Nora Ephron

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception


http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/purdum/2012/06/nora-ephron-remembered-dinner-companion

Sleepless was the first big movie Nora directed, and she liked to pass on a piece of advice she’d been given during that shoot by Rob Reiner (who’d directed her screenplay of When Harry Met Sally and played a cameo in Sleepless), which she called the “blueberries in January” rule. The point was this: on a movie set, the director is close to an absolute monarch, and if she idly asks for blueberries, even in January, she’ll get them, whatever they cost. So be careful what you ask for. A rule worth remembering.

The critics weren’t always fond of Nora, but the audiences were, and she was a master at making you smile and cry at the same time. One of her signature storytelling techniques was the use of classic recordings to underline the unfolding action (think Gene Autry’s “Back in the Saddle Again,” when the widowed Tom Hanks tried dating in Sleepless, or Harry Nilsson’s “Over the Rainbow,” when Hanks and Meg Ryan finally got together in You’ve Got Mail). At the end of Julie & Julia, when the first bound copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking arrives in the Childs’ Cambridge kitchen, it’s Margaret Whiting’s heart-tugging rendition of “Time After Time” that ends the tale.

At the end of her last book, a collection of essays called I Remember Nothing, Nora left a cryptic hint about her mortality: two lists, of things she wouldn’t miss and things she would. Among the latter: “A walk in the park. The idea of a walk in the park. The park.” Here’s what we’ll miss: Her. But in the little home movie of memories I’ll treasure, I know what I’ll hear when her name comes up: Rosemary Clooney singing “There Will Never Be Another You.”