Everything Is Copy
Directed (Jacob Bernstein, 2015)
Jacob Bernstein’s elegiac documentary Everything Is Copy (2015) made me want to call my mom. The director lovingly composed a film about his mother, the famous journalist, author, screenwriter, and director Nora Ephron. Copy chronicles Ephron’s life, starting with photographs of her parents and home videos before moving on to her early writing successes (including her 1983 autobiographical fiction Heartburn, which became a film directed by Mike Nichols in 1986, and various essays written for publications such as Esquire and the New York Post). The film deftly highlights Ephron’s vast career by incorporating snippets of her essays read aloud by Meg Ryan, Lena Dunham, and others, as well as film clips from some of her biggest hits, such as When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner, 1989) and Sleepless in Seattle (Nora Ephron, 1993). The film ends with Ephron’s death in 2012 as a result of complications from leukemia. Though Ephron claimed that “everything is copy”—i.e. be an open book, and learn to laugh at yourself—she was uncharacteristically private about her illness. Rather than shy away from the details of her illness as Ephron did, Bernstein unflinchingly documents it all. In this way the documentary reaffirms the eponymous mantra as Bernstein cinematically challenges Ephron’s desire to keep a part of herself private.
Copy mirrors both the tone and structure of the romantic comedies for which Ephron was so famous. The linear narrative progresses in a soothing, cyclical fashion from birth to death while maintaining a classic Hollywood plot arc. The bright-eyed and beautiful cast features Ephron’s frequent collaborators and admirers (including Tom Hanks, Rob Reiner, Reese Witherspoon, Mike Nichols, Steven Spielberg, and Meryl Streep), making the documentary surprisingly star-studded. The upbeat soundtrack pairs seamlessly with the on-screen images to illustrate key moments as well as entertain the spectator. These classic components all bear the hallmarks of a glossy feature film. Similarly, in Copy, trials are always eclipsed by triumphs in the end. It’s easy to get swept up in the film’s boisterous collage of interviews, photographs, news clips, and familiar movie footage. These shiny elements make the whole film sparkle with Ephron’s signature wit and humor despite the borderline melodramatic ending wherein these pieces come together a little too neatly to have the same emotional power as the rest of the film.
Everything Is Copy
Directed (Jacob Bernstein, 2015)
Considering how the documentary so closely resembles a slick rom-com, it nonetheless manages to hold on to a personal, confessional aesthetic. Somewhat paradoxically, by mimicking Ephron’s Hollywood-infused filmmaking style, Bernstein achieves a degree of closeness between the audience and the film’s ebullient (if often snarky) subject. By the time the credits roll Ephron feels like, if not the spectator’s own mother, than a very close friend. In addition to this sense of intimacy, more than once interviewees break the fourth wall to address Bernstein, betraying how personal the project was to him. These moments make the film comforting in its formulaic nature, rather than frustratingly predictable. The spectator gets a peek behind the carefully composed facade Bernstein cultivates, a feat that Ephron accomplished with panache in her writing. In this way the film allows both the director and Ephron to be vulnerable. The cinematic portrait did not smooth out the sharp edges that made Ephron’s work so captivating. Instead, the film provides a compassionate, honest homage to Ephron’s bravery and her willingness to laugh at everything and everyone—including herself.
Author Biography
Dominique Silverman is a senior English-Film Studies major and gender studies minor at Hendrix College. In addition to film she enjoys podcasts, cross stitching, and working towards dismantling patriarchal structures.
Mentor Biography
Kristi McKim is an Associate Professor of English and Chair of Film Studies at Hendrix College, where she was awarded the Charles S. and Lucile Esmon Shivley Odyssey Professorship, honored as the 2014-15 United Methodist Exemplary Professor, and nominated for the CASE U.S. Professors of the Year Award. Her publications include the books Love in the Time of Cinema (2011) and Cinema as Weather: Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change (2013), in addition to pieces in Camera Obscura, Studies in French Cinema, Senses of Cinema, Film International, The Cine-Files, and Film-Philosophy.
Department Overview
Hendrix College offers a major in English with an emphasis in Film Studies and a minor in Film Studies. This growing program within an intimate and rigorous liberal arts college environment includes a variety of courses in the history and theory of film and media, alongside co-curricular experiences (such as this trip to the New York Film Festival) generously made possible through the Hendrix-Odyssey Program. Extracurricular film-related groups include Hendrix Film Society and Hendrix Filmmakers.
Film Details
Everything Is Copy (2015)
USA
Director Jacob Bernstein
Runtime 89 minutes
Follow this link to read the introduction to this set of reviews: https://www.filmmattersmagazine.com/2016/05/21/2015-new-york-film-festival-introduction/
