Ariel Levy who has been kicking some serious ass in writing profiles in the New Yorker of late, spent some time with Nora Ephron as she readies Julie & Julia for release next month. (You can only read the article online if you have a subscription to the New Yorker.)
To me, Julie & Julia is the biggest film of the summer for women. It’s got everything– Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Nora Ephron as writer and director. What more can you need? I bet it’s going to be big.
I’ve always been fascinated with Ephron. I loved the script for Silkwood with she co-wrote with Alice Arlen. I also think her directorial debut This is My Life (which she also wrote) starring Julie Kavner (where is she now- I know she is Marge Simpson’s voice, but where is she?) is an under appreciated feminist gem.
Ephron has had some serious hits in her life. Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally (which she wrote) are two of the movies that will live on forever. Not many people have a single movie that has made such an impact and she has had several.
She’s a commercial director with a feminist bent who grew up in a Hollywood writing family. When you think of female directors whose films actually make money there are only a couple — Ephron, Nancy Meyers and now Anne Fletcher and Catherine Hardwicke. That’s pretty much it. Both Ephron and Meyers have movies this year that star Meryl Streep, so this it a very fine year. (Meyers’ movie just wrapped last week so let’s hope she can make the December 25 release date.)
Having grown up in Hollywood Ephron saw how women were treated:
Female screenwriters, like Ephron’s mother, Phoebe, almost always had a husband they collaborated with, and “woman director” was an oxymoron.
Here’s what Nora said about women and directing:
Most directors, I have discovered, need to be convinced that the screenplay they’re going to direct has something to do with them, and this is a tricky thing if you write screenplays where women have parts that are equal to or greater that the male part…You look at a list of directors and it’s all boys; it certinaly was when I started as a screenwriter. So I thought, I’m just going to become a director and that’ll make it easier.”
I wonder if a guy director would say the same thing. Do guys who are directing horror films think that those types of movies have something to do with them?
Ephron detests whining: you can acknowledge a problem, but only in the service of solving it. “nobody really has an easy time getting a movie made,” she said. “And furthermore I can’t stand people complaining. So it’s not a conversation that interests me, do you know? Those endless women-in-film panels. It’s like, just do it! Just do it. Write something else if this one didn’t get made. It’s my ongoing argument with a whole part of the women’s movement.”
Ok people. Nora Ephron is tired of the complaining. She’s tired of being asked to be on any more panels where the topic is why aren’t there more women directors and why is it so hard for women to get a film made.
Geez Nora. Don’t you think after 25 or 30 years we’re all tired of these panels? Isn’t everybody tired of asking the same question for 30 years? Wouldn’t it be great to never need to have a panel that focused on the lack of women directors anymore? But since there are so few female directors that are successful isn’t it all of our jobs to keep pushing and hounding and asking the questions? Yes there is complaining, frustration and whining at times. But there are also legitimate conversations about box office issues, the lack of interest in scripts about women and the ongoing SEXISM in the business. If we didn’t have these panels and agitate and complain and pushed — where would we be?
I am all for solutions. I try never to do a panel without talking about next steps and solutions but to blame the women’s movement (which by the without which you never would have had a career) seems a bit extreme.
And I wonder. Does Nora mentor younger women directors? Does she make sure to have up and comers on the set? The only way we will get past the whining to solutions is for women who have made it to help the ones behind.
Nora Ephron is lucky. She’s made money for her studio. She also has a champion in Amy Pascal at Sony.
I cannot wait for Julie & Julia (although from the article it sounds like we will love all the Julia parts and be bored with the Julie parts.) I will be there for anything Ephron does cause she’s a vital, singular mainstream women’s voice that we so desperately need.
I’m glad to see how many female actors will be in her upcoming film also equally happy that she is still in the business.
I agree with your point that “to blame the women’s movement seems a bit extreme.” Panels and even representational quotas wouldn’t need to exist in any field if the name/gender on the CV, screenplay or other was not an issue.
We all need to be empowered from within and yes, the “just do it” approach can work; but not everybody has the same backing like Ephron.
Given the length of time it took for women to enter certain professional positions and the many who still have to work very hard to have a door open, it is incumbent on all people to see the value of mentoring.
If she has an “ongoing argument against the women’s movement” or should I say a complaint, maybe she could see it this way. Nora Ephron and other women like her (and men) should do this because ensuring women are behind and on the screen adds value to their industry. An industry and profession they love.
From her bio:
Ephron was born in New York, eldest of four daughters in a Jewish family and grew up in Beverly Hills; her parents, Henry and Phoebe Ephron, were both East Coast-born and raised screenwriters. Her sisters Delia and Amy are also screenwriters…(and she married a screenwriter) Ephron graduated from Wellesley College and was briefly an intern in the White House of President John F. Kennedy.
Yes Nora, pedigree, wealth and nepotism will get you far…even if you are a woman in Hollywood. The problem is that most other women don’t have your access. And the lucky few, refuse to help.
aside from the points you brought up, i do appreciate her attitude. unfortunately it’s true that a huge part of jumping through these hoops is (imho) just putting on blinders to them & working your ass off.
When it’s women trying to address discrimination, it’s whining. When it’s the poor, then they shopuld pull themselves up by their bootstraps. WQhen it’s AFrican Americans or Native Americans, they should just get over it already. When it’s white men, it’s organizing. Alas, Nora make a good case for Sands. Do you all know anything about the relationship between actresses and the suffragettes? It’s an amazing history. Women in theatre, here and in England, had a great deal to do with securing the vote. Without them it might have taken two centuries instead one one. We need to focus on the great advicates, contemporary and historical. There is always somneone, male or female, to diminish inequity, and when there’s a history of contempt for women that stretches back as far as Ancient Greece (not to mention the impact of the Bible…), that’s a bias so profound it’s almost universally internalized.
When Spike Lee was the lone African American director, he didn’t tell people who wanted to follow in his footsteps to “stop whining”. He hired as many African American’s as possible and set up a fellowship. He has helped open the career door for many directors. But he’s a guy…
Nora where is your fellowship? Imagine with your power and success what you could do to help others.
She comes off as very entitled, IMO.
As much as I adore When Harry Met Sally, I can’t get past You’ve Got Mail–it’s such a misogynistic pile of crap.
But, yes, I will see the Julia movie–for Meryl!
Successful woman director or not, I doubt if I’ll be going to see J&J, as I’ve never liked Ephron’s films (although I haven’t seen Silkwood – which sounds like quite an exception to the rest of her career).
In fact, I’ve always found her to have an irritatingly patronising attitude to the women in her films, portraying them more as neurotically charming children than mature, complex beings. The trailer I saw of J&J does not change this opinion.
Her comments not only reflect this attitude but are also a sad echo of similar attitudes that seem to be common to exceptionally successful women. Rather than blazing a trail, they are much more inclined to cover their tracks. I’ve often pondered about this and have come up with two possible reasons:
One is that by keeping the numbers of women at the top low, they can continue basking in their ‘exceptional’ status.
The other reason is that the establishment of any industry is by nature conservative, so the women who rise to the top are much more inclined to belong to the conservative side of politics – which has long been feminism’s sworn enemy.
Just my 2 cents worth …
At a recent talk by an entrepreneur who was talking about business in general he noted that a great deal of successful people are prone to “hindsight bias”: they re-imagine their past successes to showcase them as the product of planned foresight, and they take credit for what was part luck and opportunity.
Nora Ephron says stop whining and just do it, because that’s all it took for her, it is implied.
It’s as if once they join the system they must mouth the myths of the system. So we hear about how talent trumps everything, and lots of talk about initiative, drive, and the don’t-give-up attitude (often coded in the usual masculine metaphors).
Yet the reality is that producers don’t trust films about women. They don’t have faith in them to generate revenue. So women work on smaller projects, because at least they might get something made there, and this helps perpetuate the idea that women prefer smaller, more intimate, or the worst appellation, domestic films. Until we see women writing and directing the summer blockbusters – and I’m talking about Transformers or Mr. & Mrs. Smith for example – we looking at a very unequal industry.
Most of us are trying to “do it” (whatever that means). The underlying criticism by Ms. Ephron is that we’re just not working hard enough.
Buck up girls!
I’ve often wondered what happened to Mimi Leder’s career. “Deep Impact” made over $140MM during the summer of 1998, yet she hasn’t had a big picture since. Lots of male directors seem to get 2nd and 3rd chances.
She’s been directing and executiving producing lots of TV.
This just reminded me of the theatre bias study which showed that plays by and about women are the least likely to be produced so women write smaller plays so they get a chance. Maybe women making movies have moved in the that direction. If they are smaller, more intimate and cheaper they might have a chance. Sigh again.
Interesting. I think that Nora probably has solid feminist credentials and from what I can tell of the women who have risen in Hollywood most of them are pretty liberal politically but because there are so few of them it’s very hard to create a tide behind you. I think that it’s just so hard. Do I think they don’t help women on purpose in order to keep other women out? I really hope not. There are some women who do want to remain the only one because it makes them special but hopefully as time marches on wmoen wil see the fact that when there are more women in the room it makes it easier for all women.
It’s got to be annoying for the handful of prominent women writers/directors that they become the mouthpiece for women in the industry. What they say has more impact. That is an unfair pressure that most men don’t have to think about.
Ms. Ephron I’m sure is fed up of having her words seized upon in this fashion. Yet, it can’t be avoided.
The reality is that women need to support each other, as much as possible, because we’re not working on a level playing field.
I agree with what Maura said. Most of my peers in the business have parents in the business so let’s not use Nora’s background against her.
bravo melissa!
you are such a champion of any & all women talent.
Nora ultimately did benefit from a time when female oriented films from the major studios weren’t as rare as they seem to be now (SILKWOOD for example).
Despite the influx of female studio executives and directors (to a much lesser extent sadly) in the years since Ephron saying ‘Just do it as I did’ doesn’t work because 90% of the stories being told in commercial cinema today isn’t as open to the more diverse female perspective as it was during the 80s relatively.
Popular culture has been turned into gender culture and therefore there are studios now who aren’t willing to say ‘yes’ to any female director or actress who wants to compete with the big boys using their own vision.