The late Nora Ephron is getting the documentary treatment at HBO.
Ephron's son, journalist Jacob Bernstein, is developing what is being billed as an intimate portrait of his mother, the acclaimed writer/director known for such films as When Harry Met Sally …, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail. He will direct and co-produce the project, titled Everything Is Copy, which was a lesson that her mother, also a self-reflective screenwriter, had taught her early on.
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Nick Hooker will join Bernstein as a co-director, while Matt Parker and Carly Hugo (a producer on HBO's 2011 Hot Coffee doc) are attached as producers on the effort set up at HBO Documentary Films. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who won an Emmy and Peabody award for 9/11, is on board as an executive producer. Carter previously teamed with HBO on His Way, a documentary centered on legendary producer Jerry Weintraub.
News of the doc comes nearly a year after Ephron -- at once a journalist, novelist, playwright, director and Oscar-nominated screenwriter -- died of pneumonia, a complication resulting from acute myeloid leukemia. She was 71. Her death took the industry as well as many of her friends by surprise as she had kept her illness a tightly guarded secret.
In early March, Bernstein penned a lengthy remembrance of his mother's final days in a New York Times magazine entry entitled Nora Ephron's Final Act. Included in the piece was a retelling of her last moments of consciousness, which were marked by still-sharp jokes, crossword puzzles and hallucinations. More recently, Ephron's Tom Hanks-fronted play, Lucky Guy, about charismatic New York journalist Mike McAlary, debuted on Broadway.
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