Everything Is Copy

I wandered over to this harmless doc after reading about filmmaker/journalist Jacob Bernstein's recent misogynistic slur regarding The First Lady. Turns out the whole family has a penchant for high profile gossip going as far back as 40s Hollywood for Bernstein, the child of high profile parents Nora Ephron and Carl Bernstein. It's a cautious documentary in spite of Jacob's closeness to the subject as he searches for another side of his mother through family and friends who probably bounced him on their knees as a child. One doubts very much they would reveal any dark secrets to this young man now morphed into documentarian about his mother. Carl, the unctuous old man needs papering over though and haggles with his son about an ex-wife reaching back from the grave to even the score for his miscreant ways.

Daughter of screenwriters, Ephron during the 60s made her bones in the rough and tumble world of NY tabloids and the pages of Esquire in what was an overwhelmingly male dominated occupation. After a well re-viewed fictionalized account (Heartburn) about her marriage to the execrable Bernstein she hit it big as a screenwriter with Oscar noms for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. She moved on to direction with less success and her lack luster output ran from decent (Sleepless in Seattle) to abysmal (Bewitched, Mixed Nuts).

Passing away at 71 she was a favorite with the NY and Hollywood in-crowd that director Bernstein has privileged access to and there is no shortage of praise from the likes of Tom Hanks, David Geffen, Meg Ryan, Steven Spielberg, Barbara Walters allowing only a quirk here and there (the first husband claims she was prone to hyperbole) to break up the love fest. And this is where the film fails as revealing documentary since the interviewees looking into the face of the subject's child are not about to jump ugly with someone so emotionally involved. If someone did then it ended up on the cutting room floor since nearly all of Everything is Copy is a bouquet tossed at Ephron by a loving son making news these days as a journalist calling the President's wife "a hooker." Mother issues perhaps? We certainly won't get any answers from this saccharine doc.

With anticipation I wanted to watch this documentary. Nevertheless, I think the writer and directors didn't do the amasingly brilliant Norah Ephron any justice.

Early into this feature length documentary, I kept having a nudge in my mind as to something not being quite right with this factual programme.

Regardless, I continued watching. Certain elements were indeed very insightful. Alas, zooming out and looking at this in its entirety, for me this simply did not deliver.

Upon reflection, I believe this is primarily down to the auteur of thia documentary film; he simply is too close to his subject mattet to keep some kind of overall balanced value.

Instead, interview after interview, the writer and the directors alike, reinforced the idea of self-indulgence; gossip-lead; self-centred; high life of New York society of a certain era, by not delving deeper into more difficult questions. It is clear to me, that in many interviews, the writer and directors often lost the control and allowed the interviewees to take over and dectate the tone and pace of their 'insight'.

I do not know whether this is because the writer is the son of the subject matter or whether because he is trying to cling on to 'look how fabulous my mother's life' or 'look the names of the then New York society who are linning up to be interviewed'. Regardless, this failed to truly provide a genuine insight into such a remarkable and trailblazing woman, whose work haa touched oh so many lives.

The above quote isn't a line from this documentary, made by the late Nora Eprhon's son Jacob Bernstein, but something that she said about success (you can find it in the IMDb quotes for reference). It can be said from the many, many things in this 90 minute documentary that she had these cinematic moments, and that the title of the movie - a reference to a certain philosophy about using your life for art via Ephron's mother (a woman who, ironically, wrote for Hollywood fluff screenplays that had little personality). At first, I thought this would be a pretty basic Tribute-To look at this writer and filmmaker, but there's a lot more to it and it gains depth the more it goes along.

In fact one can see this as being as much about a son letting go of his mother, and coming to terms with who she was to him and who his father was for a time (he's Carl Bernstein of 'All The President's Men' of course), than it is a basic bio-doc. You do get to learn about where she came from - her literal Hollywood roots - and then kind of starting at the top as a valedictorian, going on to write in the New York Post, Esquire, constant column writing, then from a busted marriage with Bernstein out of the ashes comes Heartburn (also a 1986 movie by Mike Nichols), and then into a filmmaker. But what else is there? A lot, actually, and it's achingly personal material.

If you come to this movie it's a given you've seen something Ephron's been involved with, and she's been involved with some famous movies, many of them romantic comedies (Meg Ryan could basically credit half her career to Ephron between Harry Met Sally and 'Seattle' alone), or maybe even her scripted drama Silkwood or her several books or plays, or that 2009 movie Julia & Julia which is ostensibly about cooking but is really another achingly personal movie for her about love. But the key thing with this is to actually *not* be familiar or even in total admiration of everything she's done (one of the aspects I respected was that her son, among some collaborators of hers, talk about the, well, flops and misfires like Mixed Nuts and Hanging Up, the latter also personal). You don't have to be in love with everything a person's done to admire the work done to reveal the figure's life - it does help, but it's not a requirement - and Bernstein does a terrific job of digging into all the corners of who this woman was.

What was she like as a woman, to other women, to men, as someone who was, to put it kindly by several in the movie, "Tough?" What does it take for a woman to even make it in an industry that, especially when she came up in the 60's and 70's, was dominated by men? There's so much to parse about Nora Ephron that it's fascinating to see what happened during the Bernstein marriage and the fall-out. Seeing any person in a vulnerable position (and yet, as a fair documentarian, Bernstein also gets his father's side... in some part), and because of this it's difficult to leave not only knowing her better as far as the superficial stuff, the humor and wit, but what was in her heart as well.

If that sounds sappy, well, it is. But this is a movie that comes from the heart from a son to a mother, and as it is like that it works. As a documentary it works too, though a little more conventionally as far as tracking the career (except when it does step into the realm of the "Copy" part - i.e. Harry/Sally as Reiner/Herself, or the Hanging Up saga with her own sister as a co-writer). I do wish I got a little more in retrospect about the movies that didn't work, but then it's simple: if it wasn't copy, if it wasn't as personal (i.e. Bewitched is left out), it didn't work as well, or connect as strongly. In other words, Nora Ephron was not necessarily always what people thought of as a typical woman, though she didn't always know what a typical woman was anyway, which informed her life and writing - she just looked and had those 'movie moments.' In short I leave you with her thought on life after death: " Mo

I really enjoyed this bio documentary about the successes and pains of Nora Ephron, brought to us by his son and those who loved her, with extensive clips from her many movies. The title derives from Ephron's mother, who impressed on her that everything, not just life's triumphs and comedies but also it's agony and day-to-day tragedies, can be fodder for her writing. The movie explains what she took from and how far she took that mantra, including where it and she fell short. Many famous people are interviewed, and there are clips from many of the movies she wrote and directed. Overall, it's funny and touching and highly enjoyable.