She Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron

by Richard M. Cohen

Overview

“A very personal remembrance of Nora Ephron’s life and loves, and her ups and downs” (USA TODAY) by her long-time and dear friend Richard Cohen in a hilarious, blunt, raucous, and poignant recollection of their decades-long friendship.

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) was a phenomenal personality, journalist, essayist, novelist, playwright, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, and movie director (Sleepless in Seattle; You’ve Got Mail; When Harry Met Sally; Heartburn; Julie&Julia). She wrote a slew of bestsellers (I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman; I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections; Scribble, Scribble: Notes on the Media; Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women). She was celebrated by Hollywood, embraced by literary New York, and adored by legions of fans throughout the world.

Award-winning journalist Richard Cohen, wrote this about She Made Me Laugh: “I call this book a third-person memoir. It is about my closest friend, Nora Ephron, and the lives we lived together and how her life got to be bigger until, finally, she wrote her last work, the play, Lucky Guy, about a newspaper columnist dying of cancer while she herself was dying of cancer. I have interviewed many of her other friends—Mike Nichols, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Arianna Huffington—but the book is not a name-dropping star turn, but an attempt to capture a remarkable woman who meant so much to so many other women.”

With “the nuanced perspective of a confidant” (The Washington Post), She Made Me Laugh “is a fine tribute to a fascinating woman” (Houston Chronicle): “Nora would be pleased” (People, “Book of the Week”).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476796147
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Richard Cohen is the author of By the Sword, Chasing the Sun, and How to Write Like Tolstoy. The former publishing director of two leading London publishing houses, he has edited books that have won the Pulitzer, Booker, and Whitbread/Costa prizes, while twenty-one have been #1 bestsellers. He has written for most UK quality newspapers as well as for The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Connect with him on Facebook @RichardCohenAuthor and Twitter @AboutRichard.     

Read an Excerpt

She Made Me Laugh

As she went in and out of consciousness, she was typically observing the process. “In out, in out,” she said. “So it’s happening.” The room, 242 of New York Hospital, faced south, so if she raised her head she could see down the East River and, over a bit to the west, the skyline of midtown Manhattan. This was her city. She had come from the West to claim it, to make it her own, to know its writers and actors and politicians, but especially the writers because she was one herself, her fame as a director notwithstanding.

People drifted in and out of the room. Husband. Children. Friends. Relatives. Her dying was taking longer than expected. She had acute myeloid leukemia and it had devolved into the inevitable and unavoidable pneumonia, and so the end was coming, although it was taking its own sweet time. She was awake and then asleep. Sometimes alert. Sometimes not. She lost track of time, once asking in late afternoon to watch an early morning TV show, Morning Joe. Outside, the river reversed course as estuaries do, sometimes going north, sometimes going south. It seemed apt.

Calls were being made. The famous, the somewhat less famous; the talented, the brilliant; the immensely rich, the merely rich, the non-rich; the established writers, the young writers; the struggling young actors, the struggling older actors; Hollywood, New York, East Hampton, Paris, London, and the African American neighborhood of distant Riverhead on Long Island where she had put her longtime maid’s daughter through college.

A summoning was in process, a call to assemble for a memorial service. There would be no funeral, no imprecations to a god she did not believe existed. (She was mystified that anyone could believe otherwise, and she abhorred the senseless platitude that “everything happens for a reason.”) So a call went out to various halls—the Ethical Culture School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and the Council on Foreign Relations on the Upper East Side. Too small. They were all too small. Slowly, it became apparent that a larger hall would have to be secured, something with about a thousand seats. Word of her impending death was spreading, and you could feel a stirring, a deep pain, a tsunami of bereavement that was building and building and which now seems appropriate but at the time was a surprise.

I sat on the bed and talked to her. I told her how much she was loved, about all the love in the room. She raised herself and looked out the window, south to the skyline. She extended her left arm and scooped Manhattan into her. “And out there,” she said.

So she could feel it. It didn’t surprise her as much as it did the rest of us. Still, she was a writer, and writers do not have the deaths of celebrities—the kitschy mourning of strangers, the sad bodega flowers, TV tears, and then the sign-off from the anchor, “She will be missed.” Writers just slip away. They get an obit in the Times, maybe, and then a small gathering in some dreary West Side apartment, and then, with any luck or some pull and the proper ethnic bona fides, interment in the weathered cemeteries of the Hamptons. Nora would have scoffed at that, anyway—the last-minute lunge toward religion. It was always dangerous to die while Nora was alive. She had things to say.

Out there, past her outstretched arm, something was happening. There was a movement, a swelling, a something in the zeitgeist—a rolling groan of impending misery. She could feel it and she did not scoff at it because it was real and genuine. She had it coming, she seemed to feel. She had earned it.

But the rest of us were somehow, maybe inexplicably, amazed. Her family, her friends, the doctors chosen by her and thus credentialed as both brilliant and famous—all felt it. And were stunned. Yes, she was sort of famous and she had directed movies, written acclaimed screenplays and best sellers, and even had plays both on and off Broadway and another show in the works. There had been hints. Her books sold really well. And when she made an appearance, throngs materialized. We who knew her, we who had been her friends, we who loved her (not always or all the time), we who still hear her voice on the phone—“Hello, it’s Nora.”—were too close to see what was happening.

The sorrow came through the window, up off the East River, and it had a power. Afterward, some young person wrote a tribute to her in the Washington Post. His name was James McCauley. He had known her. She had made time for him while he was at Harvard and had stayed in touch after he went to work as an intern on the editorial staff of the Post. I was her friend. I was a longtime Washington Post columnist. I knew nothing about the young man.

There was an item in the newspaper about Nora and the writer Nathan Englander. He had written a short story about Stalin’s murder of the Soviet Union’s most acclaimed Yiddish writers. It was called “The 27th Man,” and it was contained in a collection that Nora had read. The item said that Nora had gotten in touch with Englander and arranged a breakfast at Barney Greengrass, the famous West Side deli. She told him his story could be a play. She told him she would help him. From then on, they met from time to time. The play opened at the Public Theater in December of 2012. Nora had died in June.

I was stunned by the newspaper item. Yiddish writers? Nora could hardly have cared less. A writer on Jewish themes? Not my darling Nora. She once sat through one of my Passover Seders like a traveler marooned in a train station. She abhorred religion. She abhorred my sanctimonious Judaism, erratically and idiosyncratically practiced in delayed homage to the Holocaust. But here she was helping to write a play about Yiddish writers. And she had said nothing to me about the project—me who consumed Jewish history and was, even then, writing a book about Jews and Israel.

I emailed Englander. I confessed mystification. “I know you’re busy, but I’d like to meet you and also get to know Nora better,” I wrote. “I’d even go to Brooklyn.”

We met for lunch. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know the Nora he knew. The Nora the kid at the Post knew. The Nora whom others were writing about, notably Lena Dunham. Some of these people turned to me to ask similar questions. I had the answers, they thought. I was her friend, her best friend she had told others, and I knew her better than anyone. Whether that was true I still don’t know, but I do know that she knew me better than anyone—including, I’m sure she would add, myself.

Editorial Reviews

07/25/2016
Cohen has written a clear-eyed, episodic, and moving tribute to his longtime friend Nora Ephron, a multitalented screenwriter, director, and author who died of cancer in 2012. Journalist Cohen, who met Ephron in 1973, was one of the few people she told about her illness. Here, Cohen creates a portrait of the Ephron behind the public persona—the force behind such success stories as When Harry Met Sally..., Sleepless in Seattle, and I Feel Bad About My Neck. Cohen depicts Ephron as an uncompromising, driven person juggling a family and a career and caring deeply about both; a fierce, generous, and loyal friend who was also often domineering and endowed with a certainty of opinion that brooked no opposition—a tough, determined woman, ready to make hard decisions and speak her mind, but not above being hurt by harsh criticism, and insecure about her looks. In short, Ephron proves a complex subject, but one who is clearly adored and greatly missed by Cohen. The most beautifully rendered portrait of her comes in the last few chapters, which chronicle the end of her life. Here, Cohen writes with emotion, perspective, humor, and grace—the perfect combination, perhaps, to represent his dear friend. Agent: Mort Janklow, Janklow & Nesbit. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

A portrait that’s both complex and moving . . . Nora would be pleased.

PEOPLE (book of the week)

If it’s true that everyone did want Nora as their friend, after reading this lovely and loving memoir, it should be equally true that everyone should want Cohen as theirs. Muse and foil, colleague and crony, Cohen had access to all sides of this decidedly multifaceted woman and reveals not only those of the public Nora everyone admired but also the private Nora whom a very lucky few adored.

starred review Booklist

"An eternal snapshot of America’s most beloved female writer and filmmaker, as seen through the eyes of one of her closest companions. . . . There is a quality to [Cohen's] prose that shows the living, breathing person behind When Harry Met Sally, one that a regular biographer would be challenged to convey. . . . The book is timeless, but Cohen’s crowning achievement comes in the final few chapters. Here, Cohen chronicles Ephron’s final battles with the illness that would ultimately take her life. While I’d recommend picking up a family pack of Kleenex prior to reading, the emotion, humor, and perspective with which Cohen writes will uplift your spirits rather than drag them down."

Hampton Sheet

She Made Me Laugh is more about the good times with Ephron than the bad. Cohen is a terrific writer, and his book is a fine tribute to a fascinating woman.

Houston Chronicle

A book from someone who truly was a friend of Ephron, a man who dined and traveled with her and heard many an amusing anecdote that didn’t make it into an essay or a zippy line of film dialogue. . . . Cohen offers the nuanced perspective of a confidant.

The Washington Post

[A] very personal remembrance of [Ephron’s] life and loves, and her ups and downs.

USA Today

02/01/2017
Nationally syndicated Washington Post columnist Cohen chronicles his 40-year friendship with Ephron, the pop culture icon who died in 2012 of complications from leukemia. Cohen details Ephron's career, from her early days as a Wellesley College reporter and Newsweek mail clerk to best-selling author (Heartburn; I Feel Bad About My Neck) and Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director (Sleepless in Seattle; You've Got Mail; Julie & Julia). Ephron's glamorous lifestyle, her A-list friends and lovers, and complex family relationships are also described in great detail. Cohen's name-dropping account isn't chronological—it feels more like a series of short essays than a traditional memoir—and narrator Christopher Lane can't give the work a cohesive feel. Ephron's admirers may bristle at Cohen's portrayal of this much beloved superstar as an elitist (and often a bully), but he clearly knew her well and chose to present all sides of his complex friend. VERDICT Recommended for Ephron's many superfans. ["Lengthy, repetitious [and] digressive"; LJ Xpress Reviews 7/22/16 review of the S. & S. hc.]—Beth Farrell, Cleveland State Univ. Law Lib.

Library Journal

2016-06-30
An adoring biography of Nora Ephron (1941-2012) explores her motivations as a writer and a feminist.Washington Post columnist Cohen (Israel: Is It Good for the Jews?, 2014, etc.) first met Ephron in 1968 through their mutual friend Post journalist Carl Bernstein, who became Ephron’s second husband. Their friendship deepened and lasted more than 40 years, until her death by cancer, an illness largely kept secret from her other friends and the public. In this gracious, elegant eulogy to his friend, Cohen endearingly suggests that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, feeling his way as he goes along, sounding other friends and acquaintances for memories. He reveals charming vulnerabilities about Ephron as well as traits, such as her evident delight in name-dropping and hanging with the A-list, that don’t necessarily make her lovable to readers. Ephron was, above all, a fearless writer, from her college years at Wellesley to her early elbow-sharpening jobs at the New York Post and Esquire, where there were few women mentors and she learned to write fast and sharp amid a newsroom of rough-and-tumble men. She was feared for her frankness, and her targets included Bernstein, skewered in her biting post-marriage sendup Heartburn (both book and film). Ephron’s segue from screenwriter to director seemed natural, as she had been studying at the feet of friend Mike Nichols since their collaboration on Silkwood. Her film Sleepless in Seattle would became a kind of schmaltzy classic; ditto You’ve Got Mail and her final screenplay, Julie and Julia. Cohen captures a brilliant woman full of contradictions: she was a “girlie girl” and homemaker, queen of dinner parties and also a fierce feminist, yet insecure about her looks, the size of her breasts, and her inevitable aging neck—all of which she examined in her provocative writing. A warm tribute to a rather bossy know-it-all companion in arms who was hugely talented and fiercely devoted.

Kirkus Reviews