Remembering Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron, who wrote and directed movies like Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle, died yesterday at 71. (AP Photo/file)

Nora Ephron, who wrote and directed movies like Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle, died yesterday at 71.

But she gave away a few of her secrets before she left — like how she made successful movies.

“One of the hardest things when you write a script is getting a director to marry it,” said Ephron.

To get directors to invest their emotions in it, she would slyly mix their own lives into the plot.

“You will use his most recent divorce in it, just anything to make him feel the movie is about him. Mike Nichols breakup with one of his girlfriends is in Silkwood, and of course when Harry met Sally, I based that character completely on Rob [Reiner].”

And while her bread and butter was romantic comedies with improbable endings, when it came to getting old, dealing with what we now know was leukemia, she was a realist.

“You have to know if things are OK at some point they won’t be and in the meantime do all the things that you say you want to do when you have those hypothetical conversations about what your last meal is going to be, because when it comes time to have your last meal, you’re going to be too sick to eat it, or you’re not going to know it’s your last meal and you’re going to make the mistake of having a tuna melt.”