It was Nora Ephron’s screenwriter mother, Phoebe, who coined the maxim that gives Everything Is Copy its title. The documentary, which premieres on HBO in March, is, in some respects, a third-generation exercise in strip-mining the family’s personal experiences for material. Jacob Bernstein, the movie’s co-director (with Nick Hooker), is the elder son of Ephron, the polymathic author, journalist, essayist, director, and playwright, who died in 2012. Bernstein is seen on-screen talking to such friends and associates of his mother’s as Meryl Streep, Mike Nichols, Amy Pascal, Tom Hanks, all three of Nora’s sisters, and both of her ex-husbands—the latter of whom, Carl Bernstein, Jacob’s father, is a reluctant but compelling participant, having been the subject of Ephron’s acerbic roman à clef about their divorce, Heartburn. Making the movie, Jacob…
