“A TEENY-WEENY EXPLOSION”

Director and screenwriter Nora Ephron, who died in June at age 71, visited the AFI Conservatory on September 30, 1993. The New York City resident, daughter of Hollywood screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron (CAROUSEL, DADDY LONG LEGS, DESK SET, WHAT PRICE GLORY), sister of screenwriter Delia Ephron (BEWITCHED, MICHAEL, YOU’VE GOT MAIL) and former wife of Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, about whom she wrote HEARTBURN, touched upon WHEN HARRY MET SALLY... and SILKWOOD. Most of her talk, however, concerned SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, which the Fellows had screened the day before. What was Ephron’s visit like? Well, as Tom Hanks’ character in the movie described the first time he touched his wife: “It was like…magic.”

“Then they sent me SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE. I looked at it and it was a very gloopy script. It was nothing like the movie that you saw – nothing like it. It was not a comedy at all. There were about two little jokes in it – the kid had the jokes…

In the original version the father made the phone call to the radio shrink. He not only made one phone call, he made six phone calls, and they went like this: ‘I’m so sad and droopy. My wife died and I don’t know what to do.’ Clunk! It was an unmakeable movie because no male actor would ever have played a wuss like this. Ever. By the time I got to the movie, David Ward, who’s a very good screenwriter, had done a couple of rewrites and made the fundamental change that made it all possible – he had the kid make the phone call…

Sometimes the studio will say to you that it just needs ‘character’ when the truth is that all it is is a character piece, so the main thing it’s missing is the thing that it is.

Neither of the characters existed in any way. They weren’t likable people, but there was this sort of fabulous dirt that you could grow wonderful grass in if you just knew how to do it...I did a three-week rewrite…I turned this screenplay in and what happened then was really kind of funny, because I’d never been through it in my life and I never will again. It was like a teeny-weeny explosion. In 48 hours...every actor in Hollywood wanted to be in this movie. And the original director didn’t want anything to do with it, because I think he knew it had become a comedy and I don’t think he thought it should be a comedy. So off he went, and when the dust settled they offered it to me to direct…

I have this fanatical thing about having every single character in a movie have a moment. Even the guy who delivers the mail has a little scene. He doesn’t just give the mail, he’s got this dopey conversation about hiccup cures. I want every actor who comes into a movie to have a reason for being there. I want to get good actors to come because they’ll know that even if they only have one scene, it’ll be a good scene. If they say to someone, ‘I was Meg Ryan’s brother,’ they’ll say, ‘Oh yes, I remember that scene.’ I want that, not just because I want good actors, but because it makes a thin movie. This is a thin, character-driven movie, and because you don’t have suspense, you don’t have car crashes, you don’t have guns, all you want is delicious character things. You know the scene where Rita Wilson tells the story about AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER and starts to cry? There’s no reason for it. It doesn’t move the plot along. But you just can’t imagine the movie without it, because that’s what the movie is. All the little themes of this movie come together in that scene – about men and women and how different they are.”