I posted last week that I was going to see Nora Ephron be interviewed for Talking Volumes. And I promised to share a few tidbits from the talk.
My husband and I had a fun night in downtown St. Paul. First, we went to Mickey’s Diner, an old rail-car-cum-diner, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and which still has a Sputnick Burger on the menu. We had never been before.
Yeah, I know. I’m still working on the graininess of my iPhone pix.
It’s close quarters inside:
We especially liked the tabletop jukeboxes with lots of misspellings. Greatful Dead, anyone? :>)
And then we headed to the Fitzgerald Theater to watch/listen to Nora Ephron talk about her new book, I Remember Nothing.
I know. The photo is pathetic. I apologize. You can watch a brief excerpt video from the night here, and see how fabulous she really looked. (Scroll down for video.)
Anyway. The theater was kept very dark during the entire interview (until the Q&A), which I don’t remember being the case in past Talking Volumes events. I couldn’t take notes, so I have little to pass along. I’m relying on my memory, which is as bad or worse as Ephron declares hers to be! But here are a couple of things I recall:
There are all these books about how failure is a great growth experience. I have not found that.
When asked how she gets/stays inspired: If you write movies, you don’t have to have a lot of inspiration. Julie and Julia took a long time to write and a long time to make. So if I had any other inspirations during that time, they would have been wasted anyway.
How the book came to be: I free-associated things and came up with a list of topics I thought were essay-worthy. Things about getting older, what I remembered, what I’m passionate about…
On how her life would be as a movie: My life has almost no plot. [Yeah, right.]
On the thinning spot on the back of her head: It’s my Aruba, a barren island with trees blowing in the wind and exposing it.
The interview focused a lot on the actual forgetting issue, which I was thrilled about since memory loss is my own personal nemesis. Either in the interview or in a profile I read the same day (I can’t remember which), she talked about actually not recognizing her sister one time. That may or may not be apocryphal, but it made me feel a little better about a recent event.
Y’all might remember when I spoke at the Northwoods Children’s Book Conference in early October. Well, I was seating in the restaurant, reading a book and eating a grilled cheese (hey–the same thing I had at Mickey’s Diner), when a woman walked by, saw me, and stopped. She proceeded to say hi, call me by name, and chat with me for a minute. She obviously knew me and expected me to know her. And I had NO IDEA who she was. Imagine my shame at dinner when I sat by her and discovered it was someone from my critique group.
If you’re done pointing and gasping with horror, read on for my excuses.
This particular critique group is mostly online, though we see each other at events maybe once a year or so. We only even chat by email once every few months ago. And I had no idea she would be there. Still, I’ve known her for more than 10 years, know her health issues and even her husband’s name. And I didn’t recognize her. If only I could turn my declining memory into a landfall!
So, the evening was great fun, I can’t wait to read I Remember Nothing, and if you get the chance to hear Nora Ephron speak, I’d highly recommend it!