I Won’t Have What She’s Having

(Props to Terry)

Or

Lifeless on the Lower East Side

Nora Ephron, purveyor of sentimental twaddle, has died of leukemia at the age of 71. A brilliant essayist, Ephron turned to the silver screen, earning an Oscar nomination for original screenplay for Silkwood and being cruelly denied for the same for My Blue Heaven. She even made the rom-com tolerable with When Harry Met Sally… and the most memorable diner scene ever. Ephron then gave all that up to write and direct Sleepless in Seattle, a shameless rip-off of An Affair to Remember, which wasn’t that good to begin with, brought Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan back together again for the even worse You’ve Got Mail, with the John Travolta as angel mess Michael for bad measure. She then shoveled mud on the grave of Julia Child, not to mention Amy Adams’ career, with Julie and Julia. Ephron’s second marriage was to Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame; it ended in divorce after his affair with a British politician. She used the marriage and affair as grist for her quill in the screenplay for Heartburn, where she referred to a man who “would have sex with a Venetian blind.” Bernstein threatened to sue, but as a journalist, he was well aware that the truth is absolute defense against libel. She died before she could malign her third husband, crime writer Nicholas Pileggi, but she did turn his Wiseguy into the aforementioned classic My Blue Heaven, the Dr. Strangelove to his Fail Safe.