Nora Ephron

Writer and director Nora Ephron, the guru of American romantic comedies and once the most famous super-wealthy rent-regulated tenant in New York City (in 2006, she wonderfully admitted to "bribing her way into an eight-room apartment for $1,500 a month"), will probably be paying twice that amount in monthly co-op maintenance fees from now on.

According to a deed filed today in city records, Ms. Ephron and her husband, Nicholas Pileggi (he wrote Casino and Goodfellas, she wrote Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally), have paid $2.475 million for an apartment in the Georgian-style co-op building at 136 East 79th Street. It’s on the same block as the Apthorp, where the couple lived for decades (she filmed part of Heartburn there), but on the snobbier side of Central Park.  read more »

It felt like a huge sorority reunion at the party before Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year Awards at Avery Fisher Hall on Monday, Nov. 5.  read more »

Meryl Streep has signed on to play jolly cooking icon Julia Child in Nora Ephron's new film Julia & Julia, based on the adaptation of the 2005 book by Julie Powell, Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.

Reuters/The Hollywood Reporter writes:

The Columbia Pictures film follows Powell, a government worker who decides to cook her way through Child's classic "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year out of her small Brooklyn kitchen. Powell blogs her daily experiences, gaining a loyal following along the way.

Good-bye to all that: The Apthorp, one of the most coveted and romanticized rental buildings in New York City, will be converted into condos, according to The Wall Street Journal. Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev bought a 50 percent stake in the 163-unit building at 2207 Broadway in a $426 million deal that closed on Wednesday night.

With the Apthorp's ground-floor retail factored into the deal, the purchase price is about $2.4 million per apartment, making it the most expensive price ever for an American residential building.

The Apthorp, with rents as high as $20,000 a month, has been home to Conan O'Brien, Al Pacino, and Nora Ephron, who last year wrote a long love letter to the Upper West Side building in The New Yorker. Ms. Ephron, like many Apthorp tenants, had been protected from market-rate rents through regulation. Many apartments remain rent-stabilized, meaning the new owners will have to either buy out tenants or otherwise boot them for the condo conversion.

- Tom Acitelli

This is a book about age and regret. Since it’s by Nora Ephron, it’s funny.  read more »

This is a book about age and regret. Since it’s by Nora Ephron, it’s funny.  read more »

The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, by Michael Gray. Continuum, 736 pages, $40.  read more »

The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, by Michael Gray. Continuum, 736 pages, $40.    read more »

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