![]() When Sam and Annie finally meet on top of the Empire State Building, you can't help but feel their connection pour through the screen. That is an incredibly hard line to walk, yet Ephron pulls it off beautifully. It is a film that defies the standard formula of a romantic comedy while being one at the same time. People keep coming back to Sleepless in Seattle because it stands out. Carpenter and Craven with horror, and her with the romantic comedy. People like her, John Carpenter, and Wes Craven took on the arduous task of dragging some of the most "easy" standard genre fare into a place that was interesting and new. Nora Ephron may be one of the most popular auteur filmmakers. Sam posits than men simply don't work like women do (Ephron evokes similar ideas in When Harry Met Sally.) Yet when push comes to shove, he has to fall in love with Annie. We see him dismiss the kind of movie romance that guides Annie, instead evoking the more masculine The Dirty Dozen in one of the film's funniest scenes. Sam falls in love with her unbeknownst to him, actively pursuing other women and putting down her letter as impossible. Yet even with this premise, you can't help but root for them. It sounds ridiculous, and she acknowledges it as that. She is almost entirely motivated by the kind of love you see in the movies, the idea that true love can bring you together against the reality of time and space. This turns into an exercise of absurdity in a way, going as far as hiring a private investigator to stalk Sam, and eventually lying her way into flying out to meet him for her work as a journalist. Yet she cannot help but throw that all away for Sam, a man she never sees or meets until the final minutes of the film. Engaged to a nice guy, she has a stable family, good job with a good boss. In contrast to Sam, her life could not be more stable at the beginning of the film. This deconstruction of the rom-com genre is especially apparent in the character of Annie. Ephron's steady hand guides us through the entire time. Yet, this deconstruction never feels counterintuitive. Instead of a traditional "meet-cute," Ephron makes that the climax rather than the beginning. Both characters are being pulled into each other's gravitational pull, through deliberate actions and chance. Sam deals with the death of his wife, his changed relationship with his young son Jonah ( Ross Malinger), and re-entering the dating scene in his newly adopted home of Seattle, while Annie deals with her impending marriage to nebbish nice guy Walter ( Bill Pullman), and the back and forth of her obsession with Sam after hearing his story on a radio show. ![]() Instead of focusing on Sam and Annie's relationship together, she chooses to build up each character separately. So while she may be directly disregarding tropes of the genre, she is also making the audience aware of those tropes, and how she is choosing to break them. She chooses to meet Sam (Tom Hanks) on top of the Empire State Building because of a scene from the film. The motivations of Meg Ryan's character, Annie, are especially influenced by the movie. Characters often discuss films, particularly the 1957 film An Affair to Remember, starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. Inexplicable.To start, Ephron situates the film within the genre itself, without being overly "meta" or in your face. "I don't know what it was, but as soon as we started work with Ross, it was the movie. "He was an 8-year-old who understood that there's a difference between saying the lines and playing around," Hanks told Carlson. Watt, who starred in Unstrung Heroes with Diane Keatona few years later but stopped acting in his teens, told Carlson that he didn't remember much about the experience, except for Rosie O'Donnell being funny and kind and Ephron being "abrasive." It was disappointing that it didn't work out, but, he added, "I was 8."Įnter Ross Malinger, who made his movie debut in 1990's Kindergarten Cop, as Jonah. ![]() "The kid wasn't much of an actor," remembered on-site editor Bob Reitano, "but most importantly he couldn't remember his lines." He was "frickin' adorable," casting director Laura Rosenthal recalled to Carlson, as well as Ephron's first choice.īut according to multiple accounts, after just a few days of filming it was clear that Watt-who had never been in a movie-wasn't going to work out. The part eventually went to 8-year-old Nathan Watt. The production cast a wide net when it came to finding the right kid to play Sam's matchmaker son Jonah, and the young actors who came up during the search, per Carlson, included Elijah Wood, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Savage and Rider Strong, Jason Schwartzman and Joaquin (still going by Leaf) Phoenix-who, at 17, was quickly crossed off as too old for the part. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |