Saturday, August 01, 2020
10:00 AM |
The Film Meme No. 98
[98th of 100]. When Nora Ephron died in 2012, I had no idea I would be so devastated -- and still continue to be so until now. Her body of work [all those movies, all those books...] and her life [all that love for cooking, for reading in bed, and for friends...] were seriously aspirational for me, and even how she chose to lead the last years of her life knowing that she had leukemia [she wrote books and a play, she directed
Julie & Julia, she kept her condition secret from friends] felt like the blueprint of an artist who knew what she was doing, and to remain creative till the end. Above all, she seemed to know just how exactly to live, and then to use how she lived to tell her stories. "Everything is copy," she believed. And how splendidly she demonstrated that philosophy, from her novel and subsequent screenplay of
Heartburn [which dramatised her marriage to and divorce from journalist Carl Bernstein], to her play
Love, Loss, and What I Wore [co-written with her sister Delia, which collected the stories of their female friends], to her various essay collections [which collected her journalism and her often amusing takes on everything, even the loose skin on her neck], and to the documentary on her life [which is titled, of course,
Everything is Copy]. She mines her own travails at love [as well as that of director Rob Reiner's] in the screenplay of this wonderful 1989 film, which became her lasting contribution to the genre of romantic comedy, on top of those she later directed on her own, which would include the equally wonderful
Sleepless in Seattle [1993] and
You've Got Mail [1998]. It was this film that introduced me to her, although it would take me time to consider the tightly-structured screenplay to be part of the film's appeal for me. I still remember watching the movie in the theater because I was 14 when I saw it, and because I braved a typhoon to get there. I have no idea what possessed me to leave the house that day in October 1989 when Typhoon Saling was unleashing the edges of its fury on Dumaguete. I remember deciding to go downtown, I remember the tricyle ride, I remember the gusts of wind [and a flying tree branch], I remember the pelting rain and the flood -- and I remember finally getting to the safety of Ever Theater in the late afternoon, where I found myself immersed in this story of Harry [Billy Crystal] and Sally [Meg Ryan], who argue at the start whether men and women could truly become friends without sex [or the though of sex] getting in the way. I was perhaps too young for the movie's adult preoccupations on relationships but I remember being enchanted by it. Later on, when I learned more about film in general, and this one in particular, I'd chalk up that enchantment to the chemistry of the stars, the organic direction, the witty screenplay, the American standards soundtrack by Harry Connick Jr., and the lush cinematography capturing New York through the changing seasons [but mostly autumn]. Then there are the magical moments that have made the movie iconic, including Meg Ryan's orgasm scene in a deli, topped off by the line, "I'll have what she's having," from one of the extras surrounding them [actually Mr. Reiner's mother]. When I was studying in Tokyo in 1997, I came across the movie's published screenplay in my dorm, which I then proceeded to devour simply because it was so good -- and that was when I first came across Nora Ephron's name for real. Reading the screenplay, it struck me how ingeniously structured the film was, and this relayed to me for the first time the importance of writing for the visual medium: without a screenplay, there really can't be any film. I love how it's told in episodes from fractured moments of more than a decade of the characters meeting and going. I love its interlaced segments where older married couples narrate to the camera their stories of how they met. I love that it starts with our main couple detesting each other. I love how they're surrounded by truly remarkable supporting characters -- Carrie Fisher's Marie and Bruno Kirby's Jess above all. I love that it's about love, or at least the search for it, but renders the drama in an intelligent way, carefully balancing the gender perspectives in the process. When people disparage the genre of romantic comedy as something empty and saccharine, this is always my rebuttal -- and I always win. Thank God for Nora Ephron for writing this, and Rob Reiner staying true to her vision directing this. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film, life, love, memories
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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