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In 1989, Nora Ephron changed cinema forever with five simple words: "I'll have what she's having." These words were uttered by a middle-aged woman who had just witnessed what was destined to become the most famous scene in When Harry Met Sally: Meg Ryan faking a noisy orgasm in a busy diner for a stunned Billy Crystal. She was making the point that, yes, women can and do fake orgasms during sex – all the time. It's easy to see why the audacious scene was instantly iconic. Finally, a rom-com that really understood what it meant to be a woman in the modern world! The film followed two unlikely friends, Sally (Ryan) and Harry (Crystal), as they grappled with the question: could a man and a woman ever really be just platonic friends? Although the film was directed by a man, Rob Reiner, the film was one of the first rom-coms to see the world through a distinctly female gaze, thanks to Ephron's witty, incisive script.
Soon after, Ephron penned another romantic comedy with 1993's Sleepless in Seattle. This time, she got behind the camera as director, too. She reunited with Ryan, who was quickly becoming a bona fide queen of the genre, and added Tom Hanks into the mix. This daring rom-com follows Annie, a reporter from Delaware, who falls in love with Sam, a grieving widower from Seattle she hears over the radio. The pair never meet until the final scene.
Despite their limited interactions in the film, the chemistry between Ryan and Hanks leapt off the screen. Ephron returned to the winning formula with 1998's You've Got Mail. A modernised take on the 1940 Christmas classic The Shop Around the Corner, You've Got Mail saw Ryan playing Kathleen, the owner of a charming children's bookstore on the Upper West Side, and Hanks playing Joe Fox, heir to a big box bookstore chain threatening to put her out of business. While the pair are busy becoming sworn enemies in real life, online, they are unknowingly chatting and falling in love.
As one of the core films of the social media phenomenon Meg Ryan Fall, You've Got Mail has come to symbolise a certain kind of romanticised retro aestheticism.
Ephron's three rom-coms have gone down in history as a sort of unofficial trilogy. While the films paid homage to the rom-coms of the past, they forged their own path, too, redefining what was possible from the genre in a rapidly changing modern world. They introduced viewers to a new type of romantic heroine – a woman who was messy and opinionated and perhaps even a little nutty, but also loveable and relatable, too. They grappled with distinctly contemporary problems: the digital age, the working woman, love in an age of capitalism. And above all, they featured good love stories – the stuff that fantasies are made of.
Ilana Kaplan's new book, Nora Ephron at the Movies, which was released last week, explores Ephron's work and legacy as a filmmaker. Since her unexpected death in 2012 from leukaemia, Ephron has been remembered best as the architect of the modern rom-com. In recent years, she has even become the patron saint of social media's Meg Ryan Fall trend. But her work is far more expansive and diverse. In addition to her famous, Instagrammable trifecta with Ryan, Ephron also wrote and directed a range of other dramas and comedies, from the 1986 Heartburn to her final film 2009's Julie & Julia.
We spoke to Kaplan to get her take on Ephron's impact on the rom-com and her legacy today. Plus, read on to see an exclusive excerpt from the book.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Ilana, congratulations on this absolutely beautiful book! As a long-time fan of both Nora Ephron and your writing, I was so excited to get my hands on a copy. Could you begin by telling me about how your relationship with Nora began?
I grew up watching Nora Ephron movies. The first Nora Ephron film I saw was You've Got Mail, and I just fell in love with everything about it!
How did you approach the project? It spans Ephron's entire career as a filmmaker – it must have been quite a long research process.
It was really about watching and rewatching the movies. Also reading a lot of criticism about the films over the years. I also read all of Nora's books and articles and essays and plays. I listened to her speeches and her interviews. I watched the documentary about her Everything Is Copy. I really tried to find everything that was out there.
What most surprised you in what you learned about Nora during that process?
I always knew that she was a trailblazer at that time – that she was this strong female director. But I was surprised to realise she was often perceived as a polarising force – as somebody who was a very brilliant, amazing writer, but who could be really tough to work with. She was very particular. And being particular as a woman can often be perceived as being bitchy.
That kind of speaks to something that women, and especially women of colour, have to go up against. The white male patriarchy is present in any industry, but in film, you have to be a part of the boys club to some degree. And so I think she was perceived a certain way. But as I researched her more, I began to understand why she needed to be that way in order to survive in this industry and thrive.
Get ready for your meet cute.
You make a great point in your chapter about Ephron's rom-coms – she revolutionised the genre by writing heroines who weren't always entirely likeable. You quote Sally Albright's famous line: "I just want it the way I want it" as an example of that, and it sounds like that sums up Ephron as a filmmaker, too.
Yes! What really resonates and stands the test of time in her work are her strong female characters – these strong flawed, authentic characters – the messiness, the unfiltered aspects of Annie [in Sleepless in Seattle], of Kathleen [in You've Got Mail] of Rachel [in Heartburn]. These women are really strong and really brilliant, but also really messy and flawed and complex. I feel like that's opened up a lot of room for interpretation in the rom-com genre. Women aren't expected to be perfect and put together all the time anymore.
Let's back up and talk about where Ephron's rom-coms sit within the history of the rom-com. She borrowed from a lot of the classics that came before her, didn't she?
Nora grew up with two screenwriter parents in Hollywood's Golden Age, so she was looking at movies like An Affair to Remember and a little later Annie Hall. And 30 to 40 years before her there were the screwball comedies [the fast-talking rom-com capers of the '30s and '40s]. She loved all of that. But she also wanted to make the genre her own. She wanted to modernise it.
With When Harry Met Sally, for instance, we see how she takes this classic enemies-to-friends trope and then poses a really modern question: Can men and women be friends? That film also raises other provocative questions – things like do women fake orgasms. What she still recognised today for is really flipping and reworking the rom-com for the modern audience at the time. It was really very progressive at that time. Of course, she wasn't always the most progressive in all areas, but you can see the changes she made reverberating in rom-coms to this day.
One thing I've always loved about Ephron's rom-coms is how well her love stories just work even though we don't actually always see these characters together all that much – instead, the romance works because of who they are as separate people. One of my favourite scenes in Sleepless in Seattle is when Annie is listening to Sam on the radio while peeling an apple in one long curl, just as Sam's wife used to do. It's like a little sign that they are somehow connected – neither of them know it yet, but we the audience do. I love that!
Yeah, she was really great with that kind of parallel storytelling. Sleepless in Seattle was such an interesting film. We get really full stories of both Sam and Annie separately. It's wild when you think about it – aside from not really knowing each other, they only really share one scene together. But it's such a full movie and I don't think that every filmmaker could do that. You have to be a very specific kind of storyteller to make that feel like one cohesive narrative.
Nora Ephron was also one of the first people to make rom-coms that used the female gaze – not only in terms of the female and male characters and their romantic arcs, but also aesthetically.
Nora's affinity for aesthetics has become such a hallmark of her legacy. I think the only comparison is Nancy Meyers [The Holiday, Something's Gotta Give]. They're quite different aesthetics, but they both created this cosy, lived-in world that makes you want to be a part of it and makes you feel seen, too. It's aspirational, but attainable. Nora's cosy romanticism – I don't know if anyone's successfully replicated it other than maybe Nancy.
We've been talking a lot about Ephron's romantic comedies – and that is what she is best-known for. But she does have this really extensive filmography as both a writer and a director that is often overlooked by the more casual film fan. What films would you recommend to people who have maybe only ever dipped their toes into Ephron's famous rom-coms and want to explore her other work?
Silkwood [a 1983 biopic about Karen Silkwood, a whistle blower at a nuclear power plant] is such an incredible movie. I'm not always a big biopic fan, but it's Meryl Streep, it's Cher, it's Kurt Russell. And Cher's role in it was really groundbreaking. She was playing a lesbian in Oklahoma. The performances in it are incredible.
Also, Heartburn [Ephron's semi-autobiographical 1986 film based on her own novel about her divorce from Carl Bernstein]. It came back into the conversation a couple years ago with the Olivia Wilde Heartburn salad dressing recipe. I like to call it an honorary rom-com, because it's a breakup rom-com, but it has all of these elements that we love about Nora's three famous rom-coms. Again, it's Meryl Streep along with Jack Nicholson. It's a really incredible movie.
This Is My Life [1992], also. It was Nora's directorial debut. It's the movie that made Lena Dunham want to make movies. It's more of a slice-of-life movie, but it's about a single mom who's a comedian who later in life – she gets the opportunity to really go for her career and the film is about how that impacts her daughters and their relationship. And it has such an amazing score from Carly Simon!
You mentioned Lena Dunham taking inspiration from Ephron – as you explain in the book, she was actually mentored by her for several years. What do you see as the future of the rom-com and of Ephron's legacy?
I love Jenny Han. I think she's one of the most brilliant rom-com writers. The To All the Boys franchise is incredible. The Summer I Turned Pretty – I'm dying for the next season!
I also think that Jennifer Keaton Robinson – she's really putting her own twist on rom-coms in a way that is so different from Nora, but also in a very Nora manner. Like with Do Revenge – it's a buddy comedy and a revenge comedy, but also there are romantic elements in it. Seeing it reminded me of how I felt when I first saw Nora's films. It feels fresh in the way that Nora's work did. I know she's heavily influenced by Nora, but she's not following in her footsteps exactly.
Leslie Hedlund, also, I think, has done a really great job over the years. Sleeping With Other People is like the more modern and a different take on When Harry Met Sally.
The other side of Nora Ephron's legacy has played out in a surprising way on social media. In the past few years her rom-coms have been embraced and given new life on social media through trends like Meg Ryan Fall. Why do you think Ephron's work has come back into the cultural conversation in this way?
I think people are drawn to the nostalgia of all of it. I think we all find comfort in autumn and all of the things that come with it. And Millennials, even more Gen Z, have been discovering Nora's work, and with that, they've discovered the aesthetic that comes with it. And it's been fun for a lot of style bloggers and TikTokers to lean into those looks – to recreate them and by extension to curate their own Nora Ephron life. Because it's still aspirational. Like Nora, I live in New York. Nora's New York is amazing. It's beautiful. There's a reason why we all love watching those movies. But it's not my New York. But there are moments that you can create your own version of Nora's New York by, you know, wearing a bowler hat or a cable knit sweater. There's a nostalgia factor, but it's also a reminder of some of the lovelier parts of New York in the movies.
For days when your Meg Ryan Fall blazer just isn't cosy enough.
An excerpt from Nora Ephron at the Movies
I’ve spent most of my life daydreaming that I was living in a rom-com. I grew up on a cultural diet of Nora Ephron movies, fantasising about being Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally or You’ve Got Mail. Today, much of my writing career focuses on film and nostalgia – dissecting the rom-com as a contemporary cultural phenomenon through features, retrospectives, and oral histories. And when I’m not examining and analysing these films, I’m watching them.
Nora’s work transformed the way I saw myself – I could be frustrating and flawed and resist tradition: I could be seen. Being a woman was an imperfect and nuanced experience that Nora captured perfectly in her writing and portrayed on-screen, nervous breakdowns and all. With a knack for expressing unfiltered emotions and naked inclinations for romance, Nora coined an aesthetic moment of chunky sweaters, autumn leaves, and cosy, lived-in brownstones. She encapsulated a nineties New York City intellectual glamour that everyone craved and she brought to life. I believed wholeheartedly in the fantasy: my Prince Charming would stroll into the indie bookstore I worked at and sweep me off my feet, or maybe a sweet story on the radio would lead to a meet-cute with me and my future husband. To some, I may have been delusional (I prefer the term “hopeless romantic”), but I was far from alone in my sublime reveries. And they could be beautiful thing. Like so many others who longed to be writers, Nora and her real-life impressive career became aspirational for me. Her razor-sharp wit and brutally honest tone made her a maverick writer – a brave, bossy confidante who never held back. In many ways, Nora’s personal life was the antithesis of the relationship-focused storylines of her sugary rom-coms I devoured.
Nora’s mantra “Everything is copy” became words I too aspired to live by: advice passed on from her screenwriter mother, Phoebe, about the power of autofiction. The way Nora put it: “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.” In short, oversharing personal anecdotes could make you the protagonist of the story while simultaneously reclaiming control of the narrative. When Nora tackled her insecurities about her small breasts, confronted her ageing neck skin, or eviscerated her philandering ex-husband, she didn’t spare herself or others.
And she certainly didn’t feign indifference. She told the story as hers and made space for others to relate, and readers like me clung to every word. As film critic Rex Reed so aptly noted, she was “a fresh, inventive observer who stalks the phonies and cherubs alike, sniffing them out like a hungry tiger, clamping her pretty teeth down in all spots where it hurts the most, then leaving all of her victims better off than they were before they met Nora Ephron.” Though I’ve admittedly been much more selective than Nora, that principle has guided me through the tough years when I’ve wanted nothing more than to dig deep into my own personal foibles and lean into a spiral of self-pity. Guided by Nora, I managed to reclaim these insecurities and struggles by writing about them, finding humour in even the most traumatic of experiences.
