5 Lessons We Can Learn From the Queen of (Smart) Romantic Comedies     

Nora Ephron was a prolific director, screenwriter, producer, and author.  She created many of the best and most beloved romantic comedies of our time, including Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, and You’ve Got Mail.  She broke through many barriers for women, survived a nasty, public divorce, and had a unique way of capturing the simple truths of life.

Nora led a fascinating life, filled with interesting experiences.  She worked as an intern in the Kennedy White House, and met famous people like Eleanor Roosevelt and Cary Grant.  She had a front-row seat to the Watergate scandal, thanks to her marriage to Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein. She was part of the women’s movement, and wrote many pieces in support of new opportunities for women.  She was passionate about cooking, New York, and great writing, and her friends say that she always knew the best new restaurant or terrific novel.

Her work and words are timeless.  Here, then, are five ways that Nora Ephron’s thinking can continue to inspire us as women:

Be the Heroine of Your Life, not the Victim. One of Nora’s most memorable pieces of advice was given during a commencement speech, when she told the women in the audience to be “the heroine of your lives, not the victim.”

Nora lived out this counsel in several ways, including during the aftermath of her very public divorce in 1979.  She was married to Carl Bernstein, had a toddler son, and was pregnant with their second child.  She was devastated to discover that Bernstein was having an affair with a mutual friend, and this revelation led to a painful, public split.

Nora could have shut down, but instead she funneled her creative energy into positive events to rebuild her life.  She moved back to her beloved New York City, and wrote a best-selling novel —  Heartburn — about her experience.  Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep starred in the movie based on her book, she bought a house with the money she made, and Nora very definitely had the last laugh.

Moral: We can’t always control what happens in our relationships, or in the workplace.  We will all experience setbacks or have things turn out in a way we never expected.  The key is to take Nora’s advice, and instead of blaming others for our misfortunes, turn negative experiences into growth opportunities.

Think Like a Journalist.  Nora had a high school journalism teacher named Charles O. Simms.  One day, Mr. Simms was teaching Nora’s class how to write a lead, and wrote the words, “Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How” on the chalkboard.  He gave the students a series of facts to work with (essentially that the principal of their high school announced that the teachers would be traveling to Sacramento on Thursday for a colloquium on new teaching methods).

Nora remembers that she and the rest of the class wrote their leads, all repeating the facts Mr. Simms gave them in different order. They turned in their leads, Mr. Simms read them, and promptly threw them all in the trash.  He informed them that the lead should be, “There will be no school on Thursday.”  Nora said that at that point, she had an epiphany and decided she wanted to be a journalist.

Moral: We live in an age of information overload.  We are constantly bombarded by content on the internet and television, not to mention whatever we consume on our phones.  We are presented with other people’s facts and views throughout the day.

It’s up to us to take in this flow of information and consolidate it in a way that we don’t lose the point.  What are your truths and your goals?   According to Nora, it’s up to us to sift through the facts to write our real story.

Break Through the Glass Ceiling.  Nora graduated from Wellesley College in 1962, and returned thirty-four years later to give the commencement address to the graduating class.  During her speech, she pointed out all of the advancements that had been made since her graduation, and how many more opportunities were available to the current women graduating. She remembered that for her and her peers, they weren’t meant to have their own futures. For instance, she says that they were taught that if they wanted to be an architect, they should marry one.

However, she notes that, “American society has a remarkable ability to resist change, or to take whatever change has taken place, and attempt to make it go away.” After all, even today, there is a pay gap between men and women, and there are still people in the world who wish things would go back to where they were in 1962.

Nora herself said there is a glass ceiling, but did that stop her success?  Of course not.  She was an accomplished filmmaker, novelist, journalist, and playwright. She directed movies when there were few female directors, was nominated for three Academy Awards, and won a Tony Award. She didn’t pretend that the ceiling wasn’t there for her, but she broke through it anyway.

Moral: If we take Nora’s lead, we acknowledge to ourselves that there will be times when other people want to limit us.  We will encounter people who will assume we can’t do something as well as someone else because of our gender, our age, or other factors.  The best thing we can do is to work hard enough to prove them wrong, like Nora, and blow past any constraints that someone else has created for us.

Love Food.  Any fan of Nora Ephron will tell you that she was enthusiastic about several things.  One of her biggest passions was food, and she wrote many pieces about her love of all things culinary. Some of her most memorable lines and stories about this topic include the following:

• • • In her best-selling book, I Remember Nothing, she dedicates an entire chapter to her strong dislike of egg white omelets, noting that she feels sorry for people who eat them, and that a great omelet has two whole eggs, with an extra yolk added on.
    • In I Feel Bad About My Neck, she notes, “You can order more than one dessert.”
    • When asked about her signature dish in an interview with Epicurious, she responded, “If there is a Nora Ephron signature anything, it is that there’s slightly too much food.”
    • She created the Meryl Streep movie Julie and Julia, based on the life of chef Julia Child, and has said that when she moved to New York in the 1960s, she cooked her way through Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

After her death in 2012, the New York Times published two pieces on her love for food (here and here), and the Huffington Post paid tribute to her best recipes (here). These articles speak to the rather charming idea that Nora was so passionate about food, she would also be commemorated in this way when she was (clearly) most famous in the professional sphere for her movies.

Moral: Whether you are a home cook or a restaurant aficionado, follow Nora’s lead and enjoy the process of nourishing your body.

Love Where you Live.  Nora was also outspoken about her love for New York City. She was born in New York, spent her childhood in Beverly Hills, and moved back to New York after graduating from college.  Then, after a brief time in Washington D.C., she returned to New York where she stayed for the rest of her life.  Nora said this about the city:

“I’d known since I was a child that I was going to live in New York eventually, and that everything in between would just be an intermission. I’d spent all those years imagining that it was going to be the most exciting, magical, fraught-with-possibility place I could ever live; a place where if I really wanted something, I might be able to get it; a place where I’d be surrounded by people I was dying to know; a place where I might become the only thing worth being—a journalist. And I’d turned out to be right.”

Her love for New York often showed up in her creative efforts.  Her movie You’ve Got Mail is set in the city, and the characters often speak of their love for Manhattan. Her book I Feel Bad About My Neck has a whole chapter devoted to Manhattan real estate, and I Remember Nothing is peppered with anecdotes about the city.

Moral: Maybe you live in a big urban location, on a farm in the Midwest, or in a suburb in the South.  Do you have a sense of pride and community like Nora does?  Do you know the best hairstylist, the perfect shortcut through town, or the great new dish at a local restaurant?  Where is your go-to happy hour, or the sweet neighbor who waters your plants when you go on vacation?  No matter where we choose to live, we can all create the same love for our city that Nora had for New York.

Nora Ephron set a great example for women everywhere, with her many accomplishments, her sense of humor, and her unique way of using words to inspire us all.  Take the time to watch one of her movies or read one of her books, soaking in the clever anecdotes and life lessons.  Evaluate your life to see where you can be your own heroine, speak your truth, and break through a glass ceiling.  Enjoy a great meal in your favorite city today, and let’s all toast the wisdom of Nora Ephron!