Annie Reed [played by Meg Ryan] [watching "An Affair to Remember"]: “Now those were the days when people knew how to be in love.”
Becky [played by
Rosie O'Donnell]: “You're a basket case.”
Annie: “They knew it!
Time, distance... nothing could separate them because they knew. It was
right, it was real, it was...”
Becky: “A movie! That's
your problem. You don't want to be in love, you want to be in love in a
movie.”— Sleepless in Seattle
(1993), screenplay by Nora Ephron, David S. Ward, and Jeff Arch, directed by Nora
Ephron
Thirty years ago this week, Sleepless in Seattle
premiered, and promptly became a hit.
At the time, I enjoyed the film without being ecstatic
about it. Maybe what dimmed my enthusiasm slightly was that it felt as much about
falling in love with movies as it did falling in love with a person—not just
this scene’s homage to Nora Ephron’s obvious inspiration, An Affair to Remember,
but also to its counterpart, the “male weepie”—most obviously, The Dirty Dozen.
Ephron paid similar homage to another classic romantic
comedy, the James Stewart-Margaret Sullavan Christmas classic The Shop
Around the Corner, with You’ve Got Mail. Again, I felt that, for all
Ephron’s wit, her particular spin did not improve on the original.
Maybe the problem was that I had previously encountered
Ephron in a different guise, as a masterful essayist whose contributions to Esquire
I could never get enough of—an original, biting voice whose departure for
Hollywood I felt was a big mistake.
I’m glad that Ephron found enduring love in the end
with Nick Pileggi (another excellent journalist who decamped to Tinseltown).
But her first love—and really, the one that sustained her through all—was the
movies—just what you’d expect from the daughter of screenwriters Henry and
Phoebe Ephron. (The daughter in their film Take Her, She’s Mine was
based on Nora.)
Since Ephron’s death 11 years ago, I have come to feel
differently about her work. I still wish that her films were more original, and
I still beg to differ with the subtitle of Erin Carlson’s I'll Have What
She's Having: “How Nora Ephron's Three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic
Comedy.”
But with time, I can better appreciate how much of a struggle it was for her or any woman to get anything
close to a unique vision of a film made in the face of unimaginative, sexist movie
executives.
I can better value the sprightly voice of her
screenplays and the primary value they championed: wit as a life preserver for
those facing loneliness, fear, and tragedy.
I can better see the void her passing left in a
Hollywood increasingly consumed by budget-busting, CGI-crazy sequels.
In fact, I would say, Sleepless in Seattle now feels timeless, capable of being appreciated by multiple generations.
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