“In writing it funny, she won.”
So says “Heartburn” director Mike Nichols about his friend, the subject of HBO’s “Everything is Copy — Nora Ephron: Scripted & Unscripted,” premiering Monday at 9 p.m. The documentary about the former Post reporter, author, screenwriter, director and playwright was directed by her son, Jacob Bernstein, who spoke to The Post about interviewing Ephron’s family and friends — his father, Carl Bernstein, as well as Nichols, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Barbara Walters and many more — about her life, her writing and her death from leukemia in 2012, which came as a shock to many.
Did you find out why she told hardly anyone outside her immediate family that she was sick?
Yes, and I think that was a thing I was exploring with the film. She did it because there were pragmatic considerations — it would have been impossible for her to make a movie. She did it because she was a control freak. She did it because she had tremendous love for her family, and she was less interested in some of the people whom she didn’t tell.
Why wasn’t her third husband, author Nick Pileggi, involved in your film?
With Nick, the issue was really about breaking down on camera. I think he felt gobsmacked by her death. They had a tremendous love affair, and a really ideal marriage.
Do you try to emulate her famous dinner parties?
I do not cook a thing. I cannot cook. The saddest thing about it is she had this fantastic cookbook she didn’t publish, and I’ve now read almost all of her writing, but I have not made my way through that.
The thing I miss the most is her roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, which was just perfect. I remember the food a lot.
What did you learn about her while making this movie?
The most surprising thing was how many people she whacked and got away with it! We live in this very corporate era, where reporters and their subjects are separated by a rope; back then she had much more access and freedom. She wrote about her ex-boyfriends, her first ex-husband, my father, [New York Post publisher] Dorothy Schiff, [New York magazine founder] Clay Felker, even the people at Esquire.
Do you think she was judged differently as a humorist because she was a woman?
Well, I don’t think people talk much about whether Tom Wolfe was “kind.” Or Gay Talese, or all the other people who were doing the New Journalism. I think that in my mother there was this warm-apple-pie thing with her voice that made her emotionally available. There was this duality. Ultimately, this movie is a great celebration of her, but I think part of having rich female characters is having them as complete as they can be. I want there to be a group of young people who see this movie and say, “Oh my God, I want to be Nora Ephron.” And others who say, “You know, she’s really cool, but I don’t know if I could do that.” If it makes you a little uncomfortable, but also admiring of her, that’s a thing I think it should do.