Nora Ephron on Crazy Salad | Blank on Blank
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
- "It’s okay being a woman now. I like it. Try it some time.” - Nora Ephron, in a 1975 interview with Studs Terkel
To many, Nora Ephron is best known as the screenwriter behind some classic movies like When Harry Met Sally, Julie and Julia, Sleepless in Seattle, and Silkwood. But before she turned to writing screenplays, she was a journalist and a writer. Ephron got her start at the New York Post in the 1960s and soon she was writing for New York Magazine and Esquire.
It was at Esquire that Ephron made her name through with her personal essays, such as the one about the smallness of her breasts (A Few Words About Breasts). Ephron mixed humor with honesty, and captured the ups and downs of both being a woman--and the growing women's movement. It was around this time she sat down with Studs Terkel. Ephron had recently released a collection of her essays called, Crazy Salad.
Listen to the full interview, more about her place in the women's movement, her thoughts on writing and movies, and an inspiring message for graduates (“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”)
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The lost interview comes from the WFMT Studs Terkel Radio archive: studsterkel.org
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Her thoughts on objective writing being impossible is very insightful
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Such a brilliant, well spoken individual. I could honestly listen to her talk about whatever she wanted for hours, and her writing is just as engaging. I implore you, if any of you can get ahold of Crazy Salad, give it a read
NPR is a treasure trove of great audio interviews and these little animated bits are the perfect teaser.
indeed. though you know this isn't from npr; it's from the studs terkel radio archive.
Aha! Sorry about that. I didn't know he had a network with other people interviewing folks. Great clips, though. You can't watch just one.
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I nearly cried my eyes out when Nora Ephron passed away. This video is awesome!
Blank on Blank is a fantastic series. The animation is always charming and the interviews are wonderfully pieced together. I'd love to see a Donald Fagen or Pete Townshend episode one day.
Very interesting, and always glad for an interview by Studs Terkel.
I noticed that you didn't show her actual face in this one. I hope that was just accidentally missed. I like the transition between your art style into a photograph to tie it back into the real world. To remind us that these conversations are with real people
good comment. honestly, we just didn't think of it for some reason, or there was a rights issue or something.
A great woman. I've always loved her work.
Thoroughly enjoyed this one.
"I can't serve you a drink if you're unescorted." Whoaaaa.
I know right, what the actual fuck.
bob polo It was just a restaurant. It sounds like a lot of men went there, but it wasn't like it was a club. A woman needed a man to vouch for her, probably that she was "respectable." A woman out requiring the endorsement of a man in order to justify herself is ridiculous and outdated by about 100 years.
I think you did hear incorrectly. She said it was "a restaurant in New York." It wasn't a gentlemen's club, it was just a restaurant that had a lot of men customers, a kind of "men's hangout." But it didn't have rules, it was just a public restaurant. She also didn't say she couldn't complain, she said she'd lost her right to complain when she wasn't seated for 45 minutes while men who came in after her were - because she hadn't left after the first instance of sexism, when they didn't want to serve her drinks without a man. She meant she'd gone along with that, so she had already agreed in a way to sexist treatment.
I didn't hear anything to suggest this was a private men's club. She just called it a "restaurant" at the beginning of the story. I don't think that by "kind of a men's hangout," she meant it was a private club; I think that she just meant men frequented it on their own. We're going to have to agree to disagree on what kind of establishment this was. But I will point out that my way backs up why she told the story and answers your original question - "what's the problem?".
I see. I thought you were saying that it was a private club because you felt that having rules was ok. I think that having rules would only be ok if it were private. I would feel the same if it were a bar frequented mostly by women. If that's the question you're referring to, that's my answer.
WHOA. I've never heard Studs laugh so hard like that!
this is great stuff!
Amazing as per usual; love you guys.
"For someone like me who was sympathetic to the women's movement, and trying to cover it as a journalist, it always seemed as though if I wrote the truth about the movement it would somehow hurt it"...sometimes people deserve something better than truth. Sometimes, they deserve to have their faith rewarded.
Thank you for the animation of this great interview. Little detail: in the subtitle at 0.42, the poet's name should be spelled "Yeats", not "Yeates" - can you correct it, please?
Please do Norah Jones "Little Brocken Hearts" interview! I think it has good material (sorry if I have bad english)
thanks for the recommendation.
Love you guys
What is that background music?
I think it'd be cool to see an episode of Ronnie Van Zant. I've always felt like he was an incredibly intellectual person who said a lot of good stuff.
She was fab **sigh**
"It's okay being a woman right now. I like it. Try it sometime."
Nora was exposed to the culture titillated by Helen Gurley Brown and Cosmopolitan. The packaging of post-WW2 women as consumables, inoculated with new birth control methods, must have felt relentless. It's why I use this Burt Reynolds icon; he was the first to be photographed to be objectified and displayed for raw sexual entertainment. (By Cosmo)
very interesting regarding burt icon!!
I think there is a definite struggle to be objective in journalism or anything relating to the discussion of other things. Mostly because you are putting your true feelings aside for politeness, fear, whatever it may be. In the end I say just consider all sides, but i find her idea interesting nonetheless.
The first thing I was told in a journalism unit at Uni was that there's no such thing as objective writing; all writing must be subjective or the piece would be unreasonably long or a confused mess if it were even possible to write objectively.
Best practice journalism, in my eyes at least, should take all angles into consideration, mention them and then move forward with the journalist's own perspective, clearly put and explained as from the perspective of said journalist. This sort of writing of course demands the reader understand that a journalist's perspective is not fundamentally right or wrong, but if a reader can make that distinction I think it's the best possible answer to the search for "objective" journalism.
InB4 the "She's a Man hater" comments.
Yes by all means, don't spend too much time thinking about the truth if you're a reporter. SMH