girlfriends from her telephone. Ephron’s novel and its cinematic adaptation are hilarious, if bittersweet accounts of infidelity, and Bernstein underscores their importance to his mother’s work—they are evidence of a lesson Ephron learned from her mother. Hollywood screenwriter Phoebe Ephron taught her daughters that “everything is

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