Posted on June 27, 2018 at 9:41 am
This is a fascinating look at the difference between the way the script for “Sleepless in Seattle” looked on the page and the way it finally appeared on the screen. We don’t know how many of these changes were intentional and how many were slips of the tongue or amended by the actors because they felt more natural.
Posted on March 21, 2016 at 3:03 pm
“Everything is Copy,” the documentary about Nora Ephron by her son, premieres tonight at 9:00 on HBO. Ephron was the daughter of Hollywood screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron (“Desk Set”), who named her after Ibsen’s famous heroine of “A Doll’s House” and based their hit Broadway comedy “Take Her, She’s Mine” on the challenges of raising Nora and her sisters. Nora Ephron began as a journalist, and her collected essays about women and media are witty, self-deprecating, and fiercely funny. She often quoted what her brilliant but difficult mother told her as she was dying:”Take notes.” Her parents taught her that everything was material for her writing, and her first novel, Heartburn
She also co-wrote the screenplay for “Silkwood,” also directed by Nichols and starring Streep, and then went on to write iconic films like When Harry Met Sally…
I’m a big fan of her film with Rick Moranis and Steve Martin, My Blue Heaven
Posted on December 24, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Director Leo McCarey remade his own wonderful film, Love Affair, starring Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne, as An Affair to Remember with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant. Forget the third version, with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, but don’t overlook this wonderful moment from Rita Wilson in Sleepless in Seattle.
Posted on February 8, 2013 at 8:00 am
Thanks to Beliefnet for inviting me to write a tribute to our movie of the month, “Sleepless in Seattle.”
Sleepless in Seattle is like a valentine to love itself, that exquisite balance of improbability and inevitability that can make people 3000 miles apart who have never met feel as though they have always known each other and are meant to be together. Or, to use the word that Sam (Tom Hanks) and Annie (Meg Ryan) use in the film, “magic.”
Sam is an architect who moved to Seattle with his young son Jonah (Ross Malinger) after the death of his wife, played in brief flashbacks by “Law and Order’s” Carey Lowell, who conveys so much warmth and spirit that we miss her, too. On Christmas eve, Jonah calls into a late-night radio program to talk about his concerns for his grieving father. The host asks to speak to Sam and Annie, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, hears the broadcast. She is driving home from celebrating her engagement to Walter (Bill Pullman), but there is something about Sam’s description of his late wife that she finds captivating. She thought she was happy with Walter. We in the audience know she can’t be though. First, his name is Walter, not the name of a movie leading man. Second, he has a lot of allergies, a movie signifier that he can’t be a romantic ideal. In the trying-on-the-heirloom-wedding-dress scene with her mother in the attic, we see that Annie’s mother has some reservations, so we feel comfortable having our own. Most important, when Tom Hanks is in a movie with Meg Ryan, we know where this is going. They had such appealing screen chemistry that it is hard to remember they only co-starred three times. The other two were the classic “You’ve Got Mail” (also written and directed by Nora Ephron) and the uneven but still-worthy “Joe Versus the Volcano.” Sam and Annie never speak to each other until the very end of the movie, but the famously detail-oriented Ephron made sure we got the message of the essential connection between them with many subtle cues. For example, Annie goes in a door in Baltimore and Sam comes out of the exact same door in Seattle. Ephron flew the door across the country, knowing that almost no one would notice it consciously but that it would contribute to our understanding that they were going to be together.
The characters in this movie are very influenced by another classic romantic film, “An Affair to Remember,” with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. (That movie is a remake and the original, “Love Affair,” is well worth watching, but skip the third version with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.) While Annie and her best friend love to weep together over that movie’s portrayal of the redemptive power of love and integrity, Sam and his friends joke about it, and tease a female friend (played by Hanks’ real-life wife, Rita Wilson) by saying that they prefer to cry over “The Dirty Dozen,” Sam can’t help taking a leap of faith to see if Annie just might be waiting for him where Cary was supposed to meet Deborah, on top of the Empire State Building.
More than two decades after it was made, some elements of “Sleepless in Seattle” seem dated. The movie might be very different in an era of cell phones and Google. But like the classic songs on its soundtrack it has a timeless appeal. Indeed, we can imagine that some future made-for-each-other couple who just doesn’t know it yet might just be inspired by “Sleepless in Seattle” the way Sam and Annie are inspired by Cary and Deborah.
Posted on July 2, 2012 at 8:00 am
We all mourn the loss of the warm, wise, and witty writer/director Nora Ephron. As Adam Bernstein noted in his perceptive obituary for the Washington Post, she was always guided by the advice of her screenwriter parents to “take notes — everything is copy.” Bernstein describes her
razor-sharp self-awareness and the ambition to transform workaday absurdities, cultural idiosyncrasies, romantic foibles and even marital calamity into essays, novels and films brimming with invitingly mordant wit. She credited her mother with bestowing “this kind of terrific ability, not to avoid pain but to turn it over and recycle it as soon as possible.”
I first became of fan of Ephron through the columns she wrote about journalism (collected in Scribble Scribble) and women (collected in Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women), which were enormously influential for me in both form and voice. Slate Magazine’s wonderful “Dear Prudence” columnist, Emily Yoffe, wrote about how she was inspired and influenced by Ephron‘s “inimitable voice: sly, dry, witty, devastating, personal, hilarious.”
She is remembered for her romantic comedies, especially the classics “When Harry Met Sally….,” which she wrote, and “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail,” which she wrote and directed. But she also co-wrote the powerful and evocative drama, Silkwood. She took the most painful experience of her life, discovering that her husband was unfaithful to her when she was seven months pregnant with their second child, and followed her parents advice, turning it into the trenchantly funny novel and then movie Heartburn. Two of her films that I especially love are My Blue Heaven (I think it is adorable that she wrote a witty witness protection program romantic comedy as her husband’s non-fiction book was being turned in to the witness protection program drama “Goodfellas”) and “This is My Life,” with Julie Kavner as a single mother and stand-up comic struggling with life/work balance. She loved food (even included recipes in Heartburn), not surprising as her work was just plain tasty.
She has inspired some magnificent tributes, including Indiwire’s list of 10 of her best lines and this gorgeous piece by Lena Dunham of “Girls” that says so much about her wisdom and generosity — and the legacy of writers she inspired to find and own their voices. I loved the echo of “take notes” in her comforting response to Dunham’s failed brownies. Tom Hanks, who starred in her two best-loved films, wrote a warm and perceptive appreciation in Time Magazine, noting her insistance on telling details and distinctive voice. The producers of Ephron’s forthcoming Broadway show have promised the show will open, so we all have one more treat to look forward to. Celebrate Nora Ephron by sharing your favorite Ephron book or movie with someone you love. May her memory be a blessing.
