Nora Ephron by Kristin Marguerite Doidge

Author:Kristin Marguerite Doidge [Doidge, Kristin Marguerite]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781641603782
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2022-02-24T10:09:06+00:00

Two or three hundred people have followed you into the wilderness; they’ve committed six months or a year of their lives to an endeavor you’ve made them believe in. . . . You’ve fought hard to improve the on-set catering. You’ve flown in the frozen custard from Wisconsin. And everyone is having the most wonderful time.21

Even though Nora’s confidence often seemed impenetrable, those who knew her best got to see a more vulnerable side of her that was sometimes hidden from the public—one that proved she was, after all, human. “She read the reviews. And she cared about them,” longtime assistant, writer/producer, and friend J. J. Sacha recalls. “And she certainly cared about what people thought.”22

But Nora was right back to work. After all, as Martin’s Philip said, “In every pothole you can find the word HOPE.” A film that had long been in development since Sleepless was back on her radar. “I hope to make eight or nine movies before I’m done,” she said at the time. (She ended up making six more films and wrote three plays, usually collaborating with her sister, Delia.)

Meanwhile, her prized screenplay for Higgins & Beech was still in flux. After she spent eight years working on multiple drafts with her Silkwood writing partner, Alice Arlen, the script was with 20th Century Fox when, in 1993, the studio granted United Artists a one-year option for $100,000. At the time, Michelle Pfeiffer and Richard Gere were attached to star in the lead roles, coming off successes in powerful period dramas, The Age of Innocence and Sommersby, respectively. Jon Amiel, who’d just worked with Gere, would direct Higgins. Pfeiffer, for her part, had been the 1993 recipient of the Crystal Award.

But with a budget escalating quickly to $43 million, UA chose not to renew in March the following year, giving the newly formed New Line Cinema a chance to step in. Negotiations took place, and the budget was trimmed to $35 million. Script changes were made. That’s when Fox decided it wanted to keep it. The saga continued.23

Important changes were happening for women in Hollywood nonetheless—at least in front of the camera. New Line agreed to a deal that would pay $12 million to Julia Roberts and $8 million to Meg Ryan to star in a remake of George Cukor’s 1939 comedy The Women. It was the most they’d earned thus far in their careers and led to a shift toward pay parity with their male counterparts.

As for Nora and that Christmas miracle she’d hoped for? It was just around the corner in the form of a smoking, drinking, swearing, country-line-dancing angel named Michael.

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