Delia Ephron: Sister Mother Husband Dog

my name is Amy Dickinson I work for the Chicago Tribune I write the ask Amy advice column some of you may know that I am also a panelist on NPR's comedy quiz show wait wait don't tell me I know but most importantly today I'm here to talk with one of our favorite writers Delia Efrain is such a joy to meet you in person thank you I think like a lot of read a lot of your readers I feel like I already know you because your work first of all we're here to talk about this book sister mother husband dog etc which is this very revealing collection of essays where you cover just this incredible range of topics from loss and death to baked goods of course and it's just delightful so I know everyone here is going to really enjoy reading it but you start the book with this quite surprising essay about the loss of your sister Nora do you want to start by talking to us about that it's a big I started this book because after Nora died which was a year ago June I was really lost and it was really like living in a place where the street signs were missing and I was three years younger so I was the first I don't know I was the first thing that happened to her that she had no control over and and she said upon being the best big sister but also the bossiest big sister that you could ever have and my life was often about thinking I should just call her to find out what I should for instance when I started giving talks I called her on the phone I said okay Nora what do I need to know about this and she said we'll always tell them how long you're gonna speak because all they're gonna be thinking about is when they get to eat next and you need to warn them so will be what an hour we're being exactly an hour you're not so when you have someone a phone call away who just has the answer to everything and we were as you know probably collaborators on films and our parents were screenwriters so and I'm one of four sisters were all writers so it was just with Nora losing her and every day I would go into my office and I would write about that I would just trying to make sense of not just the loss of Nora but how complicated sisterhood is I'm yes sisterhood it's uncivilized we have this in common we're both one of four sisters and I'm the youngest of course you can tell yes but the thing I my second to the oldest sister claims as you do to be a middle how does that happen oh you mean that because it's one of four yeah that is weird because yes I think of my side the one that gets along with everyone although not as much lately but but yeah I had that role I was always trying to make everyone and this is so pathetic but I had for stuffed animals when I was little and I used to give sleep with one and then I would trade to the next so I was and and then I would go through the rotation and it was all about I think needing to a feeling so insecure as the middle child I needed to make sure the love was fairly distributed myself as a parent so yeah it's it's a it's a powerful thing being a middle child and with Norah being so having that did you meet right like everybody I'm sure you meet on your travels I have an aura story I will it I'm here that now I'm not gonna tell it now but she was so influential to hundreds of people and one of the things I love well millions of people obviously one of the things I love in your book is you talk about how losing someone who is such a force of nature also very important person and so well known how you identified with Caroline Kennedy talked to us about that alone this is ludicrous I know alright I just want to say before we discuss this but what when what happened was and I think because of the suddenness of for other people finding out it was people were shocked and they knew her so they felt they knew her through her work and so I found myself in experiencing public grief which is when people come up to you and on the street and say um you know I loved your sister I loved her work I met her once in the supermarket my doorbell rang one day I answered it this is an apartment building in New York and the guy was visiting someone in the building who mentioned I lived there and he comes to my door and he says I was with your sister and group that's my therapy 40 years ago I'm in the kitchen hopefully making pancakes or something and I answer the door and it's it's was I was actually after my sister died I was very angry I don't I don't know if that's been Merman oh yeah but I was angry she was gone so I wasn't feeling the feelings I expected to feel in the way that I expected to feel them I mean that's one of the things about life is that you're always trying to I mean one of the reasons I write and I try to write the truth is that I think all the feelings are always complicated and they're not what you think they're gonna be and you have to be honest about what they are that's the thing about this essay that's so surprising in a way it's not a summing up of your relationship with her because this cannot be summed up you know you reveal how your anger you know obviously at her loss the displacement you feel you're losing your long long long time collaborator I can only imagine how that feels creatively but also you're being enveloped by all of these other people who want a different kind of attention from men who have who actually had a loss - yeah but it wasn't my loss it was completely different kind and then I began to think about Caroline Kennedy her whole life people coming up and saying oh my god I was driving on the Taconic when I heard that your dad died and he was a great president because she was like what three years old and or when she's about eight or something but you know and she'd lost her daddy and the the loss was so different and maybe it was the one day that you went out and you were feeling good and then suddenly you know fungineer I pay her back right it's you you feel like your life has no control suddenly you're in and I wanted to write about this it was just because it was happening to me and I didn't know what to make of it mm-hmm well in classic Efrain fashion I think classic Delia Efrain fashion this essay is bookended by a trip to the vet Adelia is a great lover of dogs and you open this piece by talking about how two weeks after Nora died you had to take your dog you a doggy dermatologist which by the way I hope you never have to do because you could not believe the bill but in the course of this essay you also reveal how how dominated you felt by your sister how bossy she was and as a younger sister like honey I heard you there so Oh like you felt your work was so intertwined but sometimes she was given credit for some of her most famous lines ashley turns out to have been written by you well i mean first of all we borrowed lines from each other the way other sisters borrow dresses and because we were from a family of screen right my parents were screenwriters and my sisters are all writers and we were raised to be writers and and every time I said something funny at the dinner table my dad would shout that's a great line write it down so there was almost nothing to become but a writer and I think we I was this was is so weird all right but I'll tell you because I was paying it's not leaving this room right no I was at the memorial service and for my sister and I it was a very you know impressive memorial service and who was attending and and I was not just sort of shell-shocked but I had to speak so I was sort of sitting there in a daze and I and somebody was speaking and he said Oh Nora wrote you know this line from sleepless which is what Tom Hanks was speaking and he said it was about falling in love it was like coming home but not to any home I've ever known and it was that's a line of my wedding yeah it was mad that's a line from my wedding so so like my husband like gets me with this elbow I'm not that big cuz we were you know where we were but and I thought it's so crazy because you know sibling really work siblings are competitive you know and it's very complicated because we loved each other so much and we were so and we collaborated so much but at that moment I really was thinking hey that's my line yeah it's to feel that way but it's such a sibling thing I mean well I know who's SAT scores are higher I know all my sisters have math brains and I don't have a map right I mean it's just terrible let's go back to your your family a little bit your I have to say I'm so thrilled one reason I'm thrilled to be sitting here is because your parents wrote one of my favorite screenplays which I realized after I watched you've got mail again your parents collaborated on the movie dusk set correct yes which was a play first and they did yeah well it occurred to me isn't is this incredible movie with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Katherine Hepburn at their very best but it occurred to me that's about technology bringing people together and you've got mail of course which is all based on true a very old story sort of does the same thing but so you grew up in this hot house I imagine of of writers and your your parents were very well known and famous in their day and yes they were successful screenwriters they went you know my mother wore these very nice suits and she would go off then when you worked at a studio you you weren't hired for a job you were given a contract and you might write you know five movies in a year you went to the studio every day and they made so many movies then and it was kind of a great life I mean that's great and so you grew up with these very clever parents who were super successful were they competitive with each other oh yes I think so my parents had had the most stormy relationship for collocated yeah yeah this is really hard this opens a lot of doors here first of all I want to say that I did not become a writer quickly I was raised in this family where my mother picked all my courses there was no science for any of us I mean we were all expected to be writers who expected to leave Los Angeles go to New York and be a writer and yet when I was 10 I saw a movie called Seven Brides for Seven Brothers Howard keel yeah I loved it and Jane Powell yeah and all I wanted to do after seeing that movie was moved to the backwoods marry a wild man and make flapjacks so so and and I think having parents who were so successful in having a sister who was successful so quickly I really put it off and that was this was another way to do it so I just got married to the first man who asked me and I moved to Providence Rhode Island which is not the backwoods but oh but are you wasted over his sholder no not quite but but I was avoiding my destiny which I think in your 20s you secretly know you can do it for 10 years and then you've got to get serious you have a great line there's an essay about being in your 20s you have a great line about how when you're in your 20s it's like you can waste a decade and still get away with it because you know you've got more yeah you even waste entire decade and still have a life and you secretly know that even as the tragedy continues there's some part of you that knows that this OK hasn't gotten serious time is on your side right right and I and I had this job I had this really mean boss I was just an assistant in an office and I thought you know he wasn't really mean to me so I didn't think too much about it and then that's the thing about a mean boss eventually he is mean to everyone and one day he just started ragging on me and I said I quit and as I walked out the door he shouted you're flat-chested I if I could count the number of times I've heard this of the in the offices of the Tribune isn't that extraordinary it was amazing and and I took you know I have to say it's my favorite story in the world to tell but to lifelong regret I said nothing back and I cannot tell you how many lines have they when I think of your work actually think of it as being full of great lines this book each essay there are just great lines I feel like you and when I want re-watched for the 1,000th of time you've got mail so full of great great great lines it's almost like there's this awesome set up and bam out they go but your first book tell us the title of your first book how to eat like a child before that oh my first first book the adventurous crochet er right yeah well okay I don't even consider it my first book but it is definitely my first book because I was unemployed and flat chested so what was I gonna do right what else you gonna do but crochet right so I started crocheting and I was in New York and I I talked a lot about all this in this essay about my 20s but I was in New York and I said to an editor at a party I just said I know you'd never be interested in this but would you like a book about crocheting and he said yes and I to this day I I I'm in debt to him and that started my writing career and as I was writing this book you know when you have a dream to be as you know if you if you have a dream to do something and it's secret if you know it's a very big thing to say it out loud and even though I was raised in this family where I was expected to be a writer I never really quite admitted it and I started to understand that I better just go do this I think it's even harder then if you're raised in a family like that because what is every child's wish is to differentiate right yeah that what every healthy not that is an advice columnist would know anything about that but I really do think it's a healthy impulse is to differentiate yes and that was the problem ignore in my life right was how do I differentiate from her yeah yeah so talk a little about your many years of collaboration you you write a really wonderful essay on collaboration I think there are some people who can collaborate and some who can't and tell us about yours well I began to think when I was writing about collaboration that it's the most important thing in life Wow because I think I was thinking about my girlfriend see if you have sisters it prepares you for girlfriends in some fantastic way and you're constantly creating slightly more perfect version of your sisters all right girlfriends didn't know you know hey there's a competitive right you know and you don't know if their thighs are a little bit better than yours right so but when you I spend hours on the phone with my close friends and I began to think that that friendship is collaboration on life I mean it's that thing where you call up and you you can't figure out what to do or you've got a problem and then you talk to your best friend and your best friend choose it endlessly over with you and then you sort of get somewhere and or your best friend does something that you would never do and you think oh maybe I could I mean that's how I got a dog which I think is one of the most important things that ever happened to me and it was because my friend Gina got it right and I thought oh oh I could do that I could do that right so but in collaboration on screenwriting I mean movies are just huge collaborations because everybody's bringing something to the table but can you yeah let me in or for ones that can you tell us this amazing line about if you don't want to be angry direct is that the line yeah well at some point in a screenwriters like you life you have a choice do I want to be angry or do I want to direct and the reason the snow screenwriters don't get a lot of screenwriters are fired no that's the most important thing you have to understand is the screenwriter is hired and a screenwriter is fired and there is no moment that you were ever secure I have a movie has been in development ten years I've been fired off at twice I've brought back twice there been four directors but every time either an actor comes on our director comes on the possibility that you're going to get fired is there and you have no control over it so the only wetzel screenwriters who have this blessed life right who doesn't want to be a screenwriter are angry all the time they're the angriest peaks like you've ever met yeah it's a rage you really see that in LA the amount of frustration and rage and it's it's true you really do see that so how did your when did you and Nora decide to collaborate how did that happen well she decided she came to that point in life anger or direct and she decided she wanted to direct and she didn't want to be alone in the in the adventure Wow he needed someone she trusted and she also had a piece of material it was a Meg Wolitzer book called this is your life oh the Julie Kavner right remember we renamed it this is my life and it's about two sisters and a working mother and I had done a lot of writing about kids at that time and plus Nora has always said we shared half a brain so she said to me you know will you come with me on this trip you know will you write this script with me and then when we shoot it I need you with me and it was just a great adventurous and I mean I think if you collaborate with someone you have to have shared interest you have to think the same things are funny mm-hmm you have to probably maybe you both need to be of the same political party but I'm not sure I mean people sometimes think oh I could collaborate with just because they're friends but really unless you like the same movies or stuff like that is work you have to literally be on the same yeah yeah that's exactly right and and so we began doing this together and it was the first movie was of course the most fun because we neither of us knew what we were doing and she really didn't know what she was doing as a director and as a result we had so much fun and we were all in the same hotel in Toronto and we and shooting movies is like camp I mean you're away from your home life but your home life is there and you've somebody cleaning up after you well you know that your family is still there so you're not like feeling you know on a raft it's like you it's like you're at camp and everybody is at camp and everybody's having fun yeah and it was just and then because Nora is very was very generous all the time I always have trouble with these herbs I was in casting and editing and almost every part of the moviemaking process which writers know whatever variants that's amazing writer I always hear that writers are kicked off the set there they're not even usually on the set no and so I really know an enormous amount of it film and then I became a producer on our movies so I had an and/or everybody was scared of her and nobody's scared of me so it was really really exciting because she does she would do battle and like the gatekeeper for her well what would happen is that nobody had the nerve to tell her anything so the minute she Blue Room everybody would tell me everything and which is another kind of power of course but because then I could choose what I want to tell her but all right like the other kids I love you but the other kids not doing it right so you know it worked actually it worked well for her and it worked well for me because I love books books are really my home and when we started writing I knew that I would get lost if I just had a career as a partner with her in screenplays and I needed to continue to write books and also I made such a mess of my life I mean I to get divorced to start writing because my my husband then my first husband when I told him I wanted to write he said he didn't want me to oh and I said why and he said I don't want you to become famous suppose you become famous so I said I promise I won't be famous and I'm really worried I've kept that promise by the way because I'm very loyal but as you love right he shout out you know flat-chest okay no I let that be was it that bad oh my god no but that I knew I had to I think when you make a big choice in life and a lot of this book is about change and and how continually change happens to us in life and now we have to reorient and change and ourselves and take new paths and I think that a lot of my writing is about that nonfiction and fiction this book especially so I know that if I if I went to New York to become a writer and I and I left my first husband I don't even like to use his name actually I noticed anyway if I left him I knew I had to have a plan mm-hmm and I just say that to anyone who's thinking of making a change you need a plan and my plan was I had enough money for two years if I lived really cheaply I figured out I had to get published in the New York Times because that's what editors read and bam you did it yeah I did it I was down to three hundred dollars that's just how you did it yeah yeah I did it and and I wrote this piece called how to eat like a child and then I got a book contract this this is a that was published in The Times in the late 70s yes pretty famous first essay I would say it's a very well-known and oft quoted piece it was sprang from it yes in a book and and the book was very successful so that was a miracle and I thought that would always happen and it turns out it's not true I'm waiting well one of the things about growing up in your family was this just amazing work ethic especially you talk about your mother and what a worker what a worker she was when she was working yes she was what we're skirting around here is that when I was 11 my mother became an alcoholic and she was up to that time the most remarkable woman in many ways she was she was a career woman when almost no when we did not have any friends whose mother's work where we you know in Los Angeles and my mother was very proud that she did and she thought her daughter's had a destiny to work and she had a million rules for living that we all had to live by we were supposed to be nonconformist which meant we had to conform to everything she said everybody had rules like one of her rules was elope that was war so you could see it was not the most conventional sort of home and yet this wench when I was 11 she started drinking and to me that was just a suddenness to it I mean I suddenly had this add a mother who was this very impressive woman totally pulled together never lost her temper and at night it was she was like this drunk a raging angry and it was a day mom and a night mom and my life really changed dramatically I mean that's not even the right word it changed in a and so difficult and when I wrote this book the thing that has it's really driven me crazy so I really want to talk about it my mother's when she was dying and my mother died of cirrhosis so she literally it was dying yeah end-stage alcoholism um she said to my sister Nora on her deathbed she said take notes and everybody always thought this is a very famous Nora made a career of rice line really she needed it quite often and she did and it's always driven me crazy because first of all it was no you know we all have different parents I mean we're all born into a family at a different time and we relate to our parents differently and and anyone who thinks they have the same parent as their sibling that's really not true I don't think but I've always found that the weirdest thing in the world I mean if think about it think about being on your deathbed with your daughter and and that's what you say that all the affections you might want right to express that's what she said but to me she had said I hope you never tell anyone what happens here that was the most devastating moments I I can think of reading anytime anywhere that was completely devastating and I'm so sorry well thank you but look I'm fine I know what what an experience well the only thing I felt about that because I bought into the myth of my mother as much as anything and besides I had such an exciting life in many ways because I I had that mother mm-hmm so she was in many ways a great mother but not an affectionate and warm mother not to me and certainly not to me and the thing about that hearing those words because that's what I was told when I was young is that children keep the secrets mm-hmm you know and and the most important thing about hearing that line was of course it's the opposite you must tell everyone mm-hmm or you never get past it unless you tell everyone it's it's not her secrets that you keep it's your life that you have to live and you have to figure out what it all means and that's why you're in such good shape I think it's why I think about things I mean being the child of an alcoholic year-old watcher mmm you watch everything you want you what does it mean that that person through that jacket over the chair that way did say are they angry I mean you become someone with any parent who I think is is narcissistic we're abusive or alcoholic or has some illness that makes them unable to be the parent they need ought to be for you and you aren't mothered you become this person trying to figure out what's going on in the home and oddly enough is a writer and a thinker that has been useful to me yeah because I use that all the time that that I'm trained to sort of look at things a lot and to notice things a lot did you write the script for you've got mail with Norah yeah because one of the things that has always stood out to me about that film is is how much mother love is expressed in that film when the main character toward her mother so many moments where she's thinking about her mother talking about her mother dreaming about her mother what can you explain that you know I'm not about that oh it's beautiful you know what I think about all that is because of course Norah was a mother to boys and I have stepchildren and I have many other children I mean who younger in your life or yes I mean in a seriously bonded fantastic way and I think that you become a mother very quickly when you have a mother like that then you really the mothering part of you gets stronger the real problem isn't whether you can mother but the the problem when you have an a narcissistic alcohol whatever category we know of this is that it's very hard for you to believe that you're entitled to have someone love you mm-hmm it's not that you have trouble giving love it's that you have trouble accepting love or believing that you need a good guy rather than you know a scoundrel so that's my fashion word well I know a banjo that's better okay so I mean I think everyone is soon that that in some way you wouldn't be a generous person or actually it's the opposite you can be generous to a fault right right speaking of which you you made this very happy second marriage I was happy to yes wait a little bit about it in this book it's always nice when somebody has a happy you know resolution there so how did you meet Jerry well it was just you know a romantic comedy well I must tell you I gave up romantic comedies after after Seven Brides for Seven Brothers even though I will tell you that I think they're very important in life because I think when you're in love the only place you ever fall in love again is at the movies what's that line from Sleepless in Seattle you you don't want to be in love you want to be in love in the movies yes that was me when I was certainly younger but I think that romantic comedies matter because it's a place where you can fall in love again and also if you're looking for love or pining for love it feels possible when you go to romantic right and I think that's fantast provides this lovely important but I had given up on romantic movies at the time I met Jerry I knew how much trouble they were for me so he was on his way to see an unmarried woman ah right present 1970s Jill Clayburgh movie about Elvis about me actually just a single woman living in New York and who was divorced and he got the time wrong and he was with a friend of mine and she said oh you know I meet my friend you'll really love her and that turned out fortunately to be true everything at the time I was living above a beauty salon and a hamburger joint so it was really perfect and he is also a writer I know he's had a career yes he said he's a television writer writing mostly movies of the week when that was a very big thing and he's a playwright he wrote he wrote a movie called queen of the starters aisle room which is well-known yeah and it became a musical ballroom which which was not a hit and has come up in our marriage everyday for 35 and I now someone wants to make it in London someone always wants to mate should fix it fix the problem I said to him the other day but I'd know but have you known about this believe me now would you two ever collaborate together we have tried it's a total disaster we start to hate each other within about three minutes and is it because you have different habits or we're really not suited to writing together or what we're interested in writing the way we think about material what what interests us in life aside from each other is just what we are interested in subjects very different different interesting so I also would need to thank you for putting Jean Stapleton in how many movies - isn't she Devon she's and you've got mail had this such an amazing cast but including of course Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan but Dave Chappelle yeah I don't think he's I see he sort of went Dave Chappelle is a very famous comedian who flamed out very spectacularly and moved to Africa and has moved back but he didn't I don't I'm sure it's the only movie he's ever made I mean having a memory of my sister now what we hadn't seen him in a long time and we were in a hotel I forget why it was at some movie we got in the elevator and he got in the elevator and he'd gone on that walkabout in Africa right and Norah started to lecture him what is going on with you get your life together in the elevator the poor guy just gets in the elevator and he just gets it was so funny I thought it was what everybody was thinking you know and she just said Dave not that we got an answer but I was money and also this lovely movie Michael I don't know if Michaels ever really got me attention my favourites is with judge about John Travolta really another great cast wonderful cast right what was that experience like for you well we shot it in Austin and Chicago we shot yeah if we shot it here too I loved shooting that movie I loved I loved everything about it John Travolta was was great fun and I just I think all I think about when I when I think about the movies is all the traffic accidents I had a traffic accident with every movie now thinking about the one I had on that awful road in Austin that the only road that goes anywhere and so that's some reason that's all I'm thinking about at this very moment that that movie has a wonderful dog in it and it's a crucial plot point is when this dog dies were you a dog person at that time or is this I must have been yes I was but that dog had to be replaced because it bit Nora and it got fired immediately yeah as sure she was a get your life together no no yeah right I did I got my first I'm a step parent and I got a dog and I want to say to any step parents here get a dog oh it's very important to have someone in the house that loves you this that really spoke to me it really really spoke to me yes absolutely also I wanted to talk a little bit about this theater piece love loss and what I wore which I was lucky enough to see in New York during its very successful run so can you talk describe that a little bit you know I I sort of talked about this a lot in the book because it was such a perfect experience it played here for a while in Chicago it's a based on a memoir by Eileen Beckerman and the idea of the book is if you ask women about their clothes they tell you about their lives mm-hmm and she just wrote a little Illustrated memoir about her clothes and it had nothing to do with me the minute I read it I started to think about everything I'd worn when I you know it's not about fashion it's about clothes and so we knew that this was a theater piece and one of the weird things that happens when you adapt material is that you can tell what it is you you we knew it was not a movie mm-hmm and because there had been the Vagina Monologues we thought of it as you know The Vagina Monologues without the vaginas but we were scolded what a catchy title yeah we were right we were scolded until we had to stop by the vagina mom looks people but we never stopped anyway and and what we did was we asked all our friends to tell us the stories of their clothes and then we did a lot of interviewing separately and then we brought all the material together and began to craft this this play and I cannot tell you how long it took this play I mean it's such a lesson about believing in your own work because I gave up on it oh my god it was 14 years before it got on Wow we did a version we had a workshop which I don't know if you know what that is but it's when you get actors together for a certain length of time in this case no it's more than a read-through it's more like you work on the material you get it a little better and then you have a reading and you invite people and we did and everyone hated it and then we tried it again and it didn't work and then we put it away and we just forget it you know and then about I don't know eight years later Nora says oh I'm gonna do a little workshop of it in LA you know come out so I go out there she did not direct this ever this was never directed by her so somebody else was directing and I go out and everyone we knew out there was at that little reading and at the end of this workshop I cannot tell you and no one it was the worst thing ever I mean we left and we never spoke about it again we did that as any thing to each other about it nothing it just thought it went in the over in the system yeah there was nothing to say so then like four years later we get a call from a director named Karen Carpenter who had seen the play on some shelf in at the San Diego Old Globe Theatre and she's been carrying it around and she said could she do a workshop and I see either she said her Nora said if you have Linda Levin you can I don't know if you know she's yeah yeah it's very brilliant amazing and for some reason Linda Lavin agreed and it worked yeah it's 40 years later the play worked really fine and within we got a producer immediately and the next thing we knew it was on Broadway and everyone thought it happened overnight I just came together that it was a fourteen years and then it was and now it's played all over the world yeah it's it's a very it really resonates especially for women who even if you're not interested in fashion almost especially if you're not as yeah it's not about that it's it's about what you're wearing yeah we get that we are going to open up the house for QA from any audience members who would care to I think we have I feel awful because we have to I we've I've been told to be very prompt hate that about the Midwest I know so and right there I think there are a couple of mics if you could stand up and come to the microphone if you see it or just shout it out yeah I well I'm the middle child so in my opinion I have a great relationship with both of them they're both writers and they're terrific writers my sister Amy writes novels and their period novels that one of them is called a cup of tea and it's wonderful and my sister Hallie writes mysteries and I became a writer at about 27 or 28 Amy became a writer at 38 or 39 and a Henley became a writer at 48 and 49 so everybody had a bigger bite you know what I mean yeah it's a bigger mountain to climb and they both live in LA is that right no no no Amy doesn't Hallie lives in Milton Massachusetts okay she yes something about you know what oh I'm not gonna say what I just want to say that there's an etcetera and my subtitle on this book and that is not what the etc is but I really hate my bank and I just always feel I need to mention that because I got I think I made 34 cents interest last month and there's and was charged thirty-five dollars for service so I they're pieces in this book that are about things like that how much I love bakeries and how I'm afflicted with a disease called dis Gardea which is the tendency to throw things away after one bite which is a very good thing or you would have to remove me from my house with a crane right so there's all sorts of little fun in this book also julia has a she has a relationship with her hair that will resonate for a lot of women I know and so is this an everyday report we not every night tweet the hair report but it's my theory that women don't care about the weather they only care what the weather is gonna do to their hair so anyway let there's a question there yes I you know I don't it's hard for me to talk about I don't know I know they had such a long history together with sleepless and you've got mail and then and then lucky guy and they've just Noren Nick were both very close friends with Tom and Rita so that I'm that's what I know basically I mean tom is a very active collaborator and went one sleepless I really learned how to write for a star because of him because he would come in he he wanted more life how much stars need to drive the scene that they need business they need stuff and they need to drive the story and I didn't quite understand that till I started well it was early in my career anyway but he's so I'm sure with all their collaborations he was very active because I know he was on sleepless and you've got mail which were the two that I was involved with but otherwise I can't speak to it except that they were devoted to each other the question is heaven everyone in my family come to a love of food because my sister Hallie blogs about food and amy has a website one for the table which is all about food well that's a great question I was wondering that too yeah the truth is my mother we had a cook all right because my mother was a screenwriter and she part of her whole thing was I earn a lot of money and I don't need to do these things we should have someone in the house doing them alright and she spent a lot of time with us it wasn't like that it's just that she really went to the office every day and she was very proud of her income and she had a sort of grand idea she was very poor from the Bronx and recreated herself and she recreated herself by hiring a woman named Evelyn Hall who was a from Louisiana african-american greatest cook in the world okay I came home to lemon meringue pies and chocolate-chip cookies and brownies and like just the greatest fried chicken and coconut cake I mean you just can't believe how great the food was in the house and my mother would always talk endlessly about food at dinner you know veal should be pink and we were all sent to the market to go to the gym I was taught to how to buy meat at the supermarket by my mother you have to you know meat has to be marbled I knew all about marbled steak and I was like 12 and so that she didn't just serve we didn't just have food my mother expounded on it quite a lot and then she started reading cookbooks and then she would go into the kitchen she would have everything chopped up for her she would know wow I said yeah she was yes then you know but the point was I grew up with amazing I just grew up with great food and by the way everyone talks about food now all the time it's true everyone but you started it no it is not I mean you go out to dinner and people talk about where they last night and where they're eating tomorrow before they've even ordered what they're eating today I remember when everybody used to talk about real estate yeah yeah like in the 80s and now all people tell you we're just primed for it you know but I think it's an epidemic yeah any more questions thanks I'm very excited because Elaine who introduced me Lena and Roger they brought me cookies from the bent fork ah there you go moths are dia how do you know with a piece of material whether if you have a book I don't you have an idea I think how do you know whether it's a book or a play or a or a film you you just do it sort of I mean there was no through line to - there were no stakes there was no drama particularly - love loss and what I wore as a book so there was no way it could really be movie the these things kind of a they tell you what they are and and a book is never a movie a book you have to find the movie in the book you have to figure out how the adaptation works well I do write daily but what happened to me when I sold my first book was that I had no work habits at all and you can't do anything without discipline that's the truth so I had to well the first thing I did was get involved with a really crazy guy so I couldn't even think and and then my my shrink told me I had a shrink of course how'd they get rid of the guy which if you want to know I'll tell you after and he also told me how to develop work habits and I share this with you you have to sit at your desk at 10 in the morning and you can't get up till 12:00 and you sit down again at 2:00 and you can't get up til 4:00 and you cannot go online you cannot pet your plant or your pet you can't make tea once you sit down all you can do is sit in front of that computer fantastic advice and eventually it becomes habit you take the question will I right out of your day and then it becomes love it becomes this thing you you need to do yeah that's fantastic one more in the back question is this is a loaded question is a question about Delia's educational background yes am I talking to a person who might be in an in a college or teaching at a college or something oh good okay I I really I write about this when I write about my 20s that college really didn't prepare me for anything and I didn't even really associate passion with school so it never crossed my mind that I should be learning something I was passionate about and I think that my I regrets about college because I regret I didn't take a class in certain kinds of poetry or even the Bible I would sort of like to have read as literature I wish I read had read probably just more literature I wish I'd taken more courses in it but the courses I did take were not very good I mean I took a play course where you had to read a play and night you know and I mean yeah playwrights just went whizzing by you know I mean there was a I still remember a multiple-choice question in which of these plays did pork chops figure no I mean in Portugal you know all I knew is they came breaded with applesauce in my house so you know I mean I did not make use of college at all and I didn't really get serious till I thought about I wanted to be a writer and then I got serious about life otherwise I think I had a very spoiled time in college I think we could take one more if there are any ma'am miss sir sorry I can't see the question is about public speaking and that have I ever thought that that was something I might do right is that what you're no it's more like you have to do it yes I have to tell you that I get really upset when I go to schools and either have to give up an award or meet young people who cannot stand up and speak and I feel that colleges should be teaching you to present yourself because you're gonna have to do it wherever you work or whatever you do in life and I can never believe how hard it is for people to do and I feel it should be more than it is I was think I was trained at the dinner table you know and that was good I just want to thank you so much for coming here and doing this with me it's an honor it's such a joy and a pleasure and please join me in thanking Delia Ephram you

Channel: Chicago Humanities Festival

Views: 14,305

Rating: 4.7611942 out of 5

Keywords: nora ephron, Sister, Mother, chicago, humanities, festival, chicago humanities festival, screenwriting, authors, sisterhood, grief, hollywood, directing, romantic romedies, comedy, romance, Romantic Comedy (Film), Book, Sisters

Id: trVwlCvpRWQ

Length: 54min 4sec (3244 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 18 2013