Nora Ephron on Hollywood, Hookers & Nuns

“I see myself as a shadow of Nora Ephron’s, but…I can aspire to that.”
Diablo Cody

“It was her journalist’s curiosity that made Nora [Ephron] the directing talent she was. Her writing was always voice and detail. I once sent her a piece I was trying to write, and her response was three words: “Voice! Voice! Voice!’”
Tom Hanks
Time article 6/27/12 

Nora Ephron had a voice. A voice honed over the years as a journalist. Keep in mind that when she graduated from Wellesley College in 1962 that there weren’t a lot of options for female journalists. Yet, three years later she interviewed Bob Dylan* at a peak in his early career. (Shortly after he had recorded Like a Rolling Stone, which decades later Rolling Stone magazine named as the #1 Greatest Song of All Time.)

And though she started writing (and selling) screenplays in the 70s, she did not see one of her feature scripts produced until after she was 40-years old (Silkwood/1983). In the 90s, and then over 50, she added being a film director to her resume. She had a voice mixed with persistence.

So I thought I’d round out the week where I started it, remembering her voice.

“The hardest thing about being a woman director is becoming one.”
Nora Ephron
Rolling Stone interview with Lawrence Frascella

“It’s important to eat your last meal before it actually comes up….When you’re actually going to be having your last meal, you either will be too sick to have it or you aren’t going to know it’s your last meal and you could squander it on something like a tuna melt.”
Nora Ephron
2010 Interview with Charlie Rose 

“In my own business, in the movie business, there are many more of us [women] who are directors, but it’s just as hard to get a movie made about women as it was 30 years ago. And it’s much, much harder than it was 60 years ago. Look at the parts the Oscar-nominated actresses played this year—hooker, hooker, hooker, hooker  and nun.”
Nora Ephron
1996 Wellesley commencement speech

Related posts:
Making “Sleepless in Seattle”
Nora Ephron, Voice-over & the Mafia
Screenwriting Quote #165 (Nora Ephron)
Nora Ephron (1941-2012)

P.S. I believe the hooker, hooker, hooker, hooker roles Ephron was talking about were Leaving Las Vegas (Elisabeth Shue), Mighty Aphrodite (Mira Sorvino), Casino (Sharon Stone)—though technically an ex-prostitute, and not sure who the fourth hooker was— and the nun was in Dead Man Walking (Susan Sarandon).

* Dylan quote from the 1965 interview with Ephron (and Susan Edmiston):
“Great paintings shouldn’t be in museums. Have you ever been in a museum? Museums are cemetaries. Paintings should be on the walls of restaurants, in dime stores, in gas stations, in men’s rooms. Great paintings should be where people hang out. The only thing where it’s happening is on radio and records, that’s where people hang out. You can’t see great paintings. You pay half a million and hang one in your house and one guest sees it. That’s not art. That’s a shame, a crime. Music is the only thing that’s in tune with what’s happening. It’s not in book form, it’s not on the stage. All this art they’ve been talking about is nonexistent. It just remains on the shelf. It doesn’t make anyone happier. Just think how many people would really feel great if they could see a Picasso in their daily diner. It’s not the bomb that has to go, man, it’s the museums.”

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

“Kelley’s Blues” Concert

Tonight the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra will perform a concert called “Kelley’s Blue” that I had the opportunity to work on. Part of the concert will be a 40 minute section featuring the music of Duke Ellington’s “Three Black Kings” and George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and visuals by artist Gary Kelley.

Whether it’s opportunities like this or writing this blog, I am reminded of the Tom Peter’s quote that helped change my mindset when I moved to Iowa back in ’03–”Sometimes it’s best to go where the hotspots aren’t.”

Keep that in mind wherever find yourself in this world.

Over the last couple decades Kelley’s clients have included New Yorker Magazine, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, CBS Records and the large murals seen at Barnes & Noble Booksellers. In 2007, Kelley was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. My role in this concert came in the shooting and editing of 50 pieces of Kelley’s artwork that will be shown on a large screen for between 1,200 and 1,500 people.

Photographer Chase Jarvis has said something to the effect that right now within 10 feet of you there are 100 great photos that can be taken. I think the wherever you live there are not only stories to be told, but opportunities to use your creativity in ways you ‘ve never dreamed of.

If you have really big dreams about really big mountains that’s great—but keep in mind that mountain climbers start with small climbs. As the saying goes, “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” Then build on what you’ve done.

By the way, this won’t be your standard symphony concert tonight as conductor Jason Weinberger ( a Santa Monica native who came to Cedar Falls via Yale & Peabody Conservatory) will also be “incorporating music from William Grant Still and J Dilla (James Yancy), a Grammy-nominated record producer and one of the music industry’s most influential hip-hop artists.”

WCF Courier article on concert by Melody Parker.

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

The Bump in Factor

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
Emily Dickinson

So last week I was sitting down at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas waiting for the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group (LAFCPUG) to start their Super Meet and started a conversation with a man next to me who turned out to be a Hemingway-like character.

Dirck Halstead started his career in photojournalism at the age of 17. He was the youngest combat photographer for LIFE magazine, a roving photographer in the U.S. Army, spent 15 years as photographer for UPI covering stories around the world including winning the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his images of  the fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War. And I’m just getting warmed up.

Let me just defer to an online bio: “Halstead accepted an independent contract with TIME magazine in 1972. Covering the White House for the next 29 years, he was one of only six photographers asked to accompany Richard Nixon on his historic trip to China in that same year. His photographs have appeared on 47 TIME covers. During this period he was also a “Special Photographer” on many films, producing ad material used by major Hollywood studios.”

Have you ever heard the song The Last Mango in Paris by Jimmy Buffett?

                    He said I ate the last mango in Paris
Took the last plane out of Saigon
I took the first fast boat to China
And Jimmy there’s still so much to be done 

Halstead is that kind of guy (if not literally that guy). And after his adventures with LIFE, UPI, and TIME there was still so much to be done. Back in the early 90s he was a pioneer in helping still photojournalist make the transition into shooting video. Now in his 70s Halstead is the editor and publisher for The Digital Journalist  and a senior fellow in photojournalism at The Center for American History at the University of Texas in Austin. In 2007 he was honored by The University of Missouri with the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism.

And I bet he’d still say, “There’s still so much to be done.”

All that to say there is power in the bump in factor. While I was at NAB Show last week I also bumped into a producer friend from Michigan, a cameraman from Des Moines who owns a RED camera, and a editor friend from Orlando. How does this all apply to screenwriting?

Your talent and skill will keep you in the room once you get there but sometimes you need a little help from the bump in factor to open the door. I once landed a gig writing 12 radio dramas because I was editing a project at a post house and bumped into a producer who had an immediate need for a writer. Here’s what Melissa Mathison (who was once married to Harrison Ford) told Susan Bullington Katz in Conversations with Screenwriters:

“I was with Harrison on Raiders of the Lost Ark, and halfway through the shoot, we were all in Tunisia, and Steven Spielberg asked me if I would be interested in writing a children’s movie about a man from outer space. And I thought that sounded like a really wonderful idea.”

The screenplay she wrote was E.T.:The Extra-Terrestrial.

Granted being married to Harrison Ford improves the prospects of who you can bump into but you never know who’s next to you while you wait in line. Which leads me back to Halstead. If you’re interested in improving you visual storytelling Halstead is hosting The Platypus Workshops this year in Oregon and Maine.

Related Post: The Bump In Factor (Take 2)

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

Screenwriting Quote of the Day #39 (Woody Allen)

It was hard for me not to notice that the last couple days I have quoted some of the heavy hitters of screenwriting (Orson Welles, John Huston, Billy Wilder) and it made me wonder what screenwriter has won the most Academy Awards for writing. Turns out there are three writers who each have three Oscars for screenwriting (Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, Francis Ford Coppola, and Paddy Chayefsky).

But there is one writer who tops the Oscar nomination list with 14, Woody Allen. Allen,73, did not get an Oscar nominated this year for Vicky Christina Barcelona, but Penelope Cruz did win an Oscar for supporting role in the film. ( And Allen’s  script was nominated for WGA Award.)

His first writing credit was back in 1950 on Sid Caesar’s Show of Shows. And his first Oscar was 27 years later in 1977 for Annie Hall (for which he also received an Oscar for directing). He began his career as a teenager writing gags and by the age of 19 was a full time writer. In his mid-twenties he began doing stand-up comedy and was successful. He also began writing short stories for The New Yorker and found success on broadway writing Don’t Drink the Water and Play it Again, Sam.

He’s recorded jazz albums and published books and, of course, acted in many of his movies. His personal life is as mixed up as some of the characters he’s created but we’ll focus on his writing here. Today’s quote come from Time magazine’s 10 Questions with Woody Allen when he was asked, “Do you agree with Picasso’s quote: ‘Good artists copy, but great artists steal’—and if so, who have you stolen from?”

“Oh, I’ve stolen from the best. I mean I’ve stolen from Bergman. I’ve stolen from Groucho, I’ve stolen from Chaplin, I’ve stolen from Keaton, from Martha Graham, from Fellini. I mean I’m a shameless thief.”

Scott W. Smith

 

Read Full Post »