Erin Carlson - Ill Have What Shes Having: How Nora Ephrons Three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic Comedy

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God, are we gonna get away with this?

So muttered Nora Ephron, smiling despite herself as she watched Meg Ryan traverse the Empire State Building observation deck to greet her destiny, Tom Hanks. In one corner of the set, painstakingly constructed to match the real thing, the director wore super-sized headphones and kept her eyes glued to the monitor.

It was the summer of 1992, and if Nora wanted to keep making movies, she really needed to pull off Sleepless in Seattles high-stakes last scene: a fantastical encounter between her stars that defied Hollywood convention. Studio executives quivered. They dont meet until the very end! Would an audience accept the gimmick and sit through 90 minutes without a proper meet-cute? And can Nora Ephron, a neophyte director with one failed film under her belt, even be trusted to get away with this?

What transpired when the camera started rolling would make cinematic history as the most romantic (and schmaltzy) moment she ever filmed, anointing Tom and Meg as Americas Sweetheartsa label at which they wincedand Nora the Queen of Romantic Comedy. But getting there was a battle. At one point, Tom got cold feetcould he portray a wussy dad without committing career suicide?forcing Nora, anxious about keeping him happy, to persuade a fellow skeptic and know-it-all (and therefore a kindred spirit) to take a chance on her.

Sleepless is the second in a trilogy of Ephron-scripted romantic comedies that combined old-fashioned romance with hilarious truths about contemporary relationships (one word: tiramisu) to shape ideas and expectations about love, however pie-in-the-sky. According to When Harry Met Sally, you could get lucky and marry your best friend. Or, given the arcs of Sleepless and Youve Got Mail, you might break your commitment to a blah suitor and delay marriage until Mr. Soulmate (who exhibits an uncanny resemblance to Tom Hanks) arrives to pledge his undying affection as long as you both shall live. Like the great Manhattan-set romcoms of yore, from The Apartment to Breakfast at Tiffanys to Annie Hall, these romances stand the test of time: We get to experience the vicarious thrill of falling in love, a feeling at once intoxicating, addictive, and comforting, over and over again. But if you consider Nora a sentimentalist, youre mistaken: The mastermind yanking the heartstrings did not always sample the cherry-flavored Kool-Aid she served up.

Early in her career as a journalist, Nora cultivated a cutthroat, suffer-no-fools writing persona that skewered subjects from one-time idol Dorothy Parker to the staff of Gourmet magazine with bulls-eye precision. Back then, especially if you were a powerful media entityor a ridiculous man, or a conventionally beautiful woman who complained about the downside of being born conventionally beautifulyou wanted to stay on Noras good side and out of her line of vision. Later, when Nora turned her attention to filmmaking, she relied on her fierce wit and nimble social maneuvering to navigate the high highs and low lows of a male-dominated industry where womens stories typically play second fiddle. Though generous of spirit, she had the capacity to smear reputations and steer public opinion away from objects of her disapproval. And since she gave her point of view decisively and with such confidence, you took her word for it. You looked to Noras bullshit detector to give it to you straight.

Nora, like a protoTaylor Swift, channeled heartbreak into pop art with an autobiographical novel, Heartburn, exposing the bitter end of her second marriage to Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein. The film version, starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, would be her last cinematic take on divorce.

In a stark turnaround, her public image began to crystallize into a new Nora: someone who embraced the fantasy that a pair of perfect strangers, or mortal enemies, could be so MFEO. During the irony-drenched 1990s, when star-driven romances thrived anew, she found the ideal screen couple in two genre powerhouses whose sweet-and-tart sensibilities translated to sizzling chemistry, a merging of minds: Tom, an unlikely leading man who gained his sex appeal through clever delivery instead of a chiseled jaw, and Meg, a gifted actress trapped in the vessel of a Disney princess, forever struggling to earn the respect Tom came by effortlessly.

In hindsight, casting Meg as Sally Albright, her breakthrough role, was obvious. Faking the orgasm at Katzs Deli? Megs idea. But other actresses turned down the part before she got to audition. On Sleepless, Nora initially doubted whether Tom, in career flux, had what it took to sweep Meg off her feet. On Mail, Meg expressed wariness toward playing adorable bookstore owner Kathleen Kelly. What changed her mind? And more importantly, what was an edgy up-and-coming comic named Dave Chappelle doing in a turtleneck?

This is the story of how Nora and her collaborators shed inhibition to redefine the romantic comedy genre in a way that felt utterly new: wry, knowing, and urbane, but with an unabashed idealistic streak as well. And in the process, she came to also reshape the popular perception of the city she so loved: New York was just as much a character in her films as any of the romantic leads were, and her dialogue and cinematography betrayed her deep adoration of the town.