Missing Nora Ephron

06.27.12

Missing Nora Ephron


By Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck


 

Seven years ago, I was lucky enough to be seated next to Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi at a dinner event. Just as today’s obituaries noted, having dinner with Nora Ephron was just like being in a Nora Ephron movie — she was witty, insightful, gracious and remarkably funny. She made me feel good about growing up in a show business family. We talked about the relative merits of delicatessens in New York and Los Angeles, and I told her how much I had liked “My Blue Heaven,” the hysterical (and underrated) movie she wrote based on Nick Pileggi’s book

Wiseguy

.

 

Two years later, unbidden, she wrote a post for the

First Annual HuffPost Charity Chain

, urging everyone to join her in making a year-end contribution to the Innocence Project, citing exonerations and our role in repealing the death penalty in New Jersey. She joined our

Innocence Project Artists’ Committee

.

 

Today, as I remembered this dinner and the pleasure of her company, I came across this sage contemplation in her essay “Considering the Alternatives.”


“Do you live every day as if it’s your last, or do you save money on the chance you’ll live another twenty more years? Is life too short, or is it going to be too long? Do you work as hard as you can, or do you slow down to smell the roses? And where do carbohydrates fit into all of this? Are we really going to have to spend our last years avoiding bread, especially now that bread in America is unbelievably delicious? And what about chocolate? There’s a question for Gertrude Stein — what about chocolate?”

Today at the Innocence Project we eat bread and chocolate, albeit whole wheat and dark!

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