Best Of - Nora Ephron: Unstoppable Wit

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Academy of Achievement

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4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 26 December 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Contemplating what movie to watch this holiday week? You can't go wrong with "When Harry Met Sally," perhaps the greatest rom-com of all time. Nora Ephron, who wrote the screenplay, as well as other great movies and books, knew just how to make people laugh and cry and kvell. But mostly laugh. She was a successful director and producer too, in an industry not very hospitable to women. In this episode, Ephron shares the most important lesson she learned from her mother: that all pain is fodder for a good story. She explains why becoming a journalist was the best thing she ever did. And she tells stories from her later career in Hollywood, including the one about how the famous faked-orgasm scene in "When Harry Met Sally" came about. (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2017-2022

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Alice. I'm spending New Year's Eve in this year, so I've been trying to plan the perfect movie night.
0:10.0	The competition is fierce. Oceans 11 in American in Paris, Sunset Boulevard, Diner, the apartment,
0:18.0	all of them feature essential New Year's Eve scenes.
0:22.0	But for my money, when Harry Met Sally is again going to be the one.
0:28.0	Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, Director Rob Reiner, writer Nora Ephren, it's the Ramcom Dream Team.
0:35.0	Since tis the season, we're bringing back our episode on Nora Efren,
0:40.0	which is as amusing and insightful as she was.
0:44.0	The episode originally aired in the spring of 2017,
0:48.0	but even then I chose to open it with the New Year's Eve scene.
0:52.0	Enjoy. I love that you get cold when it's 71
0:56.2	degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you
1:00.4	get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I would never play you a movie clip that revealed the very end of a movie.
1:08.0	That would be obnoxious, normally.
1:11.0	But if it's when Harry met Sally, you've absolutely already seen it.
1:15.4	So no need for a spoiler alert.
1:17.8	If you haven't seen it, well shame on you anyway.
1:21.0	Put down this podcast, go rent the movie, and then come back to listen.
1:24.9	That is just like you, Harry, you say things like that and you make it impossible for me to hate you.
1:38.6	And I hate you Harry I really hate you. When Harry met Sally is one of the best romantic comedies of all time,
1:45.0	written by one of the best and funniest writers of all time,
1:49.2	Nora Ephron, she started out as a journalist but went on to write essays, novels, plays, movies, basically anything that allowed her to put pen to paper.
2:00.0	Her parents were both Hollywood screenwriters, so she was born to it.
	...

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