Anatomy Of A Classic

Remembering Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron, screenwriter of films such as When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail, passed away yesterday. While not technically a classic film figure, she had many links to the classic film world. Her parents were screenwriters and among other films, wrote the 1956 film version of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Carousel, and the 1957 Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn comedy Desk Set.

Nora clearly had an admiration for classic film. Sleepless in Seattle has numerous references to An Affair to Remember. You’ve Got Mail is based on the 1940 Jimmy Steward film The Shop Around the Corner. When Harry Met Sally includes footage of Casablanca and references Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes.

I love Nora Ephron’s screenplays because of all the observations she makes within them that do nothing to advance the plot but still add so much charm and humor. The audience gets a movie and a personal essay for the price of one. An example from You’ve Got Mail, Tom Hanks’ internal dialogue:

The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.

Some other wonderful Nora Ephron lines:

All I’m saying is that somewhere out there is the man you are supposed to marry. And if you don’t get him first, somebody else will, and you’ll have to spend the rest of your life knowing that somebody else is married to your husband – When Harry Met Sally

Sally: Well, if you must know, it was because he was very jealous, and I had these days of the week underpants.
Harry: Ehhhh. I’m sorry. I need the judges ruling on this. “Days of the weeks underpants”?
Sally: Yes. They had the days of the week on them, and I thought they were sort of funny. And then one day Sheldon says to me, “You never wear Sunday.” It was all suspicious. Where was Sunday? Where had I left Sunday? And I told him, and he didn’t believe me.
Harry: What?
Sally: They don’t make Sunday.
Harry: Why not?
Sally: Because of God.
-When Harry Met Sally

Keith: It is easier to be killed by a terrorist after the age of 40 than it is to get married.
Annie: That is not true. That statistic is not true.
Becky: It’s not true, but it feels true.
Keith: It feels true because it is true.
-Sleepless in Seattle