I love Nora Ephron. I love Nora Ephron as I love all characters, real and fictional, that represent some potential future version of myself. In the world in which I become Marianela Ephron, I am funny and brave and quick-witted and everyone does what I say. I write about all of the verboten stuff in my life and dare people to judge me for it. They can’t. I walk away laughing.

To hear her friends and family tell it in Everything Is Copy, the 2015 documentary about Nora’s life directed by Jacob Bernstein, the son she had with Carl Bernstein (yes, the Watergate journalist), that’s more or less how Nora lived her life. She was raised the eldest of four daughters by parents who moved to Los Angeles from New York City to become screenwriters.

During her teenage years, things in the family got ugly — her parents both struggled with alcoholism, and their careers began to decline at the same time as their health. Her mother, Phoebe, eventually died of cirrhosis. To hear her friends and family tell it, Nora’s writing was a way of regaining control of her life.