From 'When Harry Met Sally' to 'Sleepless in Seattle': Nora Ephron's Legacy

Journalist Ilana Kaplan remembers one of the first Nora Ephron movies she saw—1998's You've Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan—in a theater when she was about 10. To Kaplan, the onscreen romantic chemistry between the two fictitious lead characters, rival booksellers Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly, drew her attention. "I just fawn over the end of the movie, before they actually kiss in the park," Kaplan told Newsweek, "Joe is walking with Kathleen and trying to get her to forgive him for putting her out of business by comparing the situation to her forgiving this guy who 'stood her up.' He goes, 'Oh, how I wish you would.' The way he looks at her and says that line—it just gives me chills every time."

Kaplan's latest book, Nora Ephron at the Movies (Abrams), offers another more methodical appreciation of the late and celebrated writer-director, best known for her other rom-coms When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), as well as such works as Silkwood (1983), My Blue Heaven (1990), This Is My Life (1992) and Julie & Julia (2009). As Kaplan writes about Ephron in the introduction to her book: "She became emblematic of rom-coms, shifting and redefining conversations around the complexities of relationships and the women who have them."

This illustrated monograph provides both an analysis of Ephron's movies, books, essays and plays as well as a visual celebration of her work—production stills from those films and photos of Ephron over the years. It also contains Kaplan's interviews with some of Ephron's collaborators who share their professional and personal reminisces. "She was so passionate and immaculate in terms of everything she did," said actress Heather Burns. Others pinpointed that same quality: Hollywood producer Lauren Shuler Donner once remembered Ephron telling her: "Don't use a square table; use a round table because it's more conducive for talking," and: "Never order the most expensive bottle of white wine [at a restaurant]. Ask, what's the coldest?" said Ephron, related director Susan Seidelman.

In discussing the research and writing for the book, Kaplan said that it's hard to separate between "Nora the writer-director" and "Nora the person." She "was quite prickly from what other people have discerned over the years. But as a female director who was really groundbreaking at the time and a writer who fearlessly spoke her truth, I'd imagine you'd need to have a tough skin and operate a certain way to be taken seriously."

Ephron, who once worked at Newsweek in 1962, doing little more than delivering mail, is synonymous with her quote "everything is copy," a philosophy that has guided much of her career. "So everything in your life that happens—good, bad, funny, sad—is material that you can somehow translate into a story or movie," Kaplan—whose writings have been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone—explained about the quote's meaning. "The best example of that is Heartburn [her 1983 novel that became a movie three years later starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson]. The book is 'fictionalized,' but it's very true to the situation she was in with her ex-husband Carl Bernstein and his affair. She turned her personal pain into something a bit more beautiful. And it wasn't necessarily beautiful and joyful, but it was poetic."

Some of the common themes that run through When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail (all featuring Meg Ryan) are epistolary storytelling and the trope of the battle of the sexes, says Kaplan. "But it's these complex female protagonists who are flawed and unpolished that are a hallmark of Nora's work. Even as she referenced movies of the 1930s and 1940s, it was something that felt really fresh. Like in When Harry Met Sally, the frank discussion of sex and female pleasure [via the famous fake orgasm scene at New York City's Katz's Deli] was a hot topic to see. She created such a universe for people to feel real but to also feel aspirational."

"She made women who were viewing the movies feel seen," Kaplan also said of the empowering feminism in Ephron's rom-coms. "That was the most pivotal part of watching her write for a woman as the lead. It gave a lot of women who saw those characters agency to embrace those quirky, flawed parts."

And it's impossible to ignore the role food played in Ephron's films, especially Julie & Julia, her final movie. "I feel like Nora's love for food is a rom-com itself," Kaplan said. "[Food] represents so much of culture and her existence. In her films, it almost feels like we get a little piece of Nora because she's known in real life for being a very particular person [when it comes to ordering food]. In Sleepless in Seattle, it's the pie, and in When Harry Met Sally, it's the sandwich. I think that the way that her characters ordered, the bigger message is not to settle: 'Be particular. Ask for what you want.'"

Of the movies analyzed in her book, Kaplan says Heartburn is perhaps the most overlooked. "It's a breakup rom-com. And I feel like even in that, there's a lot of beauty. I really love seeing Rachel's [played by Streep] growth throughout that movie because she decides, like many characters in Nora's films, to make the brave choice. That's not easy."

In many of Ephron's films, personal pain is addressed underneath the veneer of humor. For example, there are several breakups in When Harry Met Sally. "There are aspects of pain that help shape those characters," said Kaplan.

In her book, Kaplan also addresses Ephron's continuing legacy 12 years after her death from cancer at age 71, like how Ephron has become the patron saint of fall fashion; social media is rife with the attire worn by Meg Ryan's characters. "There are fall elements in every movie," said Kaplan, "but it just became iconic to see Ryan's Sally in a chunky knit sweater in When Harry Met Sally, or Ryan's Kathleen in a cardigan carrying a pumpkin and walking through the streets of New York in You've Got Mail. It's become a way for us all to embrace the change of the season and to kind of intertwine it with pop culture that we all collectively love and think of fondly. For some reason, Nora Ephron's synonymous with fall."

While When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail will always be mentioned in any survey of Ephron's career, Kaplan argued the writer/director was more than just the queen of the romantic comedy. "The one throughline of her work has been the impactful way she writes," she said.

"Her writing was her career. Even [in] the movies that aren't rom-coms, it's the dialogue she created that you remember. She's had some movies that weren't exactly critically acclaimed. But there are still moments in the movies where it's very canonically Nora Ephron writing and Nora Ephron dialogue."

Whether it's Streep's Rachel in Heartburn who said, "I don't want to do it, honey. Can't we get somebody else to do it?" while in labor, or Lisa Kudrow in Hanging Up (2000), "I'm just as much a part of this family as either of you... and I wanna fight!" Kaplan continued: "You just can't help but smile when you see it on screen."

In the end, Kaplan hopes everyone appreciates Ephron's body of work.

"I hope they'll see how influential she's been in a lot of the films—rom-coms specifically—that they're watching now and go back and watch hers and see the parallels. I would like for somebody to discover something new about her they didn't know."

As far as who could be considered Ephron's heir apparent today, Kaplan says: "I don't know if there will ever be another Nora Ephron. In terms of writing, I do think Dolly Alderton has been someone who is like a millennial Nora Ephron of sorts.

"There's been some good rom-coms over the years, some great ones. But there hasn't been a Nora Ephron rom-com."

David Chiu is a freelance reporter. Follow him on X