The Most of Nora Ephron

by Nora Ephron

  The buyer of the painting, Wynn told us, was a man named Steven Cohen. Everyone seemed to know who Steven Cohen was, a hedge fund billionaire who lived in Connecticut in a house with a fabulous art collection he had just recently amassed. “This is the most money ever paid for a painting,” Steve Wynn said. The price was $4 million more than Ronald Lauder had recently paid for a Klimt. Oh, that Klimt. It had set a bar, no question of that, and Wynn was thrilled to have beaten it. He invited us to come see the painting before it moved to Connecticut, never to be seen again by anyone but people who know Steven Cohen.

  The next day, after an excellent lunch at Chinois in the Forum mall, which is the eighth wonder of the world, we all trooped back to our hotel to see the painting. We went into Wynn’s office, which is just off the casino, past a waiting area with a group of fantastic Warhols, past a secretary’s desk with a Matisse over it (a Matisse over a secretary’s desk!) (and by the way a Renoir over another secretary’s desk!), and into Wynn’s office. There, on the wall, were two large Picassos, one of them Le Rêve. Steve Wynn launched into a long story about the painting—he told us that it was a painting of Picasso’s mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, that it was extremely erotic, and that if you looked at it carefully (which I did, for the first time, although I’d seen it before at the Bellagio) you could see that the head of Marie-Thérèse was divided in two sections and that one of them was a penis. This was not a good moment for me vis-à-vis the painting. In fact, I would have to say that it made me pretty much think I wouldn’t pay five dollars for it. Wynn went on to tell us about the provenance of the painting—who’d first bought it and who’d then bought it. This brought us to the famous Victor and Sally Ganz, a New York couple who are a sort of ongoing caution to the sorts of people who currently populate the art world, because the Ganzes managed to accumulate a spectacular art collection in a small New York apartment with no money at all. The Ganz collection went up for auction in 1997, Wynn was saying—he was standing in front of the painting at this point, facing us. He raised his hand to show us something about the painting—and at that moment, his elbow crashed backward right through the canvas.

  There was a terrible noise.

  Wynn stepped away from the painting, and there, smack in the middle of Marie-Thérèse Walter’s plump and allegedly erotic forearm, was a black hole the size of a silver dollar—or, to be more exact, the size of the tip of Steve Wynn’s elbow—with two three-inch-long rips coming off it in either direction. Steve Wynn has retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease that damages peripheral vision, but he could see quite clearly what had happened.

  “Oh shit,” he said. “Look what I’ve done.”

  The rest of us were speechless.

  “Thank God it was me,” he said.

  For sure.

  The word “money” was mentioned by someone, or perhaps it was the word “deal.”

  Wynn said: “This has nothing to do with money. The money means nothing to me. It’s that I had this painting in my care and I’ve damaged it.”

  I felt that I was in a room where something very private had happened that I had no right to be at. I felt absolutely terrible.

  At the same time I was holding my digital camera in my hand—I’d just taken several pictures of the Picasso—and I wanted to take a picture of the Picasso with the hole in it so badly that my camera was literally quivering. But I didn’t see how I could take a picture—it seemed to me I’d witnessed a tragedy, and what’s more, that my flash would go off if I did and give me away.

  Steve Wynn picked up the phone and left a message for his art dealer. Then he called his wife, Elaine. “You’ll never believe what I just did,” he said to her. From where we stood, on the other end of the phone call, Elaine seemed to take the news calmly and did not yell at her husband. This was particularly impressive to my own husband. There was a conversation about whether the painting could be restored—Wynn seemed to think it could be—and about the two people in America who were capable of restoring it. We all promised we would keep the story quiet—not, you understand, to cover it up, but to make sure that Wynn was able to deal with the episode as he wished to until it came out. We all knew it would come out eventually. It would have to. There were too many of us in the room, plus all the people in the art world who were eventually going to hear about it.

  Meanwhile, we were not going to tell anyone.

  We promised.

  I promised.

  That night we went to dinner, once again at SW because that’s how great it is; it’s worth going to two nights in a row. They were serving creamed corn with truffles, which was amazing. Once again the Wynns joined us. They were in a terrifically jolly mood, all things considered, and Wynn told us that he planned to tell Steve Cohen the next day that of course Cohen was released from the deal because the painting had been damaged.

  After dinner I threw eight or nine passes at the craps table, one of which included a hard ten.

  The next day one of my sons came to meet us in Las Vegas, and we went to Joe’s Stone Crab, which is excellent, and where the Key lime pie may be even better than the Key lime pie at Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach, if such a thing is possible. I told my son the story of what had happened to the painting, but it didn’t really count because my son is completely trustworthy.

  Nine days passed and I told no one else. It was the most painful experience of my life. But I felt good, too, because, as I say, I knew the story would come out eventually and when it did, I didn’t want it to be my fault. And the story did come out. Ten days after Wynn put his elbow through the painting, there was an item about it on Page Six of the New York Post. It was very clear who had given Page Six the item, and it wasn’t me. I was thrilled that I had managed to keep the story (more or less) to myself and celebrated by calling several friends and telling them my version of what had happened.

  Two days later, I got a call from a reporter at The New Yorker who said he was going to write a piece about the episode. I still didn’t feel comfortable discussing the event, but I called Elaine Wynn and told her The New Yorker was going to write a story and that Steve should call the reporter back and tell him about it, since no question the story was out there.

  Elaine told me that she was glad I’d called because she had awakened that morning with the realization that Steve’s putting his elbow through the painting had been a sign that they were meant to keep the painting. So they were going to.

  Now, in today’s New Yorker, there’s a very charming piece about the incident, and as far as I’m concerned I am entirely released from my vow of silence on the matter.

  So there it is.

  My weekend in Vegas.

  —October 16, 2006

  O. J. Again

  BY NOW I’VE forgotten many of the mysteries of the O. J. Simpson case, but a few of them linger in a sort of quiescent way. For example, I have never really understood those three thumps on Kato Kaelin’s wall, but I don’t lose sleep over them. I certainly used to, though. Back in 1995, the Simpson case threw the country (and me) into a national dither, and it took the place of life, conversation, and community. While it lasted, it became a form of bliss. To this day, when I drive the south-north route on Bundy Drive that O. J. took on his way home from having murdered Nicole, I’m in Nancy Drew mode—I look carefully on both sides of the street along the way just in case I spot O. J.’s bloody clothes that have been missing for twelve years now. You never know. I might find them. And then I, too, could become part of the story.

  All sorts of people have become part of the O. J. story; in fact, many of them have careers almost entirely because Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered. I like to amuse myself by wondering—if those people could be given the magical power to bring Nicole and Ron back to life, would they do it, given that their careers would never have happened? Oh well. Why even ask the question?

  In any case, the Simpson case Cast of Characters now has a new member, and I would like to take this moment to w
elcome her to the mix. She is, as you no doubt know, the publisher Judith Regan, who announced this week that she would be publishing a book (and interviewing O. J. in connection with it) called If I Did It. Apparently it’s a confession of sorts.

  I should declare a bias—I’ve met Judith Regan on several occasions, and we have something in common: we both survived bad divorces without having to move to Connecticut. She has spent her life working hard and (as a sideline, or is it the other way around?) popping up in many dramas, the most compelling of which is her own personal life, which has contained a number of exciting episodes, including her bad divorce, a major run-in with the New York police over a parking space that led (as I recall) to a night in jail, and a very messy affair with the former (now discredited) New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik (whom she also published), which, in its happy beginnings, included his dispatching the police department to retrieve her lost cell phone, and which, at its end, involved stalking (on his part), once again with the help of the police. (Along the way, there were a series of trysts in a downtown apartment that was donated to the city in order to give Kerik a place to lay his weary head during his investigative work in the aftermath of 9/11.)

  In any case, I like Judith Regan; I can’t help it. And I was sad this week when she felt she had to defend her decision to publish and interview O. J. by issuing a 2,200-word statement on the subject, most of which appeared in Friday’s New York Post. (Ms. Regan’s publishing house is owned by Rupert Murdoch.) In it, Regan claims that she published O. J. because, having been beaten up by a former boyfriend, she’s on a personal crusade against domestic abuse:

  I did the book and sat face to face with the killer because I wanted him and the men who broke my heart and your hearts to tell the truth … to confess to their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives. Amen. Fifty-three years prepared me for this conversation. The men who lied and cheated and beat me. They were all there in the room. And the people who denied it, they were there, too. And though it might sound a little strange, Nicole and Ron were in my heart.

  I wish Judith Regan had checked with me before issuing this statement. I’m a big believer in not explaining any more than you have to. I’m also a believer in not using the word “Amen,” although I’m guilty of it from time to time. And I don’t think you have to go all the way to Mein Kampf (which Regan used as an example of a book that is still in print after all these years, having also been written by a less-than-likeable author) to defend publishing whatever this thing is that O. J. and his ghostwriter have come up with. I don’t really think you have to defend publishing this book at all. It’s news. Just get it out there.

  And while you’re at it, please find out what those three thumps were on Kato Kaelin’s window.

  I’d really like to know.

  —April 18, 2006

  Say It Ain’t So, Rupe

  HE PULLED IT? Rupert Murdoch pulled the O. J. book and the O. J. special? And Rupert Murdoch personally issued a statement of apology for causing pain to the families of the victims? Is this possible? When you live in New York City, when you read Murdoch’s New York Post every day, it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything that could possibly make Rupert Murdoch lose his tabloid nerve or apologize for causing pain to anyone. I mean, what is a tabloid? It’s a paper that causes pain to at least half the people it writes about every single day.

  What a shame. I wasn’t planning to watch O. J. on television or buy the book, but I was certainly planning to read about it. I didn’t expect the book to be good, and I certainly didn’t expect it to sell enough copies to justify whatever Judith Regan was paying to publish it, but I was looking forward to another bath of O. J. stuff. These American mysteries have a way of washing back every so often—the death of Marilyn Monroe has a half-life more powerful than plutonium—and in some weird way, they’re like old acquaintances. Now that Murdoch has lost his nerve, isn’t anyone going to publish this garbage? Where’s Lyle Stuart now that we need him? Oh well.

  —November 20, 2006

  Melancholy Babies

  SO ACCORDING TO Robert Novak, Donald Rumsfeld received a standing ovation at the American Spectator dinner last week—not because of his performance as defense secretary but because the audience wanted to make Rummy feel better because they knew that President Bush had hurt his feelings.

  “The day after the election,” Novak writes of Rumsfeld, “he had seemed devastated—the familiar confident grin gone and his voice breaking. According to administration officials, only three or four people knew he would be fired—and Rumsfeld was not one of them. His fellow presidential appointees, including some who did not applaud Rumsfeld’s performance in office, were taken aback by his treatment.”

  Good gracious me. Donald Rumsfeld, who to the best of my knowledge has not lost a wink of sleep since he helped lead us into this sorry war, spent a whole day on the verge of tears because of the way he was fired? Because no one had the courtesy to tell him in advance? Because he believed it when Bush told the press that Rumsfeld would serve until the end of his presidency?

  I love this.

  People actually think that there’s a good way to be fired.

  They get fired, and no matter what they were doing before being fired—losing an unwinnable war, running things into the ground, failing to meet the metrics, or merely holding on to a job that was destined for downsizing—they complain afterward about the way they were fired instead of about what really bothers them, which is that they were fired at all. After years of wielding power, personally firing people right and left, and, in Rumsfeld’s case, actually authorizing the illegal torture of prisoners, they try to worm their way to a scenario meant to entitle them to a wave of sympathy that will obliterate whatever reasons they were fired for in the first place.

  My favorite of these Firing Victim scenarios is the one called “They fired me on my birthday.” You can’t imagine how many people walk around complaining that they were fired on their birthdays. “They fired me while I was in the hospital.” “They fired me a week after my mother’s funeral.” “They fired me right before Christmas.” Almost any firing can be made into a Firing Victim scenario, especially if you throw in national holidays. I recently bumped into a Very Powerful Woman who complained bitterly that she had just been fired while her partner was in labor. I mean, I’m sorry the woman was fired, but how was anyone to know that her partner was in labor? Was this common knowledge? Had the labor been going on for days? And how long would the person who fired this woman have had to wait? Until the epidural wore off? Until the baby was home from the hospital?

  Here’s my point: there’s no good way to be fired and there’s no good day to be fired.

  But here are all these Republicans at the American Spectator dinner, making the mistake of believing that at the very least (“at the very least” being a key phrase in such episodes) Rumsfeld was entitled to be treated better because of his loyalty to the president.

  By the way, Novak writes that Rumsfeld isn’t the only member of the Bush Administration who has Lost His Happy: Vice President Cheney is “profoundly disturbed” at the way Rumsfeld was treated and recently “appeared melancholy.” We will leave aside the question of how anyone can evaluate the levels of Dick Cheney’s melancholy and instead wonder whether Cheney is feeling bad because he sees the handwriting on wall. Who knows? Maybe the rumor is true, and he’s next.

  —November 26, 2006

  Take My Secretary of State, Please

  I MET CONDOLEEZZA Rice last weekend. She was much prettier than I thought she was going to be. This was at the State Department dinner the night before the Kennedy Center Honors. She was wearing a beautiful green evening dress, and she looked great. That gap between her front teeth is not as bad in person as it is on television. I’ve always wanted to talk to Condi about that gap because it’s very easy to fix and I know a good celebrity dentist who can do the job in less than twenty-four hours. He’s expensive but Condi makes a decent salar
y, and let’s face it, she hasn’t picked up a check for the last six years, so she can afford it.

  Anyway, Condi was the hostess of the dinner, and she stood up to speak about each of the honorees. She was completely competent. She was, however, not at all funny. She tried to be, but she wasn’t. She was what I call not just “not funny” but “NF,” which is far worse—it’s truly, deeply, tragically not funny. I mention this because it may help explain why Christopher Hitchens has written a piece called “Why Women Aren’t Funny” in this month’s Vanity Fair. I can only assume that it’s because he’s spent too much time living in the same city with Condoleezza Rice.

  Hitchens’s thesis (let’s be honest about it) has a germ of truth. There are plenty of funny women, way more than there used to be, but as a rule women are not as funny as men. The reasons are simple, and fairly boring. Hitchens quotes at length from a Stanford University study that proves conclusively that women don’t respond to punch lines as enthusiastically as men do; I can’t imagine why he even brings up the study unless he has a word count he’s trying to meet. Why not just get right down to it? Men love jokes, women don’t. Men tell jokes, women can’t. Men have cocks, women don’t. End of story.

  By the way, I should confess I love Christopher Hitchens, but the man once wrote that Bob Hope was not funny. That is not true. Bob Hope is empirically funny.

  But my subject is Condi, not Bob Hope. Condoleezza Rice was once a provost, and if there’s ever been a job description that doesn’t require humor, it’s provost. She was an expert on the Soviet Union. I mean, what would that be like? You spend your academic life becoming an expert on something that one day just ceases to exist. Everything you once knew turns out to be outdated, irrelevant, and wrong. That alone could cause you to lose your gift for humor, if you ever had one.