Everything Is Copy

“When you slip on the banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on the banana peel, it’s your laugh. So you become the hero, rather than the victim of the joke.” This was Nora Ephron’s philosophy, inherited from her own mother. She believed that being a writer meant turning the bad things that happen to you into comedy. Written and directed by her son, Jacob Bernstein, EVERYTHING IS COPY debuts exclusively on HBO in March 2016. The documentary tracks her rise from the mailroom of Newsweek to a notable stint reporting for the New York Post, where she caught the eye of influential editors like Harold Hayes, Clay Felker and Helen Gurley Brown. Marked by biting honesty and intelligent humor, her incisive writing soon began appearing regularly in Esquire, New York Magazine, the New York Times and Cosmopolitan, winning devoted fans and foes alike. No one — including her parents, her former bosses, or, most famously, her spouses — was safe in her work.