You may not know you know her, but you know Delia Ephron. Between her and her sister Nora, the Ephron sisters have a lock on a certain kind of entertainment. The pair together were behind You've Got Mail and the just-closed Love, Loss, and What I Wore. This week Delia also dropped her latest novel, The Lion Is In, which tells the story of three women on the run and the lion (yup, a real one) they meet in North Carolina. We sat down to talk with Delia about how the book came to be (a dream!), if it'll be a movie, the problem with Manhattan in Bloomberg's New York, and more.
This book seemed like it was a fun one to write. Oh, it was the most fun. It was the most fun I've ever had on anything! It took two years—novels take a long time, they're these really long journeys you go on and you keep thinking I'm not going to have to know everything but then you absolutely have to know everything. They give you twelve weeks to write the first draft of a screenplay and it's a totally different experience than a novel. I dreamed the story, that's what was kind of...not even kind of strange but extremely strange. Have you ever had those dreams where you absolutely do not know whether it happened or it didn't?
I haven't but I've heard about them! Oh! Well, it took me a while to wake up from it and I was trying to figure it out. There were three women in it. I knew so much about them, I mean, it was like a story unfolding. They were two twenty-six-year-olds and I knew their names. They were Lana and Tracee and Tracee was in a wedding dress. They were in a strange building made of these materials hammered every which way, very large building with an older woman, who I named Rita when I woke up. There was a very large lion there and in a cage. I knew these women were on the run from something and I knew they'd met on the highway. Oh! And I knew it was in North Caroline, which is some place I've never been in my life.
Have you been now? Yes, I have been now but I did not go down there until I had written almost two drafts of the book. I had the most strange experience. I got down there and it takes place in an area which I had known about, which is north of Rocky Mountain, North Hampton county. A sort of depressed area in North Carolina. So I went to Rocky Mountain and in the day I would just get in the car and I would put things into the GPS like, "Take back roads to X," even though I didn't know what X was...There's a moment in the book where Rita wants the lion to have a tree and she drives by this field and there's this tree that looks like it's been struck by lightning. It's just shorn of all foliage, sort of chopped off at the top. It's almost a petrified tree. It's this old oak tree and she stops and gets them to take it to where the lion is. So I'm driving down this road and I pass this field and there's the tree, all alone in a field, by itself. Just sitting there waiting to be in my book, obviously.
Well I hope you took pictures! I did. It was so shocking and man, I had this other scene...there were many odd experiences like this but this was the most powerful. I was with my niece and we got out to look at the tree and a guy stopped and said, "Are you okay?" You know very polite and they worry about everyone in North Caroline. And we said, "No, we're fine, we're just looking at the tree." And he said, "Oh that's my friend's property and it's been there forever." In the book, the lion, when he first meets the tree, he doesn't really know what to do with it and he just rubs himself against it. And the guy says to me, "All the barks been rubbed off because all the goats come and rub themselves against it." It was so chilling!
I also have this character in the book who owns this big, seedy roadhouse bar...he's sort of a guy who doesn't really want to get up in the morning but the only thing he has that he treasures is this vintage Chevy Bel Air. It's a convertible from 1957. Anyway, I wanted to see inside some people's home just to get a sense of what people's homes were like. I went to a Mexican restaurant in town and on the wall it said that they were selling bread from their house. So I went to buy bread. I went in the house and I was chatting with the woman and her husband came in. When we left, the husband's car was vintage Chevy Bel Air! It was suddenly parked out there, waiting for us! It was gorgeous! Convertible, orange interior. I don't know...I'd never been there but I had obviously been there in some other life, I really don't understand it. When I write, what I really care about the most is sort of characters that you love and a story that keeps you reading. That's always my thing and this story just came to me and it was just off and running with it.
It's definitely readable! I'm glad to hear that, I really am. That makes me so happy I don't know what to say!
One of the things I found interesting in this one—and I haven't read your other books, though my family has—at what point did you know it was a novel? Immediately? No. Usually I absolutely know what something is and I had a moment of thinking—because it's a very cinematic story—about that. But here's the thing about novels. Novels are very personal, as this is, and very...it's not about a vampire or anything, you know what I mean? You want it your way. There's no way to do it but a novel because a novel is your vision, what you want, how you see it. A screenplay is owned by somebody else.
This looks like it's ready, basically, to be on theough...change the format in some of the chapters and you've got at treatment. [laughs] Only because I love to move story, I think, and because I'm used to writing screenplays. It's cinematic. I certainly know how to adapt it as a screenplay, but it would be something...
It would be a different Lion? No! No! Actually it works very well! It's just that it has a tone that's so whimsical and emotional that I just would never want to do something like that as a movie first. I want to just make sure it was the way I wanted it to be before someone else thought it could be the way they wanted it to be, you know? To me, after about a second I really thought, 'oh this is my next book.' I was so excited about that.
Did you go and do any lion training stuff while working on the book? You know, that was the other weird thing. I have a dog but I don't really know anything about lions except that of course he's the king of the jungle and in fantasy he's the fiercest. Some sort of way that if you could bond with a lion it's a very powerful thing for anyone. I didn't know anything about lions—nothing! Zero! And again I wrote almost two drafts—though I wrote more than that before I got to the lion expert. There's a moment in the book where the lion...the first time Rita starts bonding with the lion she washes her hair and let's him sniff her hair. I thought well boy, wait 'til they read that, they're going to think I'm really off the wall! I sent it to this darling woman named Katie Bus at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and asked her to read it and vet it for me, really, what makes sense and what doesn't. She said that lions are very social animals so that he would bond...everything about the bonding was completely believable. She said it was a good thing I hadn't written a panther or a tiger! Then she said, "You know, lions are scent-deprived in captivity and we spray air freshener around them for their senses." So she said that was just totally logical what Rita does. Of course I had no idea of that, that she would shampoo her hair with a deliciously-smelling shampoo and that he would just love it.
Changing topics briefly, Love, Loss and What I Wore closed this week. I didn't realize it was closing! Well it's run for over two years, two and a half. It had 1,025 performances and 120 actresses!
It's been done elsewhere, too. Everywhere, yes. It's been done in Paris, where it's coming back again this year and they even filmed it for television. It's been done in Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Israel, the Philippines, Mexico City. It's had this sort of remarkable life!
When you are your sister were writing it and adapting it did you know this was coming? Did you have a hunch? We couldn't get it right! It wasn't working! We had been trying to work on it for five years. We had several workshops, none of them worked. We were about to just throw in the towel on it! I guess it's just the lesson that you just have to be the most dogged and relentless. What happened is the director, Karen Carpenter, had been given it years before by Jack O'Brien at the San Diego Old Globe and she'd been carrying it around. So when asked to do a reading of something she asked us if she could do it. It suddenly started to work. We had Linda Lavin do the leading part and she just informed it in some way and we thought, "Oh!" And then Daryl Roth was there and she said, "Well why don't you just workshop it at my little tiny theater on Union Square." And so we did it for charity for about six weeks and suddenly it started to work. But oh my gosh, this was the last thing we ever expected.
There's something wonderful about how theatre can do that in a way that books and movies can't. When the project is finished there it's finished. I think actually that is really true about theatre. I was thinking about those 120 actresses and it's like 120 fingerprints on the play. There are all these different parts within the play so over and over again a story gets done differently. Last night [during the last performance] Erica Waters did this amazingly funny thing that Nora wrote called "The Purse." She did it as a sermon, kind of, in this crazy, amazing way. I'd never heard it done like that! Theatre is alive, sometimes night to night it changes. It's fun.
Between you and your sister you have kind of a racket on the romantic comedy scene. [laughs] There are so many romantic comedies out there, I don't think so.
It seems there is a generation of women who have been deeply affected by romance as depicted by the Ephron women. I guess we were just...that's so funny. I mean, it's great, it's absolutely great but I'm trying to think who influenced me. All the books I read probably as a teenager. Oh I know what influenced me: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers! Do you know that movie?
Of course. I saw it 150 times! That's probably where this all came from!
I just assumed there had to been a little bit of She Loves Me as influence too. You know, I didn't see She Loves Me until I was older and it's my favorite thing in the world. I love that musical, I love the movie. Jimmy Stewart. I had seen it before we did You've Got Mail but I didn't see it when I was young and I just...oh my gosh. That's just a masterpiece. Don't you think the score of She Loves Me is incredible?
I grew up with it being played in the background in my house. Oh you lucky you!
In terms of growing up, over the years you've kind of moved to and from New York and California but you're back here now, right? Yeah. I've always loved New York. We lived in California with my husband because my step kids were young and we lived there until they grew up and went off to college and everything. He's a writer in the television business and I was writing movies and could do my books from there, so that's why we lived there. But I've always, always, always wanted to make it back to New York. And we wanted to get back to Greenwich Village even more.
Did you make it back to Greenwich Village? Yes, but it took a long time. I lived on Cornelia Street just after college and I just always thought there was nothing as great.
Do you like Bloomberg's New York? Well, I like that it's safer now, and I don't know if that's Bloomberg but it's a much safer city. I can remember in the 70s constantly wondering if I should change sides of the street while I was seeing who was coming towards me. It was kind of hyper alert quality to living here when I was younger. I like that but...you mean it's a little too much like Disneyland or something? And it's all so rich! If I were me as a younger person now I would be living in Brooklyn with everyone else I know who's younger and who's a writer! I wouldn't be in Manhattan. Yeah, I think money has become too important in this city. Everything is so expensive and Manhattan is so...
Have you been following the Occupy movement? Yeah, I have been following it and especially now that they've just moved into Union Square. I've written about the banks and how I feel about the banks, personally.
Any chance of an Occupy romantic book or movie coming out from you? [laughs] No, not right now. I have two scripts right now and one of them, I think, is moving right now. It's called Sammy and it's the story of a woman who can talk to animals who falls in love with a man who can talk to the dead. Okay?
So you're on an animal kick these days! I love them! My life was changed by having a dog and I think I'm very interested in the power of having an animal. Yes, he has a dog, that's the third character.
And your own dog survived a hit-and-run in the city? Yes, she did. She was out with her dog walker, crossing Seventh Avenue, and one of those black town cars whipped around the corner and clipped her and took off.
So nobody ever caught the driver? No, and they don't catch them. That's the thing. A dog is a property. Dog "owner," right? Turns out to have legal meaning. I think you can probably sue in the civil court but you don't have any criminal options. She's fine, actually, it's a complete miracle. She just turned nine, which seems really old.
I know people are interested so have you read or seen anything you want people to know about? Especially in New York? Well of course I saw Death of a Salesman, which I thought was mind-blowing.
The night that I went last week, during the final monologue, someone's cell phone went off. No!
Twice. It was unbelievable. Otherwise, it was a great show! You mean when she's at the gravesite?
Yeah. She just looked straight forward, didn't flinch...it was really impressive acting. But the entire audience was completely taken out. I'm sure they must have wanted to storm the person. Oh my god. Yeah, I thought it was pretty miraculous. Pretty miraculous. So I recommend that.
Any books or movies? Anything else? Yeah, I recommend my book! Everyone should read my book for sure. Right now I'm reading The Custom of the Country.
My favorite book! Really?
I love Undine Spragg. The ending... Don't tell me about the ending! I actually haven't read this book. I got it mixed up with another book. I thought it was The House of Mirth and then I got them mixed up and when I started this I realized I'd never actually read it.
