Browse: Home / Vale Nora Ephron

Vale Nora Ephron

By on June 27, 2012

screenwriter and film director Nora EphronA warm and moving tribute from Melissa Silverstein at Women & Hollywood.

I’m sitting here reeling from the news that Nora Ephron has died.  No one even knew she was sick and now she is gone.  The loss to movies, and especially to women in movies, cannot be underestimated.  This is a woman who was an Oscar nominated screenwriter three times over for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle.  Not many people can boast one Oscar nomination and she got three.  She was a successful writer who then at 50 became a director.  In a business that prides itself on youth, and precisely speaking, male youth, this woman decided to become a director after a successful career as a journalist and screenwriter.

Addendum: more fine reading on Ephron -

Related posts:

  1. Friday Hoyden Quick Hit: Women Who Direct Films
  2. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
  3. Whoydensday: Vale Nicholas Courtney (1929-2011)
  4. Oscars!
  5. Vale Les Paul

Posted in , | Tagged , | 5 Responses

Article written by :: (RSS)

tigtog (aka Viv) is the founder of this blog. She lives in Sydney, Australia: husband, 2 kids, cat, house, garden, just enough wine-racks and (sigh) far too few bookshelves.

This author has written 3288 posts for Hoyden About Town. Read more about tigtog »

5 responses to “Vale Nora Ephron”

  1. kvd
    kvd June 27, 2012 at 5:19 pm |

    That is really sad. Thank you tigtog for linking to somebody writing in the raw moment rather than one of those ‘canned obituaries’ that I guess every news organisation has to have, but I find so depressing. Anyway, in your link there’s a link to another piece, and I thought this was so right:

    I don’t think this is anything that’s anything that is solvable I don’t think it’s ever going to be easy to have a career and children. You just have to know it’s going to be hard and if anyone ever said no one ever said it’s going to be so hard you must remind them that at least I said so. There is not some solution to this because your children mean more to you than anything except what you do also means more to you than anything so it’s very difficult and confusing and I don’t think there is any solution except to accept that it is very complicated.

    (my italics above) I like that she said it’s hard, difficult, complicated – but not impossible.

  2. tigtog
    tigtog June 27, 2012 at 10:11 pm | *

    blue milk linked to another great tribute on Twitter: Nora Ephron: The Funniest Feminist (Alex Leo in The Atlantic)

  3. dylan
    dylan June 28, 2012 at 9:54 am |

    Yea verily, Vale! Whenever I found myself in a spittle flecked debate about feminism (back in the pre-web days) Ephron’s humor was was a handy antidote to the hate. On a more theoretical note, when I was first trying to puzzle out the idea of kyrachy her essays from the seventies seemed to provide snapshots of the messy power relations that She navigated and made that theory clearer in my mind.

    I liked that funniest feminist article, tho the seventies was full of funny feminists like Flo Kennedy, Harrison and Tyler and Clair Bretecher etc, and why another snide aside about Steinem, I didn’t get that.

  4. tigtog
    tigtog June 28, 2012 at 10:09 am | *

    Jill at Feministe linked to a commencement speech given by Ephron at Wellesley in 1996 – terrific stuff.

  5. Mindy
    Mindy June 28, 2012 at 10:47 am |

    I think her memory will live on long after people forget what movie ‘I’ll have what she’s having’ came from.

The commenting period has expired for this post. If you wish to re-open the discussion, please do so in the latest Open Thread.