Raw, Salted and Roasted : What’s on the table when Nora Ephron and Steve Martin get together? Fajitas, vegetarians, Thanksgiving dinner and ‘Mixed Nuts.’

They look as if they have just dashed in from a faculty reception: she in her nice wool suit and pearls, he in a sport coat and tie. They are busy and smart, pressed for time, of course--Steve Martin and Nora Ephron would hardly be otherwise--but they are also hungry and they fill the room with a restless, heat-seeking energy.

They are here to promote their movie, “Mixed Nuts,” which opens Wednesday and is based on a relatively unknown French comedy, “Le Pere Noel est une Ordure” (Santa Claus Is Garbage). He is the star; she is the director and co-writer (with her sister, Delia Ephron). But they are each famous in their own right.

He was a philosophy student at Cal State Long Beach who pioneered a brand of droll, cerebral stand-up comedy and became one of the most popular and gifted comedic stars. He is also a writer, of such successful movies as “Roxanne” and “L.A. Story,” as well as this year’s bomb “A Simple Twist of Fate.”

Now he has sworn off screenwriting in favor of writing for the theater. His first play, “Picasso at the Lapine Agile,” a comic meditation on the nature of genius and celebrity, has been produced in Chicago and now Los Angeles, at the Westwood Playhouse through March 26, to encouraging reviews.

She, however, was born into a family of screenwriters. After working as a successful New York journalist for several years, she wrote “Silkwood,” “Heartburn” (which was based on her own best-selling roman a clef) and “When Harry Met Sally . . . “

She directed her first film, “This Is Your Life,” in 1992. Her second film, last summer’s sleeper hit “Sleepless in Seattle,” made more than $100 million.

Each of them now leads a comfortable, even privileged, life: he with his famous art collection, she with her vast Upper West Side apartment in New York and a summer house in the Hamptons. He is newly divorced; she is happily on marriage No. 4.

They are, in fact, frank enthusiasts for the haute bourgeois life who know exactly what they want, which, at this moment, means getting their assistants to supply something more than the avocado-and-bean-sprout sandwiches awaiting them.

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Nora Ephron: We heard a rumor about fajitas.

Steve Martin: Yeah, we heard she was sleeping with. . . . No, is there meat in fajitas? We’ll take anything in the fajita world, but I’m high on the vegetarian part of it.

Ephron: We were hoping when Steve’s marriage (to British actress Victoria Tennant) broke up he would go back to meat--I felt it was time for him to break out of that--but he didn’t. I still think you’re missing a lot.

Martin: Like a heart attack.

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Question: Speaking of breaking out, Nora, were you somewhat intimidated to try another comedy after the huge success of “Sleepless in Seattle”?

Ephron: I didn’t want to make “Sleepless” again and this is completely different. It has very low ambitions, as in low comedy. I just wanted people to laugh.

Martin: Mike Nichols once told me that I always aimed high in something low. I loved that.

Ephron: We also hoped, by the way, that this would be on television forever at Christmastime.

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Q: The movie is a loose adaptation of the French film, but did you always have Steve in mind to play the head of the suicide hot line?

Ephron: No, because that way lies heartbreak.

Martin: All right, I’m leaving.

Ephron: But we did put him at the top of our little list . . .

Martin: The only other person they considered for my role was Winona Ryder.

Ephron: . . . because there is just enough physical comedy in this that there weren’t that many actors who could do it and also Steve can act in a way that isn’t quite real.

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Q: Why did you want that quality--because this was intended to be more farcical than “Sleepless,” almost a screwball comedy?

Ephron: No, because it was just . . . Why did I want what?

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Q: Steve’s talent for making unreal behavior seem plausible.

Ephron: Because the situation of the movie is just that it couldn’t quite happen. People behave in this about 10% crazier than in real life. Like that startled-deer thing that Steve does in this, the constant shock (he registers) when the phone rings in a suicide hot line center. That kills me. And then, of course, the dance sequence where Steve is leaping over tables and he’s completely believable but it has no basis in reality.

Martin: And that’s what I do best actually. I’m sitting here thinking about myself and that’s really it: Although I can play regular guys, I can also turn up the flame a bit, so behavior that would look crazy in real life you actually can get away with in a movie.

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Q: Is that why the movie, which is ostensibly a Christmas story, is set in Los Angeles, to heighten the farcical aspect?

Ephron: Somehow Christmas in Los Angeles immediately sets the movie off kilter. There is something about L.A., you just understand why certain people come here . . .

Martin: And don’t you think . . .

Ephron: . . . from all spectrums of the rainbow . . .

Martin: . . . don’t you think that if you set it in New York that our mixed nuts would have been more dangerous?

Ephron: Oh, yes.

Martin: This is lighter, happier, because people can exist that way in L.A. and not be serial killers.

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Q: What is it about Christmas that is so fascinating that you put it in all your movies? Do you actually celebrate the holiday?

Ephron: Of course I do! What kind of a question is that?

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Q: Well, many people don’t observe the birth of Christ . . .

Ephron: Well, I know that, but I’ve always had a big Christmas thing. It is so totally interesting, so endlessly interesting to me. It is such a complicated holiday. Unlike Thanksgiving where you could eat in a Chinese restaurant and say, “Isn’t this great?,” Christmas seems to contain every other Christmas in it. So when you say, “This was the best Christmas,” you’re really saying it is so much better than the year the marriage broke up, or the year when Mother died. It is so full of tears under all the celebrating.

Martin: Like that line in the movie where Rita (Wilson) says, “I just wish I had someone to care for and who would care for me.” That is such a touching moment, gosh.

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Q: So you have a weakness for the holidays, too, Steve?

Martin: Well, I really like Christmas now, but when I was doing stand-up and traveling for something like 10 years, Christmas was always spent in a hotel room and you didn’t participate in it because you would just get too sad. But now I’ve started to understand that it can actually be fun to have people around, fun to buy somebody a present and to get one.

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Q: So, both of you--despite formidable reputations to the contrary--are closet sentimentalists.

Ephron: Everyone is. I once wrote that there is no one so romantic as a cynic.

Martin: It’s also what the medium of film is really good at.

Ephron: Well, it has to be an earned emotion.

Martin: Yes, the worst thing you can feel in a movie is manipulated and the best thing is to catch the audience by surprise. And it can be the smallest thing. One time I was driving down the street and a fire engine went by and all the cars pulled over. It warmed my heart.

Ephron: Why? Because civilization was working in some way?

Martin: No, because they were doing it for someone else.

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Q: Does gender come into play in any of this? Do women write--or direct--films differently than men?

Martin: There is a female point of view in this movie, yes, but there is nothing in my character that could not have been written by a man.

Ephron: I think that definitely happens when women make movies, they get to say different things. One of the things about this movie that I loved was that line about the woman who said she spent the holidays standing in the “10 items or less” line at the checkout register which never happened to me, but which feels completely autobiographical.

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Q: I thought the most autobiographical line in the movie was, “Things do not come to those who wait” . . .

Ephron: Well, yes. Yes.

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Q: . . . because like many women directors, you’ve had to fight your way into the profession. What is it you want to say in film that you couldn’t say as a journalist or a screenwriter?

Ephron: I hope to make eight or nine movies before I’m done and so we’ll find out one day. But so far I think (Delia and I) have managed to get our voice in there some way so they don’t feel generic. I also have a very clear goal, which is probably foolish to even say, but I love having a group of people that I get to work with, so you have this little company and every 18 months or so you all spend three months together and eat in restaurants in cities where you don’t live. But mostly I want to make funny movies.

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Q: Is Nora funny?

Ephron: Delia is actually funnier . . .

Martin: Yes, definitely. She’s not doing shtick but . . .

Ephron: All you can say is, “Does this make me laugh?”

Martin: . . . she has an instinct for framing the scene--which is something I have. She knows the value of a joke in a scene: Is it a big or small joke, is it in the foreground or background, is it a big scene or a transitional scene?

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Q: What about your nascent career as a playwright?

Martin: I think movies can be great, but movies are also like a circus, even the making of them is such an effort--three months to shoot it and all the prep and post-production. Even a bad movie is hard to make and believe me, I know.

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Q: So playwriting is more of a purely mental exercise?

Martin: When I sit down to do a screenplay, I already know too much. I’m mentally editing it, this scene is too long, too something. But in a play you can just stop for like 10 minutes and have some dialogue about an inner tube or something that doesn’t mean anything, but if it’s interesting you can just talk about it.

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Q: What about screenwriting? You’ve said you won’t write another movie, only plays. Are you frustrated by Hollywood?

Martin: I know I said that and I probably meant it . . . but I do think one of the biggest mistakes Hollywood makes in looking at a script is that inevitable question: “Will people like this character?” But they equate likability with someone never doing anything unlikable, it becomes Mr. Bland, almost like a hostile guy when it’s really the foibles that make him good and human. I like it when a character is selfish or has a flaw that makes him more real than if he is Mr. Nice Guy. Even in something like “Father of the Bride,” the sequel to which I happen to be doing now so it’s on my mind, he comes off as Mr. Perfect, but he’s actually self-centered and selfish.

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Q: Were you disappointed about the reaction to “A Simple Twist of Fate,” your updating of “Silas Marner,” which is about a very imperfect man?

Martin: I think I made a lot of mistakes in the writing and I was also a little bit distracted (by my personal life), but the reviews were so consistently bad I thought they must be right. I kept reading the phrase, “Not quite an embarrassment.” Like, OK, I’ll put that one on the shelf.

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Q: Do you two collaborate as writers, or as director and actor?

Ephron: In the context of this movie or life itself?

Martin: We talk about the script (of “Mixed Nuts”), but I talk to her as an actor, because when you’re acting in a movie it’s very liberating to just come in and act and maybe think of a joke occasionally.

Ephron: And I’ve read some of Steve’s scripts and sometimes I’ll say, “Make this a bit more something.” I’ve done a certain amount of that.

Martin: That’s what people do for each other in a certain community. If you’re writing a script or a play and Nora Ephron and Mike Nichols are your friends, you ask them to read it.

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Q: As creators of comic films, do you feel there is a bias against comedy in Hollywood?

Martin: I saw a review of “The Mask” and it had this line, “In this movie, Jim Carrey proves he can act.” Now that is a very subtle example of how comedy is not considered acting. I mean, what did he do in “Ace Ventura”?

Ephron: What you’re talking about is partly critics but mostly awards and it will always be No. 700 on the list of the world’s problems . . .

Martin: Because we get such rewards for being funny. We get paid so well and because people love it when you make them laugh.

Ephron: But all movies are hard to make. I read this interview with Jan de Bont (director of “Speed”) who said, “It’s harder to make ‘Speed’ than ‘Sleepless in Seattle.’ ”

Martin: Uh-oh.

Ephron: Well, I didn’t think that was entirely random and I thought, “Why are you knocking my movie? I can’t make ‘Speed’ and guess what? You can’t make ‘Sleepless.’ ”

Martin: Well, maybe he meant, “Which is harder: shooting a bunch of fun, happy actors or a bus?” Where would you rather go to work every day?

Ephron: I know, and I think I’d rather slit my throat than shoot a person’s hand on a gearshift. That is when I will happily go back to journalism, so I understand what he meant--but that’s not all he meant.