If you’ve films such as Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail or Julie & Julia, then you’re familiar with the work of director/writer Nora Ephron. To Jacob Bernstein, she’s more than a filmmaker. She’s his mother.
Everything Is Copy is a heartfelt documentary from Bernstein, which he co-directed along with Nick Hooker. It’s not just a loving tribute to his mom, but a look back at her life as a whole, not just in the movie business. It’s a highly personal and touching look at Ephron’s life, made even more so by her surprising death in 2012. Ephron died from pneumonic complications from blood disorder myelodysplasia, a disease she had kept a secret for six years. This was surprising to many family members and friends, many of which are able to express their grief and reminisce on her career.
Bernstein begins with a overview of his mothers beginnings, and her ability to seemingly rise across the ranks with ease. The daughter of screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron, she soon became a reporter for the New York Post and soon found a career as a screenwriter. In no time Ephron started penning bigger and bigger moves, eventually to the point where she soon would sit in the directors seat as well. Bernstein and Hooker use old footage along with interviews with family and celebrity friends to keep things fresh and engaging.
To his credit, Bernstein doesn’t hold back on his mothers troubled relationships, including with his father Carl Bernstein. Ephron lived by “everything is a copy,” a phrase taken from her mother, meaning all of the life experiences we go through would make for good material. She stayed true to it, using personal experiences such as the falling out of her relationship with Jacob’s father as source material for her the book and script for the eventual Mike Nichols film released in 1996. There’s even a pivotal scene where Carl wonders if the film affected his sons view on him, and Jacob admits that it did.
Things changed for her with the discovery of her cancerous disease. Being as strong willed as she is, Ephron kept it a secret from those close around her, decided to cope through her steadfast dedication to her work. It’s here that the film takes an understandable emotional turn, and becomes not only a tribute to a talented artist, but to a mother.
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