Nora Ephron

Writer and director Nora Ephron learned from her mother that "everything is copy" -- witness her many successful films based, more or less, on her own life. "Julie & Julia" opens next Friday. A director is something like a chef -- bringing together different ingredients, combining them in novel ways, subjecting them to heat and pressure to create something new.

And looking at "Julie & Julia" for the first time, Nora Ephron didn't see how anything edible could come from it. "I had first read a piece about Julie's project in the Times," says the filmmaker, referring to original writer Julie Powell, "and I thought, as I do about almost everything: Is this a movie?" The project Powell had embarked on was to cook every one of Julia Child's recipes from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" -- the first volume, anyway -- and blog about them. It took her a year.

"And," Ephron says, "I thought no. No it's not, a movie. Or at least, I don't know how you make it into a movie. A person decides to do something, and they do it, and it's done. It seemed too straightforward." Eventually -- thanks to, Ephron says, a smart suggestion from studio executive Amy Pascal -- a clever script for "Julie & Julia" emerged, one that created flashbacks (and re-created post-war Paris) to bring Julia Child to life too, and push her center-stage.