The enduring appeal of Nora Ephron, and the golden age of rom-coms

Ilana Kaplan has become a bona fide Nora Ephron expert.

With the publication of her debut book Nora Ephron at the Movies, an illustrated monograph on the visionary woman behind films like When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, writer and editor Kaplan integrates her passion for 90s rom-coms with a healthy dose of nostalgia for an autumnal, pre-9/11 New York City that Ephron’s filmography so memorably captured.

“Nostalgia was a big part of my beat, so it was a natural fit because I grew up watching Nora Ephron's movies and loved her voice and her writing,” Kaplan told the JC on one decidedly autumnal Sunday. “I was just really excited to do it.”

Ephron, the renowned screenwriter, director, essayist and journalist who was born to Jewish screenwriter parents in California, is remembered for her distinctive and rather Jewish sense of humour, witty observations and lovably complex characters. Having written rom-coms that quite literally defined the genre and captured the zeitgeist of the early 90s, it is no wonder Ephron’s name has become synonymous with a certain female-empowered cinematic success.

Nora Ephron at the Movies explores Ephron’s life and work with thorough analyses by Kaplan and exclusive interviews with Ephron’s key collaborators, including Andie MacDowell, Susan Seidelman, Meg Wolitzer, and Jenn Kaytin Robinson, offering a fresh look at one of Hollywood’s most important creators.

In excavating Ephron’s filmography, Kaplan delved into a handful of her less famous movies – which notably fall outside the rom-com genre – from a Mafia film called Cookie (1989) to the dramedy This is My Life (1992), a film that marked Ephron’s directorial debut, to Silkwood (1983), a thriller starring a young Meryl Streep and for which Ephron wrote the screenplay.

“Some of them have become cult favorites and I feel like her humor translated really well to different kinds of comedy,” Kaplan said. “She didn't want to just be pigeonholed into ‘the rom-com queen.’”

But it’s Ephron’s romantic comedies that have stood the test of time. Her most beloved rom-coms are full of iconic, quotable moments, whether it’s Sally’s theatrical fake orgasm in Katz’s Deli in When Harry Met Sally or Kathleen’s heart-tugging “I wanted it to be you - I wanted it to be you so badly” line in You’ve Got Mail.
And there is something ineffably Jewish about Ephron’s works, too.

“I feel like she was very Jewish-ish and culturally Jewish but wasn't really practicing and, for me, that was very relatable,” said Kaplan, who is also Jewish. “I don't think any of her characters were canonically Jewish, but you get the sense that they definitely could be. You know, like Harry and Sally – I do feel like there's this sense of humor they have that permeates through a lot of the Jewish community. So I feel like because Nora was a part of these projects, it was inherently there.”

While the book is a celebration of Ephron’s work – and her unparalleled talent for writing popular rom coms – it also comments on where she had, as Kaplan puts it, “unconscious bias or blind spots when it came to filmmaking.”

“Like, there aren't people of colour in her films. So part of me honours how beautiful it was, the work that she made, and I think it was very progressive at the time, but there were still things lacking. And that's why there's a new generation of writers and directors who are transforming what a rom-com looks like.”

Ephron died of cancer in 2012, at which point the romantic comedy genre was in a lull. The success of When Harry Met Sally is considered to have helped launch a ‘golden age’ in romantic comedy that lasted through the 1990s and early 2000s but petered out by around 2010. Some say the lull remains; the genre rarely sees itself among the highest grossing films and more recent attempts at big-budget rom-coms, like Sydney Sweeney’s Anyone But You feel... flat.

“Nora, I think, is the main element that's missing,” Kaplan said. “Her specific voice and tone are something that appealed to so many people. There hasn't really been someone that's resonated in that way. I think that a lot of filmmakers have learned from her and have really taken elements from her and progressed them forward, but part of the problem is that Nora is irreplaceable.”