Jacob Bernstein had to scramble to edit “Everything Is Copy,” his film about his late mother Nora Ephron, because his father, Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, declined to be interviewed until the eleventh hour.
Jacob, who writes about culture for the New York Times, had been trying to interview his father for months for the HBO documentary, set to premiere Sept. 29 at the New York Film Festival.
“The film was in the can and scheduled to air — with Carl having refused to participate — and then he had a change of mind and wanted to sit for an interview,” a source said.
Carl might have been wary because Ephron chronicled their messy divorce in her 1983 novel “Heartburn,” in which the thinly fictionalized cheating husband was “capable of having sex with a Venetian blind.”
Ephron, who died three years ago, was nominated for Oscars for writing “Silkwood,” “When Harry Met Sally . . .” and “Sleepless in Seattle.”