Nora Ephron Once Called 'WWD' A Lady's "Surrogate Bitch," + Other Revealing Details

06/27/2012

As a woman who devoted her life to cinematic moments, Nora Ephron, an acclaimed journalist-turned-essayist, novelist, screenwriter, director, producer, playwright and blogger left her mark on the world in the form of funny. Ephron, the woman behind classics When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, died in a New York hospital on Tuesday of leukemia at age 71, according to WWD.

As a pioneer in the funny-woman world (yes, there were funny, talented women screenwriters before ladies like Tina Fey and Kristen Wiig), Ephron spoke to women with her work, including her bestselling book, Wallflower at the Orgy, a collection of essays during the 1970s. Interestingly enough, the same publication in which I cited earlier in reference to this information, is the same publication who threatened to sue Ephron years ago. WWD was the subject on one of Ephron's essays in Wallflower at the Orgy, in which she wrote:

“WWD is — through what its publishers think of as journalistic resourcefulness and its victims think of as dirty pool — the most ubiquitous, influential, snoopy, controversial, despised and adored publication in the fashion world.”

She added, “The Ladies subscribe to WWD to read about themselves, to find out what clothes they are buying and what they should buy, what designers they will patronize next, what restaurants are fashionable, where their friends are this month and whom they are in love with. But there is one more reason the Ladies read WWD. It is seen as their Surrogate Bitch. Delightful, delicious, delectable, delirious, the newspaper is, but it is also as bitchy as can be.”

This made us laugh, not only because she calls WWD a "surrogate bitch," but also because her son Jacob would go on to be a reporter for WWD before working at the New York Times, his current employer. Despite the scuffle, the publication still reported on Ephron's work including a critically acclaimed play she had written with her sister, Delia, in 2009 called Love, Loss and What I Wore based on Ilene Beckerman’s book of the same name.

WWD shared a few words from Meryl Streep of the late, great Ephron, who worked with her on the film Julie and Julia:

“Nora was a person whose gifts of mind, amply displayed as a young person in her sharply observed journalistic pieces and in her personal wit, were, when I first met her, kind of scary: aimed and airy at the same time, an insouciant sharpness that could be intimidating, because you could never catch her 'trying', everything seemed effortless. But as I got to know her, I understood what drove her was her acute curiosity, and her desire to observe and find out stuff. It's what made her great as a journalist, and as a director, too.. She thought fast, loved new ideas, processed swiftly, decided what was valuable and what was not with clarity. It's hard to credit how very smart she was, cause she was always deflectively feminine and funny, the sharpness of mind softened and smoothed by genuine charm.”

And tonight in remembrance of Ephron, we're going to cuddle up with a good rom-com and appreciate her work, and we suggest you do the same.

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[WWD]