Amy Ephron to headline Booklover’s Luncheon with ‘Loose Diamonds’
By ALAN SMASON
Amy Ephron was born to write. The youngest of four daughters of famous screenwriters and producers Henry and Phoebe Ephron (“Carousel” and “Desk Set”), Ephron, like her other successful siblings – Nora, Delia and Hallie – became a writer almost as soon as she could hold a pen in her hand. “I don’t know,” she said in an exclusive CCJN phone interview. “I’ve always written. My first poem was published in the L.A. Times when I was five.” She recalled her mom would type up her poems for submission and “they were always funny.”
Booklover's Luncheon featured speaker Amy Ephron (©Jonathan Becker)
Growing up in Beverly Hills in a family of writers, each girl was encouraged to tell stories about their lives, but also to use their imaginations. And because reading is considered the engine that makes good writers write better, they all were constantly reading, improving their English grammar and playing word games. “Mommy loved Scrabble and anagrams and charades,” she confided.
As a youngster, when Ephron went away to summer camp, she found the rifle range located a mile off site to be a comfortable place to write. She felt she could easily commune with nature despite the occasional recoil of a .22 being fired. She asked the range officer if he wouldn’t mind her staying there all day to write and he agreed, but only if she shot rifles the other half of the day. She laughingly stated this was her first writing deal. “I used to impress my kids with my riflery skills,” she joked.
Since that first writing deal, Ephron has done fairly well for herself as a novelist, screenwriter, film executive, mother to three and wife to her two husbands. Her latest book, a collection of stories and essays, is titled “Loose Diamonds…and Other Things I’ve Lost (and Found) Along the Way.” In it she relates life experiences and proffers advice on a variety of topics including dealing with divorce, a blended family and recollections from her childhood and young adulthood.
In the prologue to the book Ephron considered the concept of loose diamonds as being analagous to Los Angeles (“an actress waiting for a part, a young woman who has a dream – as if they’re all looking for a ‘setting,’ a permanent surrounding in a town that’s all about impermanence“). With such exacting prose she touches on what she describes as glimpses of life. 
An example is “I Love Saks,” a short, but evocative piece in which she relates her life’s journey of good times and “not so easy years” through her relationship with the New York women’s wear store.
She utters the truth with which she is most familiar.”The book is a little bit about picking yourself up after a fall,” she continued as she spoke about dealing with the trauma of a failed marriage. “One of the things you have to do is you have to not believe in any of the rules. It’s a little bit about reinvention,” she explained. “If you believe in those rules, nothing’s going to happen. It’s just something I really believe is true.”
The winner of several awards for her novel of 1917, ” A Cup of Tea,” Ephron elected to make “Loose Diamond” very personal and to put herself in a place other women could appeciate. She related a number of funny instances from her life, especially those in dealing with step-children and her own offspring in what she terms as “post modern life.”
“I think I coined it first,” she posited in describing that term. “It’s complicated for them and it’s not just your complications. For an adult child in their 20s, divorce is much harder for them to accept than when something happened earlier in their life,” she explained.
Another piece in the book described her fascination with “The Birdman,” a Beverly Hills neighbor she knew as a youngster whose palatial estate was overrun with flocks of exotic birds. She revealed the wild afternoon she spent with Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme on the Spahn Ranch, one of Charles Manson’s followers, while Ephron was but one of a handful of reporters who were covering the Manson trial.
But it is when Ephron writes from her heart about love and loss, about birth and death that she is at her best. She talks about giving birth in “Labor” and dealing with her ex-husband’s girlfriends in “Musical Chairs.”
“It’s very much about women and very much about the parts of a woman’s life,” she concluded.
Ephron is the featured speaker at the Jewish Community Center’s 13th Annual Jewish Book Festival signature event, The Booklover’s Luncheon, this Thursday at the Uptown JCC at noon. Tickets for the catered lunch by Chef Rommel and presentation are $30.00. Tickets for the presentation alone are $10.00. Ephron will be on hand to autograph copies of “Loose Diamonds” and her other works. Octavia Books is partnering with the JCC and a percentage of sales goes back to the JCC.
